RUSH: The International Herald Tribune is owned by The New York Times, but this story has not appeared in the New York Times. In fact, the story hasn’t appeared. We haven’t found it anywhere. Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, none of the major newspapers. You remember many, many moons ago, ladies and gentlemen, I told you the dirty little secret of the Democrat Party is if they win the White House, they are not pulling troops out of Iraq.
Headline, International Herald Tribune: ‘Clinton Sees Risks in Rapid Iraq Pullout — Senator Hillary Clinton went out of her way Sunday to underscore the risks of a too-rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. She indicated that a pullout might take up to 20 months, adding, ‘This is not going to be easy or safe.” She says we’re going to have essentially troops in Iraq the first two years of her presidency. You might be saying, ‘Why in the world would she say this now? She’s still gotta win the nomination. This is not going to make the base happy, these kooks.’ Well, number one, it hasn’t shown up in the American media. It is on Drudge, so it’s out there, but it’s in the International Herald Tribune. The Boston Globe mentioned it without any details, didn’t make a big deal out of it. The dirty little secret here is that Hillary thinks she’s got the nomination wrapped up. She’s already running the general election. The nomination is hers without one vote being cast. I also think, not only based on the things that she’s saying, but based on who she’s talking about, I think she’s concluded that Rudy is going to be the Republican nominee, and I think she’s already running against him. I think she’s giving whistleblower time here to the opponents that she faces in the Democrat Party. So she’s out there now forgetting all about trying to woo the base because she’s got it, she’s got the nomination. This is in her mind.
All right, to the audio sound bites. I want to go back and play for you the very first question that George Stephanopoulos asked the Republican candidates two or three Sundays ago on their debate on his show on Sunday morning. First question:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Our goal today is to get a real debate going among all of you, to find out where you stand on the issues, but also to figure the real differences that separates you. And in that spirit, here in Iowa, you’ve already been going at each other somewhat beneath the radar screen on the issue of abortion.
RUSH: All right, now we have for you, the Democrat debate was yesterday. Here is a montage of all of the Stephanopoulos questions and candidate answers on abortion in yesterday’s debate. Keep in mind that none of these are repeated.
(Silence.)
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, there were no questions on abortion, and thus there were no answers. For the second Democrat debate in a row, this was the case. Of course, what would a Democrat debate be without the words Rush Limbaugh? This was at Drake University in Iowa, by the way, George Stephanopoulos said this to Senator Clinton.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Outgoing White House counselor Karl Rove opined on that this week. He was on Rush Limbaugh. Here’s what he had to say.
ROVE: There is no front-runner who has entered the primary season with negatives as high as she has in the history of modern polling. She’s going into the general election, depending on what poll you look at, in the high forties on the negative side and just below that on the positive side. And there is nobody who’s ever won the presidency who started out in that kind of position.
RUSH: So Stephanopoulos said, ‘What is your response to this?’
CLINTON: You know, I have been fighting against these people for longer than anybody else up here. I’ve taken them on, and we’ve beaten them. The idea that you’re going to escape the Republican attack machine and not have high negatives by the time they’re through with you I think is just missing what’s been going on in American politics for the last 20 years. (Applause.) The reason why we’re going to win is because we have a better vision for America, we know how to bring about change, and I know how to beat them so, yes, they’re going to be driving up negatives and making all these comments. Doesn’t matter to me a bit.
RUSH: Well, I did a little research here, folks, and I found the ‘Republican Attack Machine,’ quote, unquote, went after Algore pretty good in 2000, and his negatives were not nearly as high as Mrs. Clinton’s. Then in 2004, the so-called ‘Republican Attack Machine’ went after John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, and his negatives didn’t score nearly as high as Mrs. Clinton’s do. By the way, the attack machine, as she calls it, is simply the truth squad. All we do is get the truth of these people out there. The thing about these Democrats, especially Mrs. Clinton, is when you call them on their facts, and how they’re wrong about things, they consider it an attack. You wish there were an attack machine in the Republican Party, don’t you? Have you guys spent a lot of time watching Karl Rove? He was on all three network shows yesterday. He was wiping the floor with these people. I don’t care if it’s David Gregory, I don’t care who it is. He’s wiping the floor with all of them. And you watch this, and, gosh, where’s this been? Where has this kind of response to the Democrats been from the White House? Well, I happen to know because they’ve told me. Rove feels liberated now that he’s resigning, and will be out of the White House in a couple weeks, even less than that. So he’s free to unload. Then people said, ‘Well, why is he going after Hillary?’ It’s the age-old thing, if you focus your attack on Clinton, or anybody, you elevate them and you elevate their sense of importance. And, of course, you give Mrs. Clinton the chance, a-ha, they’re really worried about me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So people are speculating, why is Rove doing this? In fact, here’s AP, Deb Riechmann: ‘Master GOP strategist Karl Rove won’t let up in his attacks on Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton, but the intriguing question is why.’ Why? That’s the question? How about what he’s saying about her? Are you not at all interested in that? Why is he going after Hillary? Do these people actually sit there and think we’re just going to lay down and let Mrs. Clinton walk all over us? It’s such a fait accompli; she is such the candidate of inevitability that who would dare criticize Hillary? So they’re coming up with answers, and one of the answers that they’re coming up with is it’s reverse psychology. Keep in context how they think of Karl Rove. He’s the Wizard of Oz, this master strategerist pulling marionette strings behind the curtain. So they’re saying it’s reverse psychology, that the Republican apparatus, the attack machine wants Hillary Clinton to be nominated, ’cause of her high negatives and because they think that she’d be the easiest of the top-tier Democrats to beat. So they can’t figure out why he’s doing this. How about, to get the truth out about her? How about something just as simple as what it looks like. If it’s a duck, it’s a duck. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. We’re not talking about Mrs. Clinton — well, we are in a sense, but rather what Rove is saying about her.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me grab line two before we leave Mrs. Clinton here in the dust. We’re not going to totally leave here, but we have a question from Zimmerman, Minnesota, from Ron. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I apologize to you for making you wait 17 years to hear from me.
RUSH: (Laughing.) I like that attitude. I like that kind of confident bravado.
CALLER: (Laughing.) Thank you. Hey, I heard Hillary saying this yesterday, and it sent a chill up my spine. Her disingenuous banter when she talks like she wants to work with both sides of the aisle and she just got up there and said, ‘I’ve been fighting these people for all these years.’
RUSH: Thirty-five years, right. ‘I’ve been fighting these people 35 years,’ right.
CALLER: It spoke volumes.
RUSH: Well, let me tell you, I want to expand on this and tell you why she’s doing this. She’s already concluded that she cannot be beaten in this primary. What she’s doing, is she’s moving rapidly, she is moving quickly to build up a solid and rational position — ostensibly, reputation — on national security, trying to distinguish herself from the others. Hence this International Herald Tribune story. We’re going to be in Iraq for two years after she’s president, she says. We just can’t get out of there. The others are in a race to tell the base how fast they’re going to get out, how they’re going to do it, and even what roads they’re going to take out of there! Wait ’til you hear the bite coming up. It’s hilarious. So she’s got the nomination wrapped up. So she’s campaigning now, the famous ‘move back to the center’ business. She knows that what kills Democrats in general elections is the position being taken by all of her opponents in this campaign and in the debates. She’s also going to run health care. She’s also going to do it all over again. She knows that people want something for nothing, and she’s going to convince them that that’s what her health care plan is. She’ll say that she was lied to about the war, that it was fought incompetently but that we can’t pull out all at once.
We just can’t do that. She’s going to try to put Republicans on defense because they’ll be defending the Bush position, yada yada yada yada yada, and I guarantee you, she and her team right now are working on trying to neutralize the security issue. The Democrat car, the hybrid with all these candidates in it, has gone off the cliff, as I keep telling you, on the subject of Iraq. They’re invested in defeat. She’s pulling back. She’s jumped out of that car and the parachute has opened and she’s gliding gently down — well, as gently as she could glide in a parachute — down to reality. It isn’t going to help that some of our guys have been weak on security, certain aspects of it, such as the border. That’s where they are vulnerable. So I think, as I said earlier, she’s getting ready to run against Rudy. I think that’s who they think the nominee on our side is going to be, and I think they want to. So in the meantime, Rove is out there trying to alert everybody to just what her record is, and, by the way, her incompetence is the hidden message. The Drive-Bys, though, are just in awe. Nobody criticizes Hillary! They don’t know what to do with this. This is unprecedented! Well, you might say, ‘No, Michelle Obama and Mrs. Edwards are out there criticizing her,’ but, see, I finally figured this one out, too. You can’t hit the girl. You just can’t hit the girl, and for Edwards and Obama to go out there and criticize Hillary would sink them.
She plays the victim better than anybody does, and she could make real hay out of that, so they’ve got their wives out there ripping her. But the Drive-Bys around taking that seriously, because Hillary’s the inevitable candidate, so here comes Rove, and he unloads, first on this program, then goes on Meet the Press, then wherever else he went on Sunday and unloads with basically the same message, and they’re all out there saying, ‘Karl Rove singled out Hillary Rodham Clinton for criticism.’ If I may be so bold, he didn’t ‘single her out’ at all. Each and every time he has been asked about it, including on this program — and I’ll admit something to you. I hadn’t intended to ask him about Hillary Clinton because I didn’t think that I’d get an answer. But we had the audio sound bite of the ad that she was running, accusing this White House of not seeing half or more of the population. By the way, grab our commercial on that that we began debuting on Friday, Mike. I had the audio sound bite and had I played it and I asked Rove about it, because the White House had responded to it. So bam! That’s when he unloaded. But he’s asked about her each and every time. Now, you might think it’s a minor point. You might say, ‘Well, he’s smart enough to know he’s going to be asked about it, so he’s ready for it,’ but he doesn’t bring it up. He’s always asked about it. We have put together a parody ad of Mrs. Clinton and this invisibility thing because the ad that she did run was just outrageous and wrong, and in this, that ad was a classic example of the ‘Democrat Attack Machine.’ So this is the way we explain it in reality to people.
HILLARY IMPERSONATOR: As I travel around America, I hear about so many people who feel like they’re invisible.
ANNOUNCER: Hillary Clinton has spent a lifetime walking over people others don’t see.
HILLARY IMPERSONATOR: You know that travel office thing? I had no idea those people ever existed when I had them fired. They…were…invisible. I couldn’t run for president of anything if all my other records for the White House years weren’t invisible now, and I never thought I would see our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan — and I haven’t yet, and I hope I never will. And if you’re a single mom wondering how I could put up with all that trash that Bill picked up over the years? I pretended they were…invisible. But they won’t be invisible to the next president of the United States! (applause)
RUSH: Hi. Welcome back. Rush Limbaugh. Now, moments ago, I gave you insightful analysis on how Hillary already, in her mind, has the nomination wrapped up. It’s time now to run the general election, time now to move back to the center and try to get some credibility and rebuild the reputation on national security. Meanwhile, the other guys are still nowhere near winning the nomination, so they still have to appeal to the base. The question came up yesterday about getting out of Iraq, and we have a little montage here of the candidates with their pretending to say that they can be the first and the fastest to get us out. Listen to this.
BIDEN: When you begin to take the troops out, what are you going to do with the 4,000 or 5,000 civilians that are left inside the Green Zone?
RICHARDSON: We would move them through roads in Kuwait. We would move them in roads through Turkey.
HILLARY: Moving troops out cannot happen without careful planning. We would have to take our troops out, plus the equipment, which we would not want to leave, plus what we do with the people in the Green Zone.
EDWARDS: In a very orderly way bring our troops out.
OBAMA: Orderly, phased withdrawal.
GRAVEL: Pull everybody out, and turn to the Iranians who helped us defeat the Talibans! [sic]
RUSH: That last voice was Mike Gravel. He’s always good for a laugh. So Richardson is already telling us, okay, here’s the road we’re going to take. We’re going to take roads out of Kuwait. We’re going to take roads in Turkey out of there. But you hear the difference between Mrs. Clinton’s answer and all of the others. Now, Turkey would not let us use their roads to move in, if you recall this. (laughing) I don’t know if they’ve changed their mind. Maybe they’d let us use their roads to get out of there, but they may think once we got in there we would stop. These people are just hopeless.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to Mrs. Clinton here for just a second. The sound bite that we played mere moments ago, I’m not going to play it again, in which she said that she’d been fighting the Republican attack machine, been fighting these people for 35 years, do you realize what that is? That is a confession that she can’t get anything done. She’s been fighting for 35 years, and accomplished what? The question was about lobbyists, and she ducked the question. Stephanopoulos goaded her to follow up. She just reeled off her talking points, America’s problems, da-da-da-da, liberal talking points, said she’d been fighting for these ideas for 35 years.
Now, if she couldn’t fix them after 35 years of fighting, why should anybody give her four more? Oh, I know why, so that she can say she fought these issues for 39 years, not 35. Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps maybe Mrs. Clinton just doesn’t know, A, how to solve problems, B, how to fight successfully, or C, all of the above? She’s taken some people out, but it’s back to the same old refrain. I go back to the Democrat debate forum that they had with the union people, and these people in the audience were allowed to go to the microphone, and it was just one constant whine, one constant moan. ‘I don’t have health insurance, and my wife doesn’t have health insurance. What’s wrong with America? What are you going to do?’ Well, by Mrs. Clinton’s own admission, she’s been fighting for these things for 35 years. These people that have voted for her and other Democrats are still miserable. Nothing is getting done. They’re not happy. This is what led to Battered Liberal Syndrome and the fix for it that I conscientiously and very graciously, with great compassion, introduced last week.
One other thing I want to say before we move on to other things here, and that’s Karl Rove all over television on the weekend. I told you on Friday that one of the talking points that the Drive-Bys have come up and the Democrat Party is that Rove played to the base and he split the country, divided the country on purpose in order to win. That’s ridiculous. You could say that about the Democrats, too. The country was divided. Rove dealt with what he had running Bush’s campaigns and so forth. But this attack that he played to the base is two-pronged. So what? Democrats do that, too, so what’s wrong with playing to the base? You have to understand that coming from the mind-set of the left, the prism through which they see things, the Republican base, is deliverance. The Republican base is hayseed hicks, racist, sexist, homophobes, and so when you play to them, you are promoting racism, sexism, bigotry, and homophobia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you are dividing the country. This is how they see it. They really do. It’s not the result of any intellectual pursuit or conclusion on their party. It’s just total feelings.
Their belief system is largely made up of feelings, not thoughts, not real convictions that they can arrive at with the intellectual pursuit. But let’s take a look at the nature of the evidence here on the charge that Karl Rove divided the nation by playing to the base, the right-wing base. If Karl Rove, especially in the first term, was playing to any base, it was not the right-wing base, it was the left-wing base. I asked him on this program last week when we interviewed him, I said, ‘Do you have any regrets about the new tone in your first couple years, letting Ted Kennedy participate in writing legislation, and all this sort of stuff?’ He said no. The margin is pretty thin. You can’t get anything done without some Democrats helping you out. Well, let’s go look at some of these things. How about ‘no child left behind’? Is that playing to the Republican base? That’s a giant expansion of the education program that Ted Kennedy got to help write that took new funding. How about the prescription drug entitlement? Was that playing to the base? Going out and telling these racists, sexist, bigot, homophobes that we need another government entitlement? That’s playing to the right-wing base? How about amnesty for illegals? Is that playing to the right-wing base?
The idea that Rove is out here playing to the base to divide America is absurd. You know, divided America to the libs, i.e., people who don’t vote for them, means somebody’s poisoning their minds against the libs. The people aren’t capable of opposing liberals on their own, so of course there has to be some evil genius mastermind behind this. The arrogance and the sense of entitlement superiority and presumptuousness of the left is staggering, but it’s necessary to comprehend it and to understand it in order to watch their news media, in order to listen to them.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Neil in Austin, Texas. I’m glad you called, sir. Thank you for waiting.
CALLER: Hi, Rush, it’s a pleasure.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: You know, I wanted to offer an insight about Hillary’s comment that she’s been fighting these people for 35 years. Hillary doesn’t make slip-ups in conversation or interviews, and she didn’t say that she’d been battles for her programs or trying to overcome Republican programs. She said she’s been fighting these people, and that underlines the fact the only thing that she and Bill have ever been interested in is position and power over purpose. It’s that simple for anybody that hasn’t seen the light yet.
RUSH: Uh, uh, uh, uh, one minor caveat. There is a purpose.
CALLER: Oh, I understand, yes. To seize power.
RUSH: The purpose is control: the use of power for the sake of controlling as much and as many as possible. There is a devious purpose to their quest for power. Those two are inseparable. I think you’re on to something when you say that she’s been fighting these people for 35 years. When you also say they don’t say things flippantly and by mistake in public forums like this. When she says we’ve been fighting these people for 35 years, she’s been getting rid of her enemies. She’s been trying to take her enemies out, not just content to defeat them. They have to destroy them. They don’t campaign on ideas. The Clintons campaign on — well, Bill did — ‘I feel your pain.’ He campaigned on being able to relate to people, and when he did mention an idea like tax cuts, somehow it never happened. Tax increases did. But they don’t campaign on ideas. And ideas are what win campaigns. They campaign destroying people, and after they’re elected they continue the campaign. One of the things the Republicans could never quite figure out ’til it was too late, after Clinton won in ’92, was that the whole presidency was an ongoing campaign. Every day, the war room was still in operation, and the whole purpose was to stay there and be reelected the next four years and solidify relationships with people, rather than campaign on big ideas. That’s why they didn’t do anything on terrorism, that’s why we didn’t do anything on much of anything, because that’s risky. If it doesn’t work, poll numbers come down.