RUSH: I’m stuttering here because I’m distracted by what’s on television. I’m watching Fox. Apparently McCain has hit back at Obama over Obama hitting McCain for agreeing with Bush on Bush’s appeaser remarks. This is from Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic Monthly blog. He’s got a post that just recently went up saying the White House was talking about Jimmy Carter. Bush, when he made the speech to the Knesset in Israel, was talking about Jimmy Carter. He wasn’t talking about Obama. It doesn’t matter. These people have this notion in the Obama campaign that the world revolves around them; that everything going on is about Obama. Their reaction was a godsend, because they know he said this, they know whatever Bush said about whoever it was, it was applicable to Obama. We had the audio sound bite earlier. What sound bite was that? Was that number eight, Mike? I’ve got my transcripts buried here, the Obama comment from back in February or March in the debate down in Austin, Texas. Obama said this. He did say that he would meet with people like Ahmadinejad without any preconditions.
OBAMA: I would meet without preconditions, although Senator Clinton is right that there has to be preparation. It is very important for us to make sure that there was an agenda and on that agenda was human rights, releasing of political prisoners, opening up the press, and that preparation might take some time, but I do think that it’s important for the United States not just to talk to its friends, but also to talk to its enemies.
RUSH: All right, so there he is; he said it. This is why the Democrats are all circling the wagons and trying to attack Bush and it’s laughable now that they’re attacking Bush because Bush, you know, you’re not supposed to attack the president when he’s on foreign soil, right? This is the old saw. Now, naturally, the Democrats have ignored that for the last six years. Clinton, Gore, any number of them, have gone overseas and delivered policy speeches critical of Bush and this country. We all sit here, we watch this, how does the Drive-By Media let ’em get away with this? Because the Drive-Bys are in the tank for Obama as they would be for any Democrat presidential nominee, and they hate Bush. So it’s just the way it is. But what’s interesting, the Obama people are not denying that he said it, they’re just simply saying that this was just an unfair attack, personal attack, violating years of protocol and so forth. And in the process, ladies and gentlemen, Obama, in his vitriolic overreaction, in both form and substance, is violating the same principles that he is railing against, that is, in form he’s being as divisive as he’s falsely accusing Bush of being in his strident personal attacks against Bush and McCain, and Bush didn’t even attack him.
On substance he’s calling Bush’s foreign policy dangerous and other adjectives far worse than Bush supposedly said about the Democrats. And yet these people are complaining. They’re like a little bunch of spoiled kids. They need to grow up and say, ‘Okay, you want to have a spirited discussion about our opposing philosophies, fine, but no, we can’t do that because we will lose that discussion, so we have to whine, and we have to pretend like we are little kids here and that we are being insulted and so forth and that we’ve been turned into victims.’ Obama, he’s the great unifier, right? Obama is going to unify us all. Is this a great example of how? We have a Republican nominee who’s moving in their direction to try to embrace ’em and say, ‘Hey, we can all get along.’ It’s Obama pretending that he’s the great unifier and all he’s doing is being divisive himself. He’s pretending to approach civility, but it’s just pretense. This is amazing to watch. We have some sound bites here from Obama at his town meeting in Watertown, South Dakota. Here’s the first.
OBAMA: Yesterday, George Bush was before the Israeli parliament, the president did something that presidents don’t do and that is launch a political attack targeted toward the domestic market in front of a foreign delegation. On a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s independence, he accused me and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists; we were appeasers no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler. That’s what George Bush said. Now, that’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world. And that’s why I’m running for president.
RUSH: This guy is Clinton, Jr. This is pathological. A rational analysis of this is a waste of time. It’s just a pure waste of time, trying to explain to people why Obama’s lying through his teeth. His supporters don’t want to hear that he’s lying through his teeth because they already hate Bush, so whatever Obama says — but I mean this is just sewage, what he said is sewage, pure, unadulterated drivel. Here’s the next bite.
OBAMA: And not an hour later, he turned around and embraced George Bush’s attacks on Democrats. He jumped on a call with a bunch of bloggers and said that I wasn’t fit to protect this nation that I love because I wanted to sit down and negotiate with tough diplomacy, accused me of not being fit to protect this nation, this nation that’s given me everything that I have. So much for civility. Well, I want to be perfectly clear, if George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States that is a debate that I’m happy to have, and that is a debate that I will win.
RUSH: Right on, right on, right on, right on. The fact of the matter is he said exactly what they’re saying he said, that he would meet without preconditions with people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Now, let me explain what the preconditions business means. Normally, when the president of the United States — we’re not talking secretary of state or some undersecretary, the vice president or a member of Congress or some delegation — when the president of the United States extends his offices, the executive branch of the United States government, to a foreign leader it grants a legitimacy to that foreign leader. Back in the old days when we did have summit meetings with the Russians and the Soviets, all of the official work, all the treaties, whatever it was that was going to be agreed to and signed all happened months prior to the actual summit. The summit was ceremonial. Yeah, they sat around and chatted and so forth, and they did the official signing, but all that stuff was done. Those are the preconditions. And you do not meet with your enemies until you have gotten something from them, and that’s the purpose of the summit.
So when Obama says that he’s going to meet without preconditions with Ahmadinejad, it means he’s gonna have him over for coffee, or he’s going to go there or he’s going to have Ahmadinejad here. In the process of doing so, legitimacy will be anointed, if you will, legitimacy will be established, foraged, and Ahmadinejad can sit in the Oval Office and tell President Obama to go to hell and it’s going to happen whether he likes it or not because the 12th imam is waiting to come out of the well and all I gotta do is destroy Israel and you, President Obama, can’t stop me. And if you don’t have a scheduled meeting with some preconditions where that kind of stuff is not going to happen, then you let little old Ahmadinejad leave the White House, and he goes out, tells the world what he just told the president, yip yip yip yip yahoo. But the president, President Bush, is exactly right. This is the whole thing. John Kerry, global test, you go back to any number of years with liberal Democrats, they do think that the force of their intellect can turn evil people into good people, just by talking to them. They do.
This is why this has struck home. This is why Obama is reacting the way he is. I mean, this is a direct hit. These people, they should have ignored this, but they’re acting like this is major thing because it was. This has spelled out exactly who they are, not just Obama but his whole party. And their reaction to this is illustrating it for one and all. You know, the thing that we’ve talked about on this program, when I first started, I had all these criticisms, was full of lies, I didn’t know what to do about it, and seeking advice and get one group of people say, ‘You can’t let that stand, you have to react, you have to respond, you have to stand up for yourself.’ Every time I did it, the people who were criticizing me smiled and rubbed their hands together, said, ‘A-ha, direct hit, must bother him. Must be true.’ So stuff that’s not true, I ignore. You know, the other stuff, consider the source. But you don’t elevate ’em. And this is what Obama’s done. He has confirmed that this bothers him, and why does it bother him? Bothers him because it’s true. So now they’re all circling the wagons. A couple more bites. Here’s the next one.
OBAMA: I’m a strong believer in civility, and I’m a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy. But that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we’ve seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days. John McCain has repeated this notion that I’m prepared to negotiate with terrorists. I have never said that. The irony is a story broke that he was actually guilty of the exact same thing that he is accusing me of and in fact was saying that maybe we need to deal with Hamas. That’s the kind of fear-peddling, fearmongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer. They’re trying to fool you and scare you, and they’re not telling the truth. And the reason is because they can’t win a foreign policy debate on the merits.
RUSH: Strong believer in civility, bipartisan foreign policy. He’s now saying that he would present his expectations to our enemies. Says he never said that he would meet with terrorists. What is Ahmadinejad? He said he would. This is where he’s stuck. And Bush has not been uncivil. Bush never attacks the Democrats. This is something we all know all too well. We wish he would have been attacking the Democrats the last four or five years. Here’s the final Obama bite.
OBAMA: I believe we need to use all elements of American power to pressure Iran, including tough principles and direct diplomacy.
RUSH: Right.
OBAMA: That’s what John F. Kennedy did.
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: That’s what Ronald Reagan did when dealing with the Soviets. And that’s what the president —
RUSH: Stop the tape! That’s not what Reagan did! Have you ever heard of the Pershing II missiles, you idiot, that were put in Europe? Have you ever heard of Grenada? Have you ever heard of what we did down in Nicaragua? We did not sit around and talk to these people? I can’t handle it anymore. This guy is dangerously uninformed.
OBAMA: — his own secretary of defense wants to do. So I don’t know if George Bush is calling his own secretary of defense an appeaser. I don’t know who he’s talking about. It’s time to present Iran with a clear choice. If it abandons its nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, then Iran can rejoin the community of nations.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Earth to Obama! That has been the policy for the last ten years, sir. We even turned it over to the precious Europeans, they’re so much better than we are. We turned it over to the European Union. We’ve turned it over to everybody. We’ve turned it over to the United Nations. And you’re — You want to… Go to the commercial. I — I can’t — I can’t!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s the truth, folks. Barack Obama would not only meet with terrorists, he has one as a good friend: William Ayers. Barack Obama’s a flat-out liar. He’s a manipulator of words; he’s a manipulator of events. He went from saying no preconditions, now he says he never said that. He lays out preconditions; he’s flailing around on the deep end of the pool; he’s yet to learn how to do the doggie paddle. He’s reacting like a child because his position is childish. He’s acting like a child who has been upbraided by a parent, and he’s being defiant because he knows the parent is right but he doesn’t like the parent, doesn’t like who said this, and so it’s here, take this. This is a young, elitist kid from Northeastern academies, has a sense of entitlement, he thinks he is above criticism because he thinks he is so special. Yes, I’m entitled to say this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: My friend Andrew McCarthy, National Review Online, says, ‘I’m confused. Obama sat in Wright’s church for 20 years and can’t remember hearing diddly-squat. He hears 20 seconds of a Bush speech in Israel that doesn’t mention his name and heard everything.’ Now, that’s pretty damn perceptive. He’s just a little child here. But this is the best day of his life because this is the day he thinks he’s got the nomination. And, by the way, folks, don’t think I haven’t noticed what’s going on here. This guy, little Barack, has been on television live since 12 noon Eastern time, and this is not an accident. Going to Cape Girardeau was not happenstance.
Back to the phones. It’s Open Line Friday. This is Alan in Gainesville, Florida. Great to have you here, sir. Thank you for waiting.
CALLER: Good to be here. Good job, Rush. Hey, I’m calling about we’re talking about all this ridiculous outrage about what President Bush said yesterday at the Knesset in Israel on appeasement.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah.
CALLER: And what I want to know is, if this is such a horrible thing to say, then why did he get such a strong applause from the people in the room who are all important dignitaries and legislators from all branches of the Israeli government?
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you, it was the wrong thing to say.
CALLER: It was the right thing to say.
RUSH: No, it was the wrong thing to say —
CALLER: You think so?
RUSH: Because Obama is saying he never practices appeasement, his foreign policy is not about appeasement. This is a personal attack against Obama. You gotta understand we’re dealing here with a messiah! This guy’s on the ground in South Dakota thinking everything happening in the world today is about him.
CALLER: Really?
RUSH: So Bush makes this speech, Obama thinks it’s a personal attack, when his name is not even mentioned, talks about his foreign policy, when there hasn’t been a foreign policy yet that he has had. We’re dealing with a profoundly swollen ego here.
CALLER: I agree, and that’s what the liberals do, they turn things around. You can’t say anything, and right away you’re attacking them even if you’re telling the truth, they yell and scream.
RUSH: This is the way they protect themselves.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: This is the way they protect themselves, and, furthermore, they don’t care. They don’t care whether we like ’em; they don’t care whether we respect ’em. All they want to do is cream our clocks. We on the other hand, we, we want them to like us. We want them to know that we’re good people. We want them to know that we really don’t hate anybody. We want them to know that we’re really not racists. Some in our movement say, ‘Well, some of us are racist, but we’re not, I’m not, and I don’t want you to confuse me with those people.’ They couldn’t care less what anybody thinks of them. If they did, they wouldn’t say and do half the stuff they do. They’re totally focused on their agenda.