RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the last time the loser at a convention was more popular than the winner was last night. Greetings, Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, yours for three hours straight ahead. Telephone number is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Prior to last night, the last time the loser was more popular than the winner was 1976 and Ronaldus Magnus and Gerald Ford at the Republican convention in Kansas City. Not one night of this convention has been believable! Not one night of it. You have to admit Hillary gave a good speech, but when it was over, it was over, and the convention was not rallied to anything. The convention was not rallied to her. The convention was not rallied to Obama. The keynote guy last night, Mark Warner, what is all this talk about him being a vice president? He looks like a mortician. He looks
like an undertaker and the place looked like a wake last night, all these people murmuring, nobody was listening to their keynoter. I’ll tell you, folks, I shoulda taken the week off. (interruption) What are you saying? Oh, I know, we’re going to get to that. ‘I love you, I love you,’ Bill saying, ‘I love you, I love you,’ while Hillary is dissing him and disconnecting. You know what she did last night, she delinked herself from Clinton. ‘I’m a proud American, I’m a proud this, I’m a proud son, proud daughter, a proud whatever, never said she’s a proud wife. She didn’t even refer to him as ‘my husband, the president.’ She talked about the great economy of President Clinton and he’s up there faking the tears and the quivering lower lip. ‘I love you,’ he-he-he.
It reminded me, you know, when Clinton was on the leash when he was president, she’d be sitting up there like Nurse Ratched in the State of the Union speeches up there in the audience gallery, and he’d turn to her, he did this at two State of the Union speeches, he turned and looked, ‘I honor you,’ this is right after news came out about some other babe. ‘I honor you,’ and she sat through it with the coldest, steely smile on her face. So she decoupled last night, I mean she’s Hillary Rodham again. He wasn’t on stage with her. It was Chelsea up there. She said nothing to recommend Obama. If you go back and look at what she said during the primaries, she doesn’t think he can win, Clinton doesn’t think he can win. She thinks that all he’s got to his resume is a speech in 2004. I mean, the criticism of McCain was even tepid. The criticism of Bush was even tepid, and for the record let it be noted, ladies and gentlemen, that at the anti-war-America-sucks Democrat convention Hillary Clinton devoted one line to the war in Iraq, one line. The protesters gathered outside are an embarrassment. They are so few, and they’re causing no trouble. We haven’t had one tear gas bomb thrown by the cops yet. We haven’t had one car set on fire. The whole thing is an embarrassment.
These aren’t the Democrats that we’ve been told that they are. You know, every time these people have tried to gin up an anti-war protest, even through the thick of the Iraq war, it never amounted to much. So much mythology. I commented on this a little bit yesterday in the striking and really out of this world third hour yesterday. All of us, we get caught up in all this never-ending, breaking 24/7 news cycle that the Democrats are this giant juggernaut and they’re just going to steamroll all over us poor conservatives and Republicans and turn this country into communist Marxist Russia. The fact is they’re barely going to find their way to the airport from the convention hall in Denver. There’s a mythology that they represent the majority of opinion in this country and they do not. This convention is such an opportunity for the McCain camp. And I have to tell you something. The McCain camp is running great ads, and they’re coming out quick, and they’re funny, they are humorous. Did you happen to see CNN last night, by the way? They found a black female delegate who says her life is ruined because Hillary Clinton didn’t get the nomination, a black female Democrat. I just saw the video. I had the sound down, so I looked into it this morning. But the best speech of the night at the convention so far has been that wacko governor from Montana with the string tie, Brian Schweitzer. And by the way, this got a huge applause line. He said, ‘Barack Obama understands that the most important barrel of oil is the one you don’t use.’ (laughing) Brian Schweitzer from Montana, ‘Barack Obama understands that the most important barrel of oil is the one that you do not use.’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Actually, to me, this seems like it ought to be Friday. The pace and the lack of substance of this convention, I mean it’s funny, but it’s not like it’s funny to watch. It doesn’t speed by. This is an arduous task to watch this, but, hey, it’s what I signed up for and I’m committed to it. One other thing about Mrs. Clinton. Everybody’s talking about this. There are three places in the Drive-Bys today that they’re trying to totally misrepresent Hillary’s speech. Anybody who watched that speak last night knew it was all about her. It was about delinking herself from Obama and from her husband. It was not an endorsement of Obama. It did not do anything to get that convention rallied behind Obama.
Yet the New York Times, I think the Boston Globe, maybe the LA Times (two of those three) have written stories about how this was the most unifying speech perhaps in convention history; the most rousing endorsement of a nominee by a loser that we’ve seen. It’s unbelievable, wishful thinking the part of these Drive-Bys, trying to create for their audiences an image opposite of what we actually saw last night. I’ll give you an example. Any of you people think that what Hillary did was a full-fledged, total endorsement of Obama and his leadership capabilities and his experience and all that? You know that the McCain camp is running an ad with her talking about how Hillary says McCain is far more ready to lead, far more qualified than Obama is.
It’s an ad that features something she said during the primaries. So McCain’s running this ad, which basically says Hillary endorses him. She could have said last night, ‘This ad that John McCain’s running is misrepresentative. I do not believe that John McCain would be a better president than Barack Obama,’ and on and on and on. She didn’t even discuss it last night. She didn’t even bring it up. If she were really warpath for Obama, that would have found its way into her speech. Because she can’t let it stand out there that McCain is running an ad with audio of Hillary endorsing him. Yeah, she said basically what we’re left with is Obama and she left it out. (laughing) You have to hand it to her, folks. It was a real omission.
If anybody thinks that Mrs. Clinton did this rousing rah-rah for Obama, you don’t know the Clintons, and you don’t know how to listen to a speech. By the way, the Obama camp is getting tired of Nancy Pelosi. They have asked her to shut up. This is from the American Spectator. ‘The Obama campaign has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to shut her mouth, but in as nice a way as they possibly can. That isn’t to say they aren’t mad about her recent activities. It’s like, ‘Thanks, Madam Speaker, you’ve done enough. Now, please move along,’ says one Obama advisor. And all this because Pelosi’s big mouth has ensnared Obama in Catholic abortion issues, and she didn’t take direction. She is back after she’s been denounced by high-ranking archbishops in the Catholic Church. She stands by her comments on Sunday.’
She stands by them! I remember the glory days of the Democrat Party, when they might have been the and liberals they might have been Democrats, but they were formidable. They were smart. This party is led by a big bunch of fools. Pelosi? Harry Reid? Howard Dean? (sigh) ‘Forty-seven percent of Democrat women say Hillary should be on the ticket.’ This is from the Rasmussen Reports website. ‘Nearly half of Democrat women, 47%, say Obama should have chosen Hillary for his running mate instead of Biden, as the former first lady prepares to speak tonight at the Democrat convention.’ This is news from yesterday.
‘Thirty-nine percent disagree.’ From Gallup: ‘Conservative Democrats are Peeling Away from Obama — Obama has been struggling to maintain his Democrat base thus far in August — and, according the weekly averages of Gallup poll daily tracking — the problem seems to be with conservative Democrats. Within the Democrat Party, Obama’s losses are primarily evident among the relatively small group that describes its political views as conservative. The 63% of conservative Democrats supporting Obama over McCain is the lowest Obama has earned since he clinched the Democrat nomination in June.’ Small number, eh? Who are these conservative Democrats, by the way?
Conservative Democrats, they used to call these Reagan Democrats, and they’re out there. We’ve had a couple call us in the last couple weeks. Maybe three or four have called us, and they’ve expressed similar sentiments. If they’re pulling away from Obama, where are they going? They’re going to McCain. This presents another problem. I sit here and I really marvel at how cleverly the Drive-By Media convinces everybody in this country that the Republicans essentially are a finished party. They’re really so small and so out of touch, they’re finished — and the Democrats are this giant juggernaut, loved by the American people almost as the American people love their gods. It just isn’t the case. The Democrat Drive-By Media are very upset about this convention. They still worry that there is no theme to this convention, that there is no message. The Forehead still has his doubts. This is last night on CNN.
BEGALA: The most important thing is for Democrats to have a clear simple narrative — and David noted, accurately that, we now have a long litany. Every Republican who walked out of their convention in 2004 said, ‘Bush is strong and Kerry is weak.’ That was it. Will Democrats run out — walk out of this convention and say, ‘I don’t want four more years of Bush-McCain’?
RUSH: And here’s David ‘Rodham’ Gergen also concerned.
GERGEN: I don’t know what they’re doing up there. Right now we’re just sort of drifting around. You know, we’ve got an hour and a half before — two, it’s a little over two hours — before Hillary Clinton speaks. They’ve gotta get some more fire back into this. They cannot let these precious hours slip by. They gotta tighten this up and get this baby moving.
RUSH: Don’t you just love hearing this? Let’s just keep going. Here’s Dee Dee Myers. This was on MSNBC last night with Chris Matthews, who said, ‘Do you think negative politics or positive politics is the most powerful in winning elections?’
MYERS: I do think this convention and this party and — and — and the Obama campaign have to define the choice, and I think that hasn’t happened yet in this convention. We’re in the middle of the second night. (nervous laugh) We’d better get to it.
RUSH: See how when they all get together and they try to put this united front, the truth, the truth is revealed. The truth is exposed. The myth that is presented of the Democrat Party day in and day out is destroyed, because Democrats eventually get ensnared by their own policies. For example: affirmative action. They came up with the idea. Fine. Who does it screw? Hillary! Here is James Carville, continuing to be unhappy.
CARVILLE: I couldn’t help but thinking in — that people watching this, ‘This is what a major league fastball looks like. Now you’ve seen one.’ I mean — And — and you just — that — that — that there are skill sets and skill levels in politics like there are in — in anything else, and you saw a lot of pitching so far in this thing and then you saw one of those. ‘Where did that ball end up?’ And this was in — in — in — I was — you know, it had a lot to do with the moment, eh, the emotion and everything. But the delivery was almost like, she — she didn’t stumble on a line or a word. What you saw tonight — and I’m not saying this because I’m a Clinton person — this is a — this is a major league fastball unlike anything we’ve seen.
RUSH: Well, that’s not even true, but at least he was happy that something went right about the convention. I guess you could say her speech was good compared to other Hillary speeches and compared to what else is going on at this convention. But in terms of accomplishing things for the Democrat Party, it didn’t do too much.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to the phones, Temecula, California, Brittany is up first today. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. I want you to know that my parents watched you on television, bought your books, and now it’s my turn to watch you on Dittocam. So thank you and dittos to you, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you. Thank you very much, Brittany.
CALLER: I just want to say, so I rushed home from school yesterday to make sure I didn’t miss Hillary speak and her little orange suit.
RUSH: Wait, wait whoa, whoa, whoa. You rushed home from school. How old are you?
CALLER: Nineteen.
RUSH: Nineteen.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: So you’re in first year college?
CALLER: Actually, well, I’m getting my AA in administration of justice, and I’m looking at maybe a political science, criminal justice kind of degree. So working on that. But, yeah, really exciting stuff, and Rush, I gotta tell you that I’ve got such a love of politics because of you, because of everybody in talk radio. And if it wasn’t for you guys, I think I wouldn’t be where I was today, and I gotta tell you: I got so much stuff going on for me that I hope one day you can get involved with.
RUSH: Well, you know, you make it sound very attractive.
CALLER: (giggles) Well, thank you. For example I have a book coming out October-November, that’s what we’re looking at, and I actually messaged you about it. So hopefully you’ll eventually get to that message. But it should be good. It’s comments from youth about America, so hopefully everybody can get their stuff in. I do want to talk about Hillary’s speech last night.
RUSH: Yes?
CALLER: And I want to talk about, because when I saw it, knowing the Clintons, I understood that the speech was a bunch of BS, you know? But as I was watching it I realized that her speechwriter is fantastic, and she articulated it so well that if I hadn’t paid attention and me being a youth, I really would have sunken in to what she was trying to sell me, and I loved — I loved — how for the last eight minutes of her speech, she said, ‘I’ did this and ‘I’ did health care and then she went and said, ‘This is why I’m choosing Obama,’ which is really made me laugh, and my mom said she’s getting ready to run again, you know? She’s getting people hyped for her.
RUSH: Yeah, but here’s the thing, here’s the thing.
CALLER: What?
RUSH: You’ve passed a test that I was going to give you.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: Because I was going to ask you, ‘Okay, what do you remember of it?’ You said it was a great speech; you just told me what you heard in the last eight minutes. The problem with the last eight minutes when she’s listing all of her accomplishments, is her supposed accomplishments are at the top of the agenda of things wrong in America that the Democrats need to fix, they think. She hasn’t fixed anything! Now, just taken within the confines of the speech, yeah, of course it was a good speech. She’s getting better and better at that all the time; and she plays the victim role very well, and she was in that mode last night. And she was there to show this convention that they chose the wrong nominee, chose the wrong candidate. And she was happy to do that. She was energized. The way the Clinton mind works, payback.
CALLER: I agree. I totally agree. I loved it. I was watching. I was paying really close attention to Michelle Obama’s expression, and she kept the same expression on her face the whole time because I was comparing speakers in my head and I really wasn’t impressed by Michelle Obama’s speech. No offense to her, I didn’t get anything out of it, and the woman crying in the audience really started to tick me off because I didn’t see what they were seeing. But again I think Hillary’s speech, something about it was so alluring. She was totally confident, and I think I like that. I would never —
RUSH: How could she not be? Everything that had preceded her was just one-foot-in-the-grave in terms of energy level! She had to know that on her worst night she would give the best speech up to that point that had been given at this convention. I’m not trying to take anything away from her, Brittany, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was all the point. You’re talking about she articulated it well and she delivered it well and she had a good energy level. But for the purpose that the Democrats were hoping for, did not happen. There was no unifying message. There was no, ‘I want all of you to get out there and get Barack Obama elected. He’s far more qualified.’ There was none of that. So it all depends on how you define the speech, and in this case, for her purposes, you’d have to say it was good.
You talk about Michelle Obama, by the way, and her speech. I watched Michelle Obama watching Hillary. Did you guys see that? Did you catch a couple of the screen shots? Michelle Obama had a frozen smile on her face. You just know that they were waiting. ‘Oh, God. I hope, I hope, I hope that she doesn’t do something really bad. I hope. Oh, please.’ They’re going to be doing the same thing tonight. It’s going to even worse when Clinton gets up there. (laughing) By the way, my friends, I was not the only one to observe that Michelle Obama’s speech was actually not the real Michelle Obama, that she threw feminism away. She tried to make herself out to be June Cleaver and Mrs. Partridge all for the express purpose of trying to make white people like her and her husband, which we thought that had already been accomplished.
He’s The Messiah. Richard Cohen, Washington Post blog: ‘The transparent purpose of Michelle Obama’s speech, its kitschy effort to reassure, gave Michelle Obama a glaze of insincerity. In the post-speech commentary many of the TV types — schooled now in empathy and not objectivity — gave her high marks for what she did, but what she had really done, she had done earlier in her life. Last night she gave the standard log cabin speech expected of nearly all American public figures: born poor, raised in faith, et cetera, et cetera, with nary a mention of race. It was a speech designed to reassure, but it didn’t do that at all. Politics can sometimes be ugly. In this case, we witnessed how a dynamic woman with a razor-sharp intellect had, for the moment, been lobotomized.’ Richard Cohen, Washington Post: they ‘lobotomized’ Michelle for her speech.