RUSH: Greg in Marana, Arizona, great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Tribal dittos, Mr. Big.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: The reason I was calling up, my comment is when I was watching the weekend news shows and they were interviewing the Republicans, they all talked about how Rahm Emanuel had sharpened elbows and they hoped he would keep them tucked in. Well, why isn’t somebody on our side develop the testicular fortitude to sharpen their elbows and get in there and mix it up with him?
RUSH: I don’t know. I’ve been getting this question for 15 years. I don’t know why our side doesn’t do this stuff. I’m watching our side disintegrate right in front of our very eyes. I’m watching a bunch of the smartest people in our room, supposedly, pointy headed intellectual advocates who got what they wanted in this election telling us that Reaganism is over; conservatism is over, all these things. Why they don’t get in there and mix it up? Your guess is as good as mine. I think part of it is they live in Washington and part of it is they want the media approval. Part of it is they’re afraid of being called angry and enraged partisans and this sort of stuff. Who the hell knows?
CALLER: Between now and the inauguration, he’s probably honing his elbows with a serrated edge just to inflict more damage. We need to get real and be ready.
RUSH: See, here’s the things that Republicans would tell you. See, the difference is that when Tom DeLay has sharp elbows they call him The Hammer and they try to get him indicted and thrown out of Washington and put in jail. When they describe Rahm Emanuel as having sharp elbows, they do it admiringly, and they think what a great guy Rahm is, in there fighting for what he believes. I mean, that’s what they’re afraid of. None of them want to be categorized and characterized as DeLay was.
Karen in Humble, Texas. I’m glad you called. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Well, my question is what do you think is going to be Biden’s role in the coming term?
RUSH: I have no clue right now, but the first thing they’re going to try to do is to make sure he says as little as possible that’s not written down on a teleprompter. The second thing is they will probably try to use him as a liaison between the White House and the Senate because he’s loved by the Senate Democrats up there. And I suspect that he’s going to get into a battle with McCain over that, because people in the Obama campaign have also suggested reaching out to McCain for this role as well. So there could be an argument there between McCain and Biden over who is the best liaison from the Obama administration to the Senate.
CALLER: Well, the reason why I ask is because they kept pulling him off the campaign so many times ’cause he kept putting his foot in his mouth, so I’m just figuring he’d be in the shadows more or less.
RUSH: He might even be the court jester. I expect that before this is all said and done Obama’s going to need a jokester to come in the Oval Office and make him laugh now and then because not much else will and they’ll bring Biden in to sort of do that.
CALLER: I know you’ve been taking a lot of slack about the thug thing, but can you still call him a squirrel?
RUSH: Oh, yeah, I’m surprised nobody’s caught up on that yet. The thug business they’re focused on — look, let me explain something to you. I got a note that makes a lot of sense here just a moment ago. You and I, we look at the media, we look at this orgasm, and it’s what it is, this unending, multiple orgasm that the media particularly is having with Obama, and we say, ‘How in the world do they see things differently than we do?’ Folks, it’s not really complicated. When you’re young — remember the first time you fall in love or even think you fall in love? You hope as you get older that that happens to you, you would love to recapture it. The first time of anything and the media right now is trying to recapture Camelot and they think they have. They’re in the midst of recreating Camelot and capturing it. They’re trying to relive their youth, all these Drive-Bys are, and the thing about love is that you know you can’t talk anybody out of it. If you have a kid who loves somebody who’s a reprobate and you’re terribly scared about it and you try to talk him out of it you know it just drives them further into the arms of the person that you don’t like. So there’s no talking them out of this, and there’s no changing their mind about it. They’re going to love Obama for as long as he’s around.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: A lot of us think that the left is humorless. But, ladies and gentlemen, I found evidence over the weekend that they are hilarious, at least one of them is, a guy named Rick Stengel. This is a CBS MarketWatch story. The headline: ‘How Obama Can Win Over The Media.’ They do have a sense of humor. They’re actually making a joke here, aren’t they? ‘Rick Stengel, the managing editor of Time magazine, didn’t hesitate when I asked him what advice he would have for the nation’s next president. It was around 9 p.m. on Tuesday night, and Stengel was weaving his way through the throng at the CNN Grill. … ‘There has to be a new era of transparency,’ Stengel told me, raising his voice to be heard over the din. I asked Stengel what the next president’s priority should be. ‘Communicator-in-Chief,’ Stengel said animatedly. ‘That’s his main job.’ Speaking for the media, who have been frustrated by outgoing President George W. Bush’s infrequent public pronouncements over his eight years, Stengel urged Obama to be a constant presence in our lives.’ (laughing)
I’m telling you, it’s a love affair, and it’s not so much with him. It’s a love affair with the past. They don’t even know him. They’re admitting they don’t really know who he is. We do. They don’t. They’re in love with Camelot. They’re in love with unfulfilled promise. They are in love with an unfulfilled destiny, and they see Obama completing it. And that’s what they’re in love with. So of course the guy from TIME Magazine says, ‘His main job is to be communicator in chief.’ Man, that’s not good. And then, ‘He needs to be a constant presence in our lives.’ And if he does that, Stengel says if he does that, Obama can win over the media. You know, I don’t know if you people noticed this or not, Obama has a really hostile media that he deals with and this election is an amazing triumph. We haven’t discussed this much, but this media that he faced, I’ve never seen a more vicious, a more brutal, a more bigoted, a more unprofessional journalistic malpractice campaign aimed at Barack Obama. I’m just stunned that nobody charged the Drive-Bys with racism here the way he was treated, and so now the Drive-Bys I guess are feeling a little guilty here because they’re now putting out a story how Obama can win over the media. I saw this and I said, ‘This has to be in The Onion. This has to be Scott Ott. This has to be some satirist writing this.’ I read it and they are damn serious.