RUSH: This is Jessica Yellin last night on CNN’s The Situation Room. Wolf Blitzer, said, ‘The president was out there trying to get some enthusiasm among Democrats. It’s been a huge problem so far, hasn’t it?’
YELLIN: Huge problem, Wolf. Oftentimes political reporters are accused of exaggerating the circumstances, being overly dramatic. This is one instance in which we can truly say that a loss for the Democrats would be cataclysmic for the party, and here’s why.
RUSH: Ooh!
YELLIN: Not only would it symbolically be devastating because Ted Kennedy’s seat, the liberal lion —
RUSH: Ooh!
YELLIN: — would be changing hands to the Republican Party —
RUSH: Yes!
YELLIN: — as you point out: It would throw health care reform into such uncertainty, some people in Washington believe it would be on life support and potentially not passed. That would mean the president’s last year of working toward health care reform would seem to come for naught on that front.
RUSH: And we would save our health care system in the process. This is all tied up in I hope Obama fails. I don’t want these policies of his, certainly not his health care reform. It is a disaster, and she’s right: It would be cataclysmic. Snerdley and I yesterday, during one of the top-of-the-hour breaks, were talking in his office and watching TV. He has three monitors in there, and he always has C-SPAN on one of them, Fox on the other, and Mess NBC on the other one. And Mess NBC was covering the Kennedy angle of all this. And I looked at Snerdley and I said, ‘You know, these people are the only ones that care. The people in the media are the only ones that care about this.’ And Snerdley said, ‘Yeah. You remember the funeral in Washington. They shut down the whole route. They stopped traffic on the whole route because they were expecting throngs of people to show up,’ and there weren’t throngs.
They had to tighten the camera angles of various shots of the funeral procession because there were not throngs of people out there to watch the funeral procession. The only people that cared… Not the only, but the media. It’s like the lion of the Senate’s gone. (Gasp!) ‘Oh, no! Camelot! Oh, no, it’s over.’ But people who have been listening to this radio program — for example Rush Babies, younger people. Remember Kennedy had been in that seat for 47 years. The people who have been listening to this program all of their lives know Ted Kennedy the way we presented him here. You know, nobody made fun of Democrats nationally until this program came along. So all this reverence for the Kennedys is largely tied up in the State-Controlled Media. Here’s Howard Fineman to illustrate my point. This is last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Matthews says, ‘Brown is clearly double-digit, almost-20 point leads in these bellwether areas of Massachusetts. They were described by the pollster as ‘little Massachusettses’ in each case, so all the evidence scientifically — if you can measure these things — says that Brown is going to win.’
FINEMAN: Don’t forget: In Massachusetts, they have their own version of health care reform. They installed it a few years ago. It’s expensive. It doesn’t provide all of the benefits that older plans when people had them were able enjoy. Chris, this is not Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts anymore. And I thought it was brilliant and significant that Scott Brown latched on to Jack Kennedy and not Ted. Once Ted Kennedy passed away, once the respects were paid to the Kennedy family, the Kennedy era in Massachusetts ended.
RUSH: Right on the money there is Howard Fineman, especially talking about the health care reform that Massachusetts has. It’s expensive. It’s more expensive than they were told it was going to be and their coverage is less, and they don’t want any more of it, and Vicki Kennedy last night on MSNBC answering the question, ‘How did it end up that way that this is such a close race?’
KENNEDY: I think that we have to ask for people’s vote. Certainly that’s the way my husband always ran. You always ask for everyone’s vote, for everyone’s support. You can’t take anything for granted. We shouldn’t take anything for granted. You know, Tip O’Neill said this best. You know, ‘all politics is local.’ If you don’t ask people for their vote and their support.
REPORTER: Nobody expected months ago that this would be this close and that a Republican could actually win this seat.
KENNEDY: We’re all out there asking people for their help and for their support.
RUSH: Does that sound to you like Vicki Kennedy might be throwing Coakley under the bus? It sounds like she’s saying that Coakley took the vote for granted. ‘We’re out there asking people to vote for her, but you gotta ask people to vote,’ then by implication she’s saying that Coakley didn’t ask people to vote for her, she has this sense of entitlement and thought it was going to be a sweep precisely because it’s the Ted Kennedy seat, but this is not Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts any longer. Howard Fineman is right.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: (Playing You’re a Grand Old Flag) Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Patriotic music in the bumper rotation today (while it’s still legal and approved) on this, the first official day of saving the United States. (music continues) Great to have you here. You know, this business of Vicki Kennedy throwing Martha Coakley under the bus? I am now convinced that that’s exactly what she was doing. At HotAir.com, from the Boston Herald: ‘Big-name Kennedy endorsements for Martha Coakley appear to have been little help to the Democrat in the US Senate race — and may have even hurt her with some voters, a new Suffolk University/7News poll shows. The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, and nephew Joseph Kennedy II gave the attorney general their official blessing last week. But of the 500 voters surveyed, only 20 percent said the Kennedy family nod made them more likely to vote for Coakley, and 27 percent said the endorsement made them less likely to support her.’
It appears the Kennedys, at least some of them, do not like ‘Marcia’ Coakley. I know, I know it’s Martha, but Patrick Kennedy called her ‘Marcia’ on Sunday a bunch of times at the rally for her. So in deference to him, I say ‘Marcia,’ just like the Reverend Jackson often called the governor of New York Mario ‘Cooomo,’ and we pronounced it that way in deference to the Reverend Jackson. ‘Kennedy nephew…’ This is the Washington Examiner: ‘Kennedy nephew Stephen E. Smith later told the Boston Herald, ‘She set up a committee six months before my uncle died. There were people on the corner with a huge ‘Coakley for Senate’ sign two days after his funeral.’ Coakley formally announced her candidacy a week after Kennedy’s death.’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s David, Bristol, Tennessee. Glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Yeah, Rush. Well, just to further demonstrate that. First off, 1989 dittos to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: Is this not the same press during The Swimmer’s funeral that christened him, meaning Obama, the fourth Kennedy brother?
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Chris Matthews called Obama the last Kennedy brother.
CALLER: Right. And that would therefore cinch a lock on that seat.
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. But then on the same network yesterday or the night before Howard Fineman said this is it for the Kennedy era.
CALLER: Yeah, when he passed away, that was the end of it, and —
RUSH: But not if Obama is the last surviving Kennedy brother.
CALLER: Yeah. So what happened?
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: (laughing) I think his policies came into play and then that was the end of that.
RUSH: What happened was it was always a bunch of spin and PR and wish in the first place. Obama, the last surviving Kennedy brother. That really ticked off Bill Clinton because Bill Clinton was the first black president. If there was ever a Kennedy brother, it should have been Clinton in his mind. I mean, hell, he did the same kind of stuff JFK did and he did it in the White House. And he was at Boys Nation when JFK was in the White House, he met him in the Rose Garden. That ticked off a lot of people, last surviving Kennedy brother, Barack Obama.