RUSH: Hey, somebody help me out here. I might have missed it, as I was in transit yesterday. Did any of the Republican leadership respond to Obama’s despicable lies about Obamacare yesterday? (interruption) There wasn’t? There wasn’t any Republican response to that? You gotta be kidding me. I was flying to — well, I was in transit. I had it on the television and I’m watching this.

I’m heading up to a celebratory occasion, I’m watching this thing, and it’s ticking me off, this Rose Garden thing. I mean, here you’ve got Obamacare, which is mandatory under penalty of law, and they’re all out there celebrating that 7.1 million people have signed up, which is not true. They can’t back it up. It’s a phony number, as said yesterday. It’s been documented by the UK Daily Mail Online and the RAND Corporation.

But they’re out there celebrating. Mandatory, it ought to be 200 million sign-ups. The deadline was March 31st. It’s mandatory. Either that or you pay a penalty and go to jail. They’re out celebrating and there’s not one Republican response to this? (interruption) You mean I missed the brilliant stem-winder responses from Republican leaders? Or there weren’t any brilliant stem-winders? So what, are they leaving it up to me? (interruption) As usual, leaving it up to the Tea Party.

I guess Obamacare’s golden now, folks, just hunky-dory. I guess the Democrats are gonna be happy to appear with Obama. (interruption) You’re saying “no” to all this? But I saw it yesterday. I saw that Rose Garden thing. They were ecstatic. They were happy. This is a victory lap. This is the greatest achievement, and when Bush did stuff like this, they attacked him. I’ve got the audio sound bites to remind you. They said he was too much hubris. Remember after Bush’s reelection in 2004, he started talking about how he was gonna spend his political capital. And they said, “It’s very dangerous for a president to start bragging. It’s very dangerous for a president to get into too much hubris.” I’ve got that sound bite coming up.

But I’m assuming that Obamacare’s now golden, and that means Obama’s gold. That means that Democrats are gonna be clamoring to appear with Obama and they’re gonna want him with them as they campaign for reelection. (interruption) Why are you saying “no”? (interruption)
What polls did I expose? I’ll tell you one poll. Do you realize, I’m gonna tell you, folks, I mean, even I got sucked in by this and I’m not talking about the poll that you’re talking about. I’m talking about actual ratings. CNN never got a ratings bump out of this Malaysian jet. The story that CNN’s ratings were skyrocking was absolute BS. They’re still in the tank. They never moved out of the gutter. Fox cleaned their clock.

MSNBC is plummeting even further. They lost 10% with the kid, Frank Sinatra’s kid in there. That’s not working out. And now the Malaysian people just said they might have to expand the search for two more weeks, and Wolf Blitzer said, well, why not two more years? These clowns at CNN think they got a ratings bump and they didn’t. Somebody put out a lying report about them getting a ratings bump, and they didn’t. (interruption) What poll are you talking about?

Let me tell you something. I’ll just say it, what the hell. I’m gonna get audited anyway. I went to New York, annual cigar dinner, the Dinner of the Century, Marvin Shanken, Cigar Aficionado Magazine. After the show I flew up. I concluded business, I arrived at Teterboro exactly on schedule at seven o’clock. I landed in New Jersey. I changed clothes on the airplane. I got in the car to go into town at 7:15. I got to the Four Seasons restaurant at five ’til eight. I went to the dining room. At my table: John Salley. The former LA mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. He relived that funny story when I met him in New York with President Clinton. Michael Milken, Rudy Giuliani. There were all kinds of people there last night. I mean, it was the 20th anniversary.

Anyway, at five ’til 11 I hit the trail. I went back to car, got back Teterboro, and I walked in my house at 2:30. I’m watching Obama on the flight up and I’ve got smoke coming out of my ears. I’m watching this thing, this lying victory lap thing he’s doing in the Rose Garden about this and all the while I’m saying, “What is there to celebrate?” It’s mandatory! Why are they acting like they’ve had this giant persuasive — they’ve turned minds and changed minds and made people love it. It’s mandatory! It’s the law! People are doing this out of fear, the people that are doing it at all. And even then, the things that were being said about this yesterday.

And then the testimony of the guy at the House intel committee today on Benghazi, there were no protests. This guy’s undermined Obama, Morell, the acting CIA director’s totally undermined Obama on the idea that the video produced protests which led to the deaths, it’s all lies. Everything is lies. (Interruption) What poll are you talking about? (interruption) Oh. Oh. Okay. All right. I haven’t had a chance to check that. Let me check real quick here. Snerdley says that I caused a poll. Oh, here it is. AP answers Rush without saying so, of course.

Okay, so here’s what they did. Oh, I get it. AP had a poll last week that showed 26% approval for Obamacare, and then we had yesterday the Washington Post/ABC News poll, they said 49-48% approval. So the AP has a story today to explain how that could be. Snerdley believes that they did this story because I made such a big hype whoop-de-doo. And I did, so it could well be. “Polls often diverge by a few points, but itÂ’s rare to see well-respected polls come to opposing conclusions about the publicÂ’s take on an issue.

“In the last week, however, an Associated Press-GfK poll found support for President Barack ObamaÂ’s health care overhaul at a new low while a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed it had hit a new high. The seemingly contradictory findings stem more from question wording and timing than from either poll doing something wrong or even misrepresenting public opinion.”

By the way, that’s right. Look at the question in the ABC/Washington Post poll. I saw that after the program ended yesterday. It was a meaningless, worthless question that produced this plurality. It was something like that, “Do you think everybody should have health insurance?” Well, hell, yes! That should have gotten an 80%, not 49%.

I’ve got the sound bite coming up, but Obama’s sitting there in the Rose Garden saying, “What are people so ticked off about people getting health insurance for? I don’t understand why the Republicans don’t want people to get health insurance!” Lying little… I’m telling you, folks, this is just beyond the pale what is happening with this. I just want to see now…

Since Obama’s golden, I wanna see all these Democrats requesting Obama to appear with them as they campaign for reelection this fall. I’m sure that’s gonna happen ’cause Obamacare now needs to be hung around every Democrat’s neck like a flaming… Never mind. I’m not gonna say it. The ANC. I was gonna say necklacing, flaming tires. That’s what Winnie Mandela did. But seriously, they need to hang this thing because they own it.

This is all theirs, and this speech is… I don’t know, folks. Remember when Bush did his “mission accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier, and the media said, “How dare he! How dare he start bragging!” Obama goes out and does it — and, by the way, brags over nothing that’s real — and the media’s just so in the tank, they can’t help themselves. There’s no Republican response to this?

There’s one thing that might mitigate all this happiness today that the Democrats think that they’re feeling. My dad used to ask me and my friends when we’d come in late on a Friday night, “What’d you boys do?” We’d say, “Ah, we’ve been out having fun.” Dad would say, “You think you’re having fun, but you’re not.” Well, the Democrats think things are going great guns, but they’re not.

The Supreme Court has just said again, in a new ruling, that free speech trumps campaign finance limits. This is gonna ruin their day. This is Koch brothers combined with Citizens United. This is gonna send ’em over the edge and mitigate whatever up feeling they’re having over whatever they tried to make it look like happened with Obamacare yesterday in the Rose Garden.

There’s other stuff, too. For example, did you know, by the way, this from the RAND Corporation? “Only One-Third of Obamacare Exchange Sign-Ups Were From the Previously Uninsured.” There really is just so much that’s bogus, even this 7.1 million. We’ll dissect it as the program unfolds.

But, yeah, the CNN ratings bump was never true. It never happened, ladies and gentlemen. They thought it did. That’s right. It seems like every day… You know what we do here? We tell you what was true and false in the previous day’s news. So much is not true. So many things that are reported end up not being true.

But of course what it was Churchill who said, a lie — paraphrasing — is halfway around the world before the truth even puts its pants on in the morning.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s what happened. Yesterday, ABC News/Washington Post proudly and with great fanfare (and with a lot of media support) released poll that showed for the first time ever a plurality of Americans like and support Obamacare. The numbers were 49 to 48%.

And then I, your host, El Rushbo, remembered that there was a poll four days ago (five days ago now) that the AP did that showed an all-time low for Obamacare at 26%. I made a big hullabaloo about this. I spent a lot of time on this ABC News poll, as you know, and spent a lot of time on the AP poll reminding you of it just four days prior, and then asking, “How can this be?”

Apparently AP, because nobody… I don’t know that anybody else focused on this to the extent that we did yesterday. AP has run a story today to explain the difference. Now, I’m gonna tell you something. This is unprecedented, too. I mean, it’s not unprecedented, but it’s rare when one news organization/polling company runs a story to explain the differences in their poll and a competing poll.

That’s what AP has done today.

“Polls often diverge by a few points, but it’s rare to see well-respected polls come to opposing conclusions about the public’s take on an issue. In the last week, however, an Associated Press-GfK poll found support for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul at a new low while a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed it had hit a new high.

“The seemingly contradictory findings stem more from question wording and timing than from either poll doing something wrong or even misrepresenting public opinion.” This is circling the wagons here. This is the AP circling the wagons, there’s no question. I mean, why do this? Who else made a big hullabaloo about this? It was only made a big deal of here. Nobody else cared, really.

But I am into the sausage-factory aspect of this stuff. So the AP felt duty-bound to explain how both polls could be right on the money. They had to circle the wagons and protect the business. So here’s what they say: “The AP-GfK poll asks those taking the poll whether they ‘support, oppose or neither support nor oppose’ the law, while the Washington Post-ABC News poll asks if they ‘support or oppose’ it.

“The inclusion or absence of that neutral category is critical, as poll takers respond to the question they’re asked rather than offering opinions unprompted.” So their point here is ABC did not give their poll respondents an opportunity to express the “I don’t care” or “I don’t know option,” and the AP did. The AP says that doesn’t make what ABC did wrong and it doesn’t make what AP did wrong; it doesn’t mean that anybody doctored the results, yada yada yada.

Yes, it does. It means that ABC wanted to get a result, and they did what they had to do to get it, and they wanted that result for one day. They wanted that result for the deadline day, or the day after the deadline day. They wanted it for April 1st so that they could join with the Regime — ’cause remember, the media is part of the Regime. There is no news anymore.

There really isn’t any media; it’s just extensions of the left or the Democrat Party. So the timing was to get a poll that showed for the first time ever a plurality, even if it was only by one point, a massive support for Obamacare. And they got it. So it allowed them… Now, I’m gonna tell you what’s happening here, folks. People are deluding themselves.

Obama and the Rose Garden little shenanigans yesterday and these doctored, crazy wacko polls are a repeat of 2010. They just can’t deal with reality, so they’re gathering together amongst themselves. They’re telling themselves, “Not only is everything okay, we’re actually beating the hoards back and we’re triumphing. We’re winning. Everybody loves us now and every loves Obamacare now!

They’re deluding themselves, and they’re heading for another crash this November just like what happened in 2010.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, folks, here is the ABC/Washington Post poll Obamacare question that produced this first-time-ever plurality support. Ready for the question? It was — dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! — “Overall, do you support or oppose the federal law making changes to the health care system?” It doesn’t have “Obamacare,” doesn’t have any identification.

It’s just pure, 100% generic. And there’s no “don’t care,” “don’t know” option in there. It was designed to get the result that they actually wanted to get just for one day. This leads to, I think, a bit of analysis of what purpose talk radio, conservative blogs, the Internet and so forth really serve. Let’s take a look, for example, at the story involving San Francisco Democrat Leland Yee and gunrunning and so forth.

When they did that story, they got it right. The first time they ran that story, they got it right. The thing is, they haven’t run it anymore. There’s no follow up. They never keep you abreast. They run the story once. Anything damaging to Democrats like that, if they do it at all, they’ll get it right for the most part so it’ll be on record, and then they drop it. They don’t follow it up. They don’t continue to editorialize on it. It just dies.

So people that didn’t hear it the first time don’t hear about it at all. When it’s stories that are damaging to conservatives or Republicans, they keep pounding those stories after they do it the first time. They keep rolling them over and over, and they keep adding elements to it. The damaging stuff on Democrats that they do report just languishes. If they report it at all, it dies after the original report and they satisfy the requirements.

They did it, and then it is done with. So it’s a cute little game that they’re playing. But I think, folks, just to reiterate what I said (and I said it in a jam-packed time frame going into break bottom of the hour), I think they’re deluding themselves.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I need to pose a question. You’ve heard it said by many that once we get deep into Obamacare we cannot repeal it because you cannot take away health care from people. You simply cannot take the entitlement away. It’s never happened, and once it gets embedded too deeply it’s gone forever. You cannot take people’s health care away. But didn’t Obama do just that by implementing Obamacare?

How many millions of people lost their health insurance? Six million people at last count lost their health insurance. They were canceled. They don’t have it replaced yet. How many people are, at this moment, panicked or in a state of panic either because they can’t afford the new price, they are uncovered after being canceled, or they’ve been fired, or they’ve been downsized or whatever?

When Obama did it, everybody said it was progress. Obama’s taken health care away from people. That’s one of the, I think, important realities that goes unmentioned here. It’s always the Republicans, that’s Obama, you’ll hear it coming up in a sound bite in the Rose Garden yesterday. He said, “I don’t understand why these Republicans want to take people’s health care away from ’em.” Republicans are not the ones who are taking people’s health care away from ’em. It is you, Mr. President, doing that. Barack Obama. Middle name Hussein. Pronounce it sometimes, other times I don’t, just depends on how I feel. He’s the one who has engineered six million people losing their health insurance, maybe more.

Here is Peter in Seattle, as we grab a quick phone call. Peter, thank you for calling. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Wow, Rush, I’m so glad. I was on my way to work, I’m listening to you talk about the poll, and I hear you tell us exactly what the poll question was, and I’m listening, and I’m going, “Well, I would support the federal government changing our health care system. It’s costing more and more money every year.” But I don’t like Obamacare. So the question is very deceiving. I’m an anti-Obamacare voter, a hundred percent, yet as posed, I thought, well, yeah, I would like to see changes. So it’s very deceiving. In my 65 years of being here I’ve never seen administration manage to manipulate the press so well. I feel almost like I’m approaching the Eastern bloc.

RUSH: He’s not manipulating the press. He doesn’t have to.

CALLER: Well, I agree with you there, he doesn’t have to do it, but it feels like it.

RUSH: No, no. They’re already on board. They’re willing accomplices. They’re not being manipulated here.

CALLER: Well, okay, I agree with you there, Rush. I can’t help but agree with you.

RUSH: Well, I tell you, you don’t sound anywhere near 65, I had to make that observation. But look, folks, Peter here is exactly right. The ABC question: Do you think the health care system needs — do you support the changes? Do you support the changes in health care? Everybody does! Everybody thinks it could be improved, but that’s why they left “Obamacare” out. They asked this generic question, it’s a push poll question.

The Washington Post has been asking this question for years. It’s always had a high number. It’s why they go back to it. It’s always been a close split for years because the question is so vague. “Do you support or oppose changes in the health care system?” Well, if there’s no reference to Obamacare, and you just answer, you don’t even maybe know what this thing’s about. It’s totally misleading, push poll misleading on purpose.

Now, I’m gonna tell you what. Remember, folks, Obama has only begun to take away insurance. He hasn’t gotten to the employer-provided plans yet. That’s next year, unless he waives them. The only people that have been canceled and lost their health insurance are the people who buy it themselves. Those of you who get your health insurance from your employer, your turn’s coming. That’s why I keep saying that most Americans don’t yet have the slightest idea what’s gonna happen to them. They’re hearing all the horror stories.

In fact, last night at the annual Dinner of the Century cigar dinner, I had a guy, and I thought it was a good question. In fact, it helps me to make this point. He said, “Rush, I keep hearing about all the disasters and the horror stories, but nothing’s happened to me. I still have my plan and everything’s fine.”

I said, “Well, do you get your insurance at work from your employer?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you’re next. You haven’t been touched yet, by design, because most people are in your boat. Most people have their health insurance through work. And the people still employed that get their health insurance through work is a large number. And your turn’s coming. The employer mandate, that was supposed to have been waived. But so far the only people really being impacted are the people that provide for themselves. They call up, like to buy their own car insurance, buy their own health insurance. You who get yours through your job are next. It makes sense.”

“I don’t understand what the folderol’s about, Rush, I mean, fine with mine.”

Well, not totally. Your employer could yet still cancel you and off-load the whole benefit, which many have started doing.