RUSH: Well, I think there are two major, huge differences that, I mean, when you ask me, just glare at me in the face. First is, we do not have an incumbent Democrat’s vice president seeking the White House. Number 2, we have this profound issue that faces every American called the war on terror, and it continues, and one of the parties literally has nothing to offer the American people on it. That’s what these hearings are all about. You know, if you strip all this away, there’s nothing really new here, the Democrats still to this day cannot say, “vote for us, because we’re going to do X, Y, Z.” They still only can seek votes by criticizing and denigrating their opponent, by getting people scared, frightened, angry at Bush, get people to vote against their opponent, is what they’re having to do; and if you couple that with the fact that they’ve nominated a man whom few Democrats have any genuine support and affection for personally, I just don’t see anywhere near identical ingredients that worked as they did in the year 2000. I don’t even see a close election.
CALLER: I appreciate that, Rush, and that makes me feel a lot better. Because I see that, and I know listening to you and listening to other conservative commentators and, you know, talk show hosts, I get that feeling. I just wonder, you know, is that going to penetrate through to the American people when it comes time to make that decision in November?
RUSH: Well, I think it already has. I mean, you can look at the polls. You know, polls are polls and polls now actually are not really relevant to what’s going to happen six months from now or nine months from now, but they?re pretty reliable in terms of representing and illustrating where the public mind-set is today, if you know how to separate it from the news of the day because that’s really what polling companies are polling.
But if you ask me, after 9/11 and they continue for three years, the Democrats have done nothing but try to destroy George Bush, they have tried to talk the economy down and make it worse than it is, they have been nothing but negative, negative, negative, negative, and they keep piling on with this sort of thing and yet Bush still leads Kerry. I mean, if this stuff were really having that great an impact, Bush would be at 20 or 30% in the polls. I’m telling you, Debbie, it is now March the 25th and I have yet — and even in tempting these people, even stoking them, even goosing them — I still have yet to receive one Democrat phone call from somebody who’s personally enthusiastic and supportive of John Kerry. The only Democrat calls we get, the only liberal calls we get are, “I hate Bush, Bush has got to go, Bush is horrible, what about Halliburton, what about war for oil,” all these clich?s. And I think there was some support for Gore. I think there was a lot of residual Clinton support and affection for Gore in a lot of states in this country last year. Because Gore was an unknown quantity, really. Had that came gone on three or four more months Gore would have gotten skunked, but I think the ingredients this year are just entirely, entirely different.
Plus, you know, the Democrats are lying about a lot of things. The economy is not nearly as bad as they say it is. Their base is eroding. I mean they keep talking about unions here and unions there, look at the Teamsters. The Teamsters union sided up with Kerry not because they like him, but because Gephardt told Jimmy Hoffa to do so and now Hoffa is out there having to make excuses for Kerry who’s voted for things that the Teamsters actively oppose. I mean, there has not been a coalition or a coalescing of Democrat support behind their nominee. The turnout in these Democrat primaries, for all this talk of how angry they are, and how enraged, and how much they hate Bush, the turnout was 8 or 10% even when John Edwards was still in the race. Democrats are not beating down doors to go vote, they are not nearly as angry and enraged, that’s just all media hype to try to convince people to get on board in the same manner. But if you simply look at the Democrats, give you another example, Richard Clarke, do you think Osama bin Laden or the terrorists really give a rat’s rear end about Richard Clarke and what he’s saying here? Who are they going to be most concerned with? Whoever is in the White House. They don’t care about any of this. This isn’t going to deter them. That’s what I said before the commercial break at the bottom of the hour. They can do all these committee hearings they want, they can have all this hindsight they want, they go back and look all they want, this that’s taking place this week in Washington is not contributing an iota to the problem being solved, the terrorist problem being solved.
It’s typical liberalism. They don’t solve problems, they want them to get worse so they can capitalize on them by getting the people they want to blame for them in trouble, and that’s all this is. They’re not actively involved in even trying to solve this. They’re trying to explain why it happened so they maybe can do something about stopping it in the future, but who can be sure of that? You’ve got to couple that with a candidate who’s going to make people feel confident and inspired and has got what it takes to take these people on. And he doesn’t. John Kerry inspires us he’s got what it takes to take what we’ve got, but not take on Osama bin Laden and get rid of him. The ingredients just aren’t there.
So what it boils down to is, you’ve got Democrats who are going to vote for Kerry regardless and anyway, but he’s not the kind of candidate that’s going to get any more Democrats than any other nominee could have gotten. In fact there may have been other nominees that could have been able to get more Democrats than Kerry can. Plus, I’ve shared with you, they’re under the radar, but we’ve had four or five stories, New Republic, columnist Marjorie Williams in the Washington Post, a number of other places, they don’t like the fact that Kerry is the nominee, they don’t understand it, don’t think he can hold up, he’s not been battle tested. There’s a lot of unsettledness.
The Democrats are trying to say they’re totally unified and all that. Yet they’ve got a unity dinner tonight. And they’ve people getting together that don’t like each other. You know, Clinton doesn’t like Carter. Gore doesn’t like Clinton. Clinton doesn’t like Gore. Dean doesn’t like any of them. And yet they’re going to get there and act tonight like they’re all one big love fest. All Clinton wants is the after the dinner suite. That’s all he’s going for, to see who he can find there. And then throw into this mix Hillary has all of a sudden — this is in one of the stacks here, Debbie, that’s been accumulating — and I haven’t gotten to it. Hillary actively seeking veep. Hillary actively seeking the vice presidency now. She’s letting it be known that that’s what she wants.
Now, that to me, that to me, I hate to tell you this, folks, because I don’t want to inspire overconfidence but if Hillary wants to be on the ticket as the vice presidential nominee it means the ticket is going to lose. There’s no way she’s going to want to be vice president for eight years. It just isn’t going to happen. I think all this stuff in the news, Clintons are coalescing and trying to help Kerry out, that’s like Colonel Sanders letting the fox into the hen house. I mean it just really is. The closer Clinton gets the closer he can get to sabotaging this. You have to understand they got to hide this fact and they’re doing a doing job of it. The last thing in the world they want is for a Democrat to win this election and be there for eight years. They want back in the White House so badly they can taste it. Now that they’ve got some money, couple that with the power of Hillary back in there and Bill back in there doing what he’s doing or whatever he would do. I just think if you add this all up, I think people vote issues. I don’t think Democrats have issues to offer. I think they’ve got fear, they’ve got panic.
Remember in 2000, don’t forget this, too, Debbie, the perception in 2000 was the economy was just growing and it was just happy as we can be. They had falsified commerce department numbers on the success at that point and profitability of U.S. businesses, they were reported to be 30% higher than they were. There were a lot of ingredients there that Gore just stepped into. It’s different this time around, Bush is battle tested, Bush is not just a governor from Texas, not just an unknown, and Bush, for all the Democrats want to make him out to be as some dunce or so forth, he’s an eminently likable man who inspires confidence and decency, and he says what he means, and he does what he says he’s going to do. The Democrats don’t, can’t. I mean, they continually come up with ways they can fool everybody into voting against Bush or for them. I’m not saying it’s going to be a landslide, but I don’t think it’s going to be one of these we’ll be up four days in a row after the election counting votes, either. I don’t think it’s going to be that close.
Now, all that having been said, there is a caveat, and that is the election is way the hell down the road and I have no idea what’s going to happen between now and then. But by virtue of that I can also say do not think that what happened this week is going to be the single issue on which people’s votes turn. This is going to end in some near time frame, this week, next, 15 days, minutes, fame whatever of Clarke, they’re going to subside, and we’ll move on to other things; and the Bush campaign will continue to define Kerry, and Kerry will continue to do whatever it is he does; and I think the truth will be told when that process gets going again, but, you know, that’s why I don’t think it’s sensible to get down in the dumps over just like it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make sense to get euphoric over a good week, either, this far out.
But you can take some lessons from both. And while the press is out there saying that this has really hurt Bush, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, I don’t see that it’s really hurt Bush. And the reason I don’t see that it’s really hurt Bush is because nothing that’s happening in this committee, and nothing that they’re talking about, has one thing to do with capturing terrorists, with stopping future terrorist activity. There’s only one guy doing that. There’s only one guy worried about that, and he’s not bothering to show up and testify, yet. Anyway, I’m glad you called. I appreciate the opportunity to explain this in depth.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
RUSH: Here’s another way of looking at the big Democrat unity dinner tonight in Washington, D.C. It’s sort of like a Wizard of Oz meeting. You got the cowardly liar, Bill Clinton showing up. You’ve got Al Gore as the tin man who can’t bend at the waist, you’ve got the scarecrow showing up, John Kerry, and Howard Dean showing up as the head midget of the Lollipop Guild. All that’s missing is Toto. No, we won’t go into the witch. The witch will be there, though. The witch will be there as well, although they’re keeping that quiet. I mean, in all the stories about this big unity, the fact that the witch will not be joining the cowardly liar, the tin man, the scarecrow, and the head midget of the Lollipop Guild I think is interesting. No mention of that degree of unity.
END TRANSCRIPT
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