RUSH: If you’re a welfare recipient just getting up, and you may have missed the first hour of the program, once again, we’re talking about the judicial nomination harangue going on in the Senate. Roll Call magazine is suggesting that Trent Lott, Republican, Ben Nelson, Democrat, are approaching six senators from each of their respective parties with a deal and the upshot of the deal is that the Democrats would get what they want. They get to cream three of the seven current nominees, the other four would be given floor votes and future nominees would not be filibustered unless a Democrat thought there were extreme circumstances involved which of course you can guarantee will be the fact that such will be raised, so it’s essentially the Democrats deal. As I’ve always said, “What in the world is it that happens to these Republicans when they get to Washington and they forget who wins elections out there and who’s in trouble?” They get to Washington, DC, and it’s almost like they forget that it’s the Democratic Party in trouble in this country, the Democratic Party is imploding.
I think it’s sort of like the ghost of ’94, you know, Newt and the gang take over the House, quote, unquote, that’s the lingo, and then the government shutdown in ’95 came, and then the impeachment of Clinton came. I think the Republicans in the Senate and I bet that Senate impeachment trial is something that does still scare the hell out of these guys because they think they ate a lot of excrement sandwiches after that and they’re afraid of opposing any Democrat because they think the country is going to turn around and make them pay for it. And I think they’re probably having the same reservations about confronting the judicial tyranny that the Democrats in the Senate are foisting on the country because they’re afraid that the people of the country are going to take it out on them, the Republicans, if they do anything to stop this. In the meantime, the party that is imploding out there, the party that’s not building, the party that is not doing one thing to expand its reach, is the Democrat Party. Robert Novak had a piece in his Saturday column. “Democratic National Committee fund-raising under the chairmanship of Howard Dean shows a disappointing $16.7 million raised in the first quarter of 2005, compared with $34 million reported by the Republicans.”
Now, if you do the math the Republicans have raised twice as much money, the RNC has raised twice as much money as the Dean-led Democrat National Committee. “That tends to confirm dire predictions by old-line Democratic fund-raisers of a fall-off in money if Dean became chairman. He had promised to bring in heavy individual contributions, as he did in his 2004 campaign for president. But the DNC in the first quarter received only $13 million from individuals, compared to $31 million for the RNC. A footnote: A recent DNC fund-raising appeal promised to send field workers to North Carolina, which does not have a major statewide election until 2008.” There’s no major statewide election next year. Now, this is an indication of just how far behind they are. The Republicans have raised more than twice the money the Democrats have in the first quarter. The Democrats are imploding all over the place out there, and yet you get to Washington and the Republicans act like, “If we stand up for ourselves the people of this country are going to take it out on us.” There has to be a long-held institutional reason for this belief, and as I keep saying it’s something that’s shrouded in fear. But this inability to recognize who’s on the ropes. I mean, the Senate lost its minority leader in the 2004 elections. Tom Daschle, who led a similar effort that Dingy Harry is leading now, is now a lobbyist. Doing something in Washington. But he’s out. He was defeated in the Senate. Everybody expected that the Democrats would realize this and maybe tone it back, but they’ve done nothing but the opposite. They have increased the inflammatory rhetoric; they have expanded their opposition. It is their only agenda item. There’s nothing else on the agenda. They don’t have one idea for anything. They don’t have an idea on Social Security, they don’t have an idea on North Korea, they don’t have an idea on virtually any big issue of our times.
All they do is stand in the way. And yet the Republicans end up going to Washington, get caught up in the attitude that is that town, and somehow continue to think of themselves as the ones with the crosshairs trained on them. It’s an amazing sight to behold. It makes me so happy that over the course of my many broadcasting years I have refused to spend significant time in Washington because I don’t think the same circumstances would befall me but I don’t even want to take the chance. It’s a poison atmosphere there apparently and something a lot of people have trouble fighting, not everybody, but enough Republicans do that they want to be on the in, they want to be in the big clique, they want to be invited to the prom in May every year by the Democrats and so you get the Chuck Hagels, John McCains, George Voinoviches and all the rest.