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.
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.