RUSH: As I say, we need a 24-hour cable network with 24 hours of Chuck Schumer. Just keep playing his statements over and over again. We can call it the All Schumer Service, or ASS. We have two sound bites from Senator Schumer today. He compared Judge Alito and his seat on the Supreme Court to Rosa Parks and her seat on the bus.
SHUMER: Like Rosa Parks, Judge Alito will be able to change history by virtue of where he sits. The real question today is whether Judge Alito would use his seat on the bench just as Rosa Parks used her seat on the bus to change history for the better.
RUSH: Yes.
SHUMER: Or whether he would use that seat to reverse much of what Rosa Parks and so many others fought so hard and for so long to put in place.
RUSH: By the way, did you hear what Ted Kennedy said? I think he’s stealing lines from me. He said that this choice that the president made is made from a position of weakness. Well-l-l-l-l-l! That’s what I said about President Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers that got so many of you people upset at me and in a tizzy at me, and here’s the swimmer now out there suggesting that this choice is made from weakness. It’s just the opposite. (interruption) Has who apologized? Have I gotten any? No, no, no, no, no, no, I haven’t gotten any. Well, I may have gotten a few. I don’t know. I can’t look at e-mail over the weekend, so I haven’t had time to go through it all. I got 30,000 e-mails here when I got here this morning. I can’t go through all that. You know, it’s just impossible. So at any rate, I did come in for a couple hours yesterday to do some pre-prep, but I didn’t have a chance to go through all those — went out and played golf yesterday, finally got the golf course open. There’s no power, but we charged the golf carts up. We stole a generator and we charged the golf carts, about 12 of them, went out there and played. It was like there was a mother-in-law convention in town, it was so windy out there, and I was trying a new ball. The new ball was supposed to go just as far as my old ball but be a little softer, and I couldn’t tell because of the wind, it was just — so, no, I haven’t seen any apologies.
But I tell you, folks, put yourself in the position of the Democrats. During the month of October they thought they’d pulled it off, and last Friday, I am telling you, that when that indictment came down, it was only Scooter Libby, the wind went out of the sails of the Democrats. They thought it was going to be Rove, and they thought they were going to get an indictment that would cause an investigation of the whole reason we went to war; and the independent counsel, regardless of what you think of this indictment, and we’ll talk about that at some point, he said two things in that press conference that will stand out above anything else that I hear about it. He said, (paraphrasing) “Despite all of our investigation, we did not find any evidence of the outing of a covert agent. So it means that our investigation turned up nothing. So we decided to turn up a crime as part of our investigation.” So they’ve got this crime of Libby covering up a noncrime. The second thing he said was, “I don’t want anybody to read into this indictment that there’s anything here about our policy of war in Iraq.” I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what he said. And I tell you, the winds came out of the sails of all of the Democrats and the left and the media because they were hoping that that’s what this would ultimately be. And I think it’s something that a lot of them had participated in setting up. There was a third thing that Fitzgerald said that I also found, and it didn’t register immediately, but as I pondered it, he said, “I would have just as soon this investigation been over in October 2004, not 2005.” Now, when he said that, it just kind of skated over my head because I was still listening to all that he was saying within the context of his press conference.
Then I got to thinking, October 2004, is he saying that he would have just as soon been able to — and preferred to — indict Libby in October of 2004 as opposed to October of this year? Because October 2004 is right before November 2004, which was the election month of 2004, the presidential race. Then I got to thinking, well, what stopped him from indicting anybody in October 2004? Judy Miller. She chose not to testify. She’s one of the people that fingered Scooter, and so she decides not to testify and ultimately ends up going to jail. No wonder the media hates her. No wonder the media despised — not only did she do the wrong thing by promoting the weapons of mass destruction angle, she refused to finger Scooter soon enough to get an indictment in October of 2004. Anyway, the point is that the Democrats — I’m sure, folks, they thought — 22 indictments, Lawrence O’Donnell, 22 indictments, Rove was going, one of the five indictments, Rove, Libby, perhaps Cheney, could go all the way to the White House… what did they get? They got zilch. Okay, so we’ve lost Libby. They’ve lost Dan Rather, they’ve lost Andrew Heyward, they’ve lost a lot more key players than we’ve gotten rid of ours in the last five years. The way I tally this we’re still on the top, folks, in getting rid of key players. Brokaw is gone, Peter Jennings passed away, Rather gone away in shame. The mainstream media’s evening news is no longer a big deal, people don’t pay that much attention to it anymore. The gasoline price is now below $2.50. Did I tell you this? You can drink the water in New Orleans. There was no toxic soup. All of this horrible stuff that had happened on the Bush watch, we’ve had three successful elections in Iraq, we got a constitution, everything is happening on a timeline basis as the president promised. The Democrats think they’re sitting in the driver’s seat but they know that their car is about to come to that edge of the cliff, folks.
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RUSH: We have one more bite from Senator Schumer, and then Byron York just sent me a little blurb. You know how Ted Kennedy came up with that statement, Robert Bork’s America, women will be forced to go to the back — Well, a group has tried that today with Judge Alito. The Center for American Progress has tried to rewrite Ted Kennedy’s famous Robert Bork’s America speech in its news release on the Alito nomination. I’ll get to that here in just a second. But first one more bite from Senator Schumer.
SHUMER: It’s sad that the president felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America instead of choosing a nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor, who would unify us.
RUSH: Stop the tape a second. Senator, let me tell you what’s going to happen. He is going to unify America, and you’re going to be on the losing end of it. This is not going to divide America whatsoever, and you know it, and it’s something you’re deathly afraid of. You want to simply continue to define yourself and your far leftist fringe buddies as the mainstream, but you couldn’t be more out of the mainstream if you had charted a course to be out of the mainstream. This is all posturing. It is Schumer who is genuinely sad that he wasn’t able to roll the president, because what’s happened here, folks, the president has chosen to pick a fight with his real enemies this time. He has chosen to pick a fight with the left. And he’s really not even choosing to pick a fight. He’s just choosing who he thinks would be an excellent nominee for the court. Here’s the rest of Senator Schumer.
SHUMER: — needs unity now. America needs reaching out to one another more than ever.
RUSH: Why?
SHUMER: But the president seems to want to hunker down in his bunker and is more concerned about smoothing the ruffled feathers of the extreme wing of his party than about governing all of America and changing history for the better.
RUSH: Extreme wing of his party? How about Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg? Extreme wing of his party. The president didn’t want an O’Connor. It’s you people on the left who live in this mirage that there is somehow some swing vote on the court to make sure you don’t lose every time that wants an O’Connor. It’s not the president. If there was supposed to be another O’Connor, Clinton should have nominated another O’Connor, if O’Connor is the baseline, is the benchmark, then let Clinton have nominated — he didn’t, he nominated an ACLU member, Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg. And here you have Schumer dumping all over Alito, but then says that he will scrutinize. He says he can’t be a fair judge. He’s been a federal judge for 15 years. He’s been on the federal circuit for 15 years, 100 to nothing unanimous votes twice. You know, and Chuck’s want even the ranking member of the judiciary committee. That would be Leaky Leahy, Patrick the Senator Depends. And he’s had some things to say, too, but he’s being outflanked here by Chuck Schumer. Like I’m saying, folks, we need to be happy that Schumer is saying what he is saying. We want people like Schumer out front every day just as we want this.
As we mentioned, Byron York sent me this note that the Center for American Progress has tried to rewrite Senator Kennedy’s famous Robert Bork’s America, and here’s basically what it says. “Samuel Alito would overturn Roe vs. Wade. Samuel Alito would allow race based discrimination. Sam Alito would allow disability based discrimination. Sam Alito would strike down the Family and Medical Leave Act. Sam Alito supports unauthorized strip searches. Sam Alito is hostile toward immigrants,” and they cite their cases to give evidence of this. This is what we want. We want these people to come out and show just how far out of the mainstream they are. We want them to illustrate that it is they who are extreme on all of these things, folks. I’m telling you, for those of you who doubt me, and I’m sure there’s some of you out there because I know who you are, we know who you are. “Okay Rush, I hope you’re right. What if you’re wrong? Oh no, yeah, I think you’re right, yeah, I guess we have to…” Folks, we know that conservatism wins every time it’s tried and every time it’s stood up for. Conservatism doesn’t win when conservatives act like they’re not conservative. Conservatism doesn’t win when conservatives try to please liberals and moderates. That’s when conservatism loses. Conservatism wins when it stands up for itself and it will! Here’s Cliff in Greenville, South Carolina, hello, sir, you’re up first, it’s an awesome responsibility.
CALLER: Hey, it’s show time.
RUSH: Yes, show time.
CALLER: You and I have to put our trust in these Republicans in the Senate, and though we agree that we’re a nation of laws, when we started out that way, we weren’t, we were a nation of men because the laws hadn’t been established, and I hate to say this, but I don’t think we have the individuals in the Senate that are up to this. I know you pushed it really hard —
RUSH: Wait a sec.
CALLER: But it’s show time.
RUSH: Wait a sec. Wait a sec. Vice president Lindsey Graham has already come out, did you hear what he said?
CALLER: Yeah, he’s one of my senators.
RUSH: Well, okay, well, then Lindsey Graham is a member of the gang of 14. And Lindsey Graham said, “If anybody tries to filibuster on this, it will fail.” This means he will abandon the gang of 14. There may be a couple Republicans who will vote against the guy. I will bet you, I’ll predict to you right now, Cliff, and I’ll tell you, if I lose I’ll send you a couple EIB golf shirts, all right?
CALLER: Sounds great.
RUSH: All right, if you win, you have to do nothing but keep listening.
CALLER: I can handle that.
RUSH: Okay, which you’re going to do anyway — he gets 65 or more votes.
CALLER: Sixty-five or more. All right.
RUSH: Sixty-five or more.
CALLER: Let it be. I’m hoping and praying that’s the case.
RUSH: Yep. Sixty-five or more votes. I’ll tell you what else is going to happen. He’s going to be the fifth Catholic. Oh, no. The fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court. Let ’em come out against religious people, too. Let all of this surface. But after what happened with Harriet Miers, I don’t think that you’re going to have that many Republicans wander off the reservation now. I think with this indictment of Libby and all this… and it’s an instinctive feeling, and I obviously could be wrong about this —
CALLER: I hope you’re right, but I’m so nervous because we know sins can be forgiven but stupid is forever.
RUSH: Well, I know.
CALLER: And these guys continue to befuddle me, supposed, supposed conservatives.
RUSH: Well, look it, there’s some Republicans in the Senate that are not conservatives.
CALLER: I know that.
RUSH: Okay, so you got Linc, you got Susan Collins, you got Olympia Snowe, and McCain, depending on, you know, what he wants the press to think of him that day.
CALLER: The way the wind’s blow that day.
RUSH: Yeah, but look. Even in that scenario, see, what I think is going to drive this, don’t forget what happened out here with the Harriet Miers thing, and I say this with great trepidation, but if you look — I told you that what was going to happen, instead of this conservative crackup that everybody on the left was talking about, Howard Fineman, that it was a conservative crackdown, and here is evidence it’s been validated. Here is a conservative crackdown, you can call it the conservative movement, the base of the party, whatever brought this nomination about, and they’re not going to sit by and if some Republican senators want to go wobbly, they will hear about it.
CALLER: Rush, this is a bet I certainly want to lose, but this is not the team I’d like to go to war with.
RUSH: You think they’re going to defeat Alito?
CALLER: I think there’s enough of them there that when the press put its full-court press on and they want to be the McCains, they want to be the darling of the press, I think they have the spines of a chocolate ?clair.
RUSH: Let me tell you something. You mentioned McCain or any of these other Republicans want to be president. If they really want to be president they’re going to have to get on board with the Republican agenda right now because we’re getting close to primary time. If they start trying to undermine the president on this particular, and other things, they know they can kiss their chances in the ’08 primaries good-bye. I think also because of what happened with Miers, I think there’s going to be a big sigh of relief now that we can be unified and focus on the real enemy, which is not us and ourselves or the president, but the left.
CALLER: So how many votes do I get?
RUSH: Sixty-five.
CALLER: Okay. That’s a vote I would love to lose.
RUSH: Sixty-five. He may only get 54 or 55. Let’s put it this way. There won’t be a filibuster.
CALLER: You don’t think so?
RUSH: No. Not with vice president Graham already suggesting that he’s off that reservation.
CALLER: Well, Graham did that, it’s because myself and so many of us here in South Carolina just barraged his — we worked so hard to get him there, and we barraged his office with how disgusted we were with him being a part of that.
RUSH: That could well be a factor. There’s no question. I think he realizes it might have been just a bad structural move as well, and he was very plain as day yesterday about this. There will not be a filibuster. Meaning, the Republican side of this will not hold.
CALLER: Boy, I hope you’re right, Rush.
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you, I don’t see any reason for pessimism here because, you take look, doesn’t matter who it is, Schumer, Kennedy, the alliance for whoever they are, the NAGs, their opposition to this guy is the same it would be to anybody. There’s nothing specific about this guy. They’re just opposed because he’s conservative. There’s nothing new. It’s the same old playbook. It’s the same old song and dance. And I’m telling you, when the left brings forth — put Ralph Neas on TV as much as possible. You want to talk mainstream America, the guy is not it. Put Ralph Neas on television as often as possible. Let Nan Aron, let all of the leaders of these fringe groups get on television as much as possible and start denouncing this guy. There’s not one thing unlikable about Mr. Alito — kids, family, he’s not a demon. You cannot demonize the guy. Let ’em try. This is my whole point. It’s time to swat this fly for good, the left and their so-called unity and their ideology and all that. So, Cliff, I’m glad you called. Hold on there. We’ll get the necessary information here just in case we don’t get 65 votes and I send you a couple shirts, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
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RUSH: Something else you can add to the list of good news, and that’s economic growth. The third quarter economic growth, 3.8%, is that what it was? You know, that will be seasonally adjusted upwards after they get some more data in. So, you know, all these things supposed to be falling apart, and they’re not, and that’s because the press believes their own alternative reality that they create, and they ignore real reality, if I can be redundant, as they create their alternative reality. So we’ve got gas prices now moving below $2.50, that’s for regular unleaded. I got a story here, this is from Knoxville, Tennessee, Scripps Howard News Service, why some Americans remain optimistic. Press can’t believe that there are Americans that are optimistic out there. And one of the things that it points out, among those who are optimistic, they are watching less and less of the evening news and reading less and less of the newspaper.
Now, I’ve always told you, if you did this your life would change dramatically. Now, I know you have this compulsion like I do to stay informed, but some people are really optimistic when they don’t read the news, when they don’t watch the news, or at least the front page of the newspaper or whatever. People have been tuning out the mainstream media for decades, folks, their audience numbers are coming down. The vast majority of elections in this country are decided by incumbency. One of the little-known secrets about the Republican takeover of the House in 1994 was that there was a whole bunch of open seats in 1994. There are 435 House seats up for reelection in 2006, and about 20 of them are competitive. Only 20. Incumbency rules these things. So there’s really a whole sector of the country that?s noticing positive things. The situation in Iraq is far better than the alternative reality that has been created. Rove was not — I cannot tell you, I don’t care what the left wants to massage themselves and say or how they want to massage it — well, let’s go through it. Let’s just go through what they said. We had Schumer calling Pat Fitzgerald a prosecutor’s prosecutor. Well, what happened? Fitzgerald charged no criminal leak, but he still found a crime. He reported no conspiracy. But he found one. He didn’t charge Karl Rove, but the left says that Rove should step down anyway. Dingy Harry says that Rove should either quit or Bush should fire him. He discounted any connection to the war. But the left is out there saying that this whole thing is the cause of the war. The mainstream media might have the template on this, but they do not have the facts about any of this that went on. The more the left talks about Libby’s alleged perjury the more you have to ask, did Joseph Wilson commit treason?
Joseph Wilson has been documented by the Senate intelligence committee, bipartisan, to be a liar. People have pored over his New York Times and LA Times op-eds, found him to be a liar. If, as the left charges, we went to war because of yellow cake in Niger, then they have to live with that charge or die with it. I know that’s not our argument, it’s not the president’s argument, the argument of the president’s at the UN but that’s the Bush-bash of today, that we went to war because of yellow cake in Niger and it was all a lie. That’s what the left wants to believe themselves and they try to make everybody else believe it, and so Wilson came back and found no evidence, they say, when that’s not even true, either. His initial verbal report confirmed what the CIA knew at the time. You still can’t convince me, by the way, that this whole thing is not a CIA-hatched plot to destroy Bush, undermine the war effort, and all that. I mentioned this for the past couple of weeks. But the real question is this, did Bush lie about yellow cake, did the Brits lie about uranium in Niger, or did Wilson? Did Wilson lie about Niger, did Wilson commit treason, did Wilson make up something? Did he go in there and sip tea and not even investigate, come back and just say whatever he wanted to say what the plan was. I mean, you know, didn’t even strike me that this was all that important till the left started making it the reason for opposing the war and trying to get rid of Bush. That he lied about weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons of mass destruction to get us into war, and Wilson is the agent for that story being moved forward, when Wilson is himself a questionable source.
So Dingy Harry wants Rove to resign. Why? Wants Bush to pledge no pardon, ever. Why? I can’t wait ’til Dingy Harry says this goes all the way back to Barbara Bush. I mean, how far back are they going to try to take all of this? Then we have Lawrence O’Donnell. This guy ought to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. He was 21 indictments off, and he was the first guy to guarantee us that he’d heard sources inside that Rove was it, that Rove was going to be indicted. This is the guy who pops his blood vessels on TV, writes for TV’s West Wing, predicted 22 indictments — I don’t know — predicted multiple indictments, I think 22 indictments was a rumor in the media about three weeks ago, but he predicted Rove would be indicted, and of course it wasn’t the case – and the left all thought that was going to happen. So I’m telling you, no matter how they phrase it, no matter how they pursue this — and you could tell by the way Wolf Blitzer was pursuing guests on his show yesterday: “Well, even so, wouldn’t you have to admit that what Libby did was bad? Even though the special prosecutor found no crime, and he found no covert outing, agent outing, wouldn’t you have to agree what Libby did was bad? Wouldn’t you have to agree that what Libby did was a crime?” Anything to associate the word “crime” in the White House. They didn’t get what they want. They didn’t get what they want in the Supreme Court nominee. They don’t have what they want with the economy roaring. They don’t have what they want with New Orleans not as bad as it was forecast to be. They don’t have what they want going on in Iraq. Don’t believe for a moment they’re happy with what’s going on, because they’re not.
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