Harping On Haditha Will Backfire, Too

RUSH: Fort Walton, Florida, and Eric. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I wanted to suggest a Chris Matthews suicide watch, because he had yesterday’s elections tied to everything, from Katrina to Abu Ghraib to illegal immigration, and I really don’t see how he’s going to get through this.
RUSH: He’ll find a way. Forgot that he said it.
CALLER: Do you think he’ll address it tonight on his show?
RUSH: Why don’t you watch and call me tomorrow and tell me?
CALLER: Am I going to get paid for it?
RUSH: (Laughing.) No, I already pay one person to do this so that I don’t have to. What’s the proper way to respond? By the way, I’ve noticed every caller that we have had today, including you, Eric, and this is a positive, every caller that’s called today is excited; they are up. They are speaking so fast, I’m having trouble keeping up with them. You guys got a big oompah last night, didn’t you, on these election returns? Everybody’s got their confidence up today. I can just tell it in the people that have called this program. You know, I’ve been urging you to be confident throughout. I know it helps when actual results come in because that’s substance to buttress the confidence.

But it’s great to hear in you people’s voices that you’re all revved up about this now, and also noticing that the Drive-By Media is going to be doing a 180. I don’t know what Matthews will do; it will be difficult to predict, but my guess is since he was so invested in this that there will be some kind of in-depth analysis on his next program to explain what happened. My guess is — let’s just see if I’m right — my guess is he’ll say, “If this Haditha stuff had broken earlier, that would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Can I tell you something about Haditha? Now, I have been telling you people for the last week and a half, brace yourselves because this is going to be a one-sided story. The people who cannot speak about this are the people who know most about it.
They can’t speak about it because there would be fear of corrupting the case when and if it is brought and tried. So they can’t say diddly-squat. So the field is left wide open to the Drive-By Media and the Democrats to basically say whatever they want about this, and then to expand and extrapolate on it to make it sound like it’s the absolute worst thing that’s ever happened to the US military. This is typical of what they are. “We’ve got to get out of Iraq. We’ve got to disband these units. This is just horrible,” blah, blah, blah. It’s going to happen. Here’s the result, though, and this is where the Drive-By Media will miss it.
It’s just like Abu Ghraib, and it’s just like Club Gitmo. The vast majority of the American people aren’t going to care. They are not going to be able to make Haditha a weapon by which the American people will support pulling out of Iraq. Now, they might succeed with these wimps inside the Beltway. That’s a whole different ball of wax. But as far as — and I’m confident of this — as far as the American people are concerned, a sizeable percentage if not a majority is going to get outraged at this never-ending, continuing assault on the people in this country who volunteer to offer their lives in sacrifice to protect freedom and democracy in this country and help spread it elsewhere. Now, some of you say:
“Rush, look what they’ve done to Bush’s poll numbers. Why, their negative reporting over Iraq over all these years, they’ve brought Bush’s poll numbers down.”
I’m not convinced that all of those poll number falls have to do with Iraq. I think there’s a whole bunch of things that have contributed to the president’s approval number going down, including history, including cycles. It’s just this way in presidents’ second terms, and they usually rebound toward the end of these second terms anyway. But I’m confident of this folks. Just like everything else they’re going to overplay their hand, they’re going to overdo it on Haditha, and people are going to get sick and tired of hearing an elite bunch of people who really have no respect for the US military in the first place start ripping the shreds out of the entire Armed Services over this incident and trying to equate this incident with normal, standard operating behavior in the US military.
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RUSH: Here is Owen in Yorktown, Virginia. You’re up next, sir. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Mega dittos from the true birthplace of America, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: The analysis that you mentioned earlier, that Chris Matthews will undoubtedly do tonight will absolutely go down in flames, and Exhibit #1 concerns the special election in the 50th district. One factor that everyone in the Drive-By Media seems to forget is that this was a statewide Democratic primary, and they only had 30% turnout. In other words, this was their best chance to make their mark and they blew it, and I feel that what this means is that it will be even worse for the Democrats in the November general election.
RUSH: Well, it’s tempting to go there, but primaries traditionally do not attract huge turnouts, in June especially. This is summertime. People are away from home, traveling around, even with $3.50 gasoline out in California. I wouldn’t go too far with that. I don’t know what the turnout was in California 50. That’s the only race where somebody was actually going to be installed in office. It would be difficult to say that this is typical and representative of what’s going to happen in November, because the majority of the state of California is Democrat, and during a general election you’re going to have a much greater turnout than even during a primary.
What this says is that what was on the ballot statewide was not all that big a deal to people, including the Democratic gubernatorial primary. But June is a tough month to have one of these things, even in an off-year election. But having said that, you’re exactly right as far as this is concerned. The Democrats can try to look for all kinds of strong signs out there, and they’re just not going to find them, and lurking right underneath them on this culture-of-corruption business is William Jefferson (Democrat, Louisiana). More and more is coming out about this, and the Democrats are starting to pull the whip now, and Steny Hoyer is getting serious about yanking him off the Ways and Means Committee.

Come on! At the very least the guy’s got 90 grand in cash in his freezer. He’s on the Ways and Means Committee. It’s a tax writing committee. At least he’s got a tax problem, if nothing else. You put 90 grand in your freezer that nobody knows how you got. Well, we do know how he got it. He was paid off. He didn’t withdraw that money from one of his own accounts for which there would have been a record. So the Democrats are starting to get the picture on this. I mean, you have to understand, folks. Nothing’s really changed here. I know it’s hard for you to believe. I can say don’t doubt me as long as it takes, but I know until hard and fast results show up you’re still going to have some doubts.
But it’s been this way since 2002. The Democrats open a door and break their nose and bloody themselves. They did it with the Wellstone memorial. They thought ’02 they were going to run away and retake the House. They thought Kerry was going to retake the White House and that the House and Senate were going to go Democrat back in ’04. They’re fooling themselves. They’re lying to themselves. They still have not come to grips with the fact that they are the party losing votes and losing interest in themselves. People are losing interest in Democrats left and right. They’re not inspirational, they’re not attracting — look at who their outreach is aimed eight. Their outreach is aimed at felons and illegal aliens.
Now, they can fool themselves all day and say they’re going to go out and try to get the values vote by “injecting spirituality” into their campaign. By the way, it’s “religion,” not “spirituality.” If you really want to have a chance at getting the values vote, Democrats, you’re going to have to start using the right terms. You start talking about “spirituality” and you’re going to come off as a bunch of New Age wackos at the top of Mount Shasta doing harmonic convergences while getting into these mantras like, “Ohmmmm,” and you’re not going to get anywhere. You don’t have the guts to get “religious.” You know, religion scares you people on the left because it’s too judgmental. It has not enough gray, too much black and white. Some things are definitely wrong, some things are definitely right, and that just doesn’t mix with the moral relativism of modern day liberalism and the Democratic Party.

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