RUSH: Reuters headline, ‘Senate Hands Bush Major Defeat on Immigration.’ What about Ted Kennedy or Harry Reid? They run the Senate. They couldn’t get it done. Believe me, don’t believe for a moment that Harry Reid is upset about this. He pulled the bill two weeks ago. He’s fine with this, folks. He loves these headlines. ‘Senate Hands Bush Major Defeat.’ They want it to look like Bush is the guy that can’t get anything done. Harry Reid is not that disappointed about this, I guarantee you. Even our buddies at the Wall Street Journal have a little flash news alert have the same thing. Bush loses big on immigration, is essentially what they said. The Washington Post today: ‘Immigration Stance Costly for McCain.’ Yes. I warned him about this many, many moons ago, but what’s interesting about this story. Now, here I am. What would Reid say I do, sponsor simplicity? I’m ‘a generator of simplicity,’ and I run America. I’m ‘an untamed piece of the Republican message machine.’
I am ‘irrelevant. (By the way, they’re not going to be saying that anymore.) But now in this story, ‘Once seen as the inevitable presidential front-runner, McCain is sinking in the polls particularly in the all important early primary states. On conservative talk radio, he’s lumped together with Senator Kennedy and derided endlessly. A top fundraiser for the Arizonan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to the campaign, was more blunt. ‘This criticism of Senator McCain on talk radio is hurting with the main money guys. Overall it’s definitely a negative.’ This top fundraiser added that the constant barrage of criticism from the likes of Rush Limbaugh is making it difficult to raise money from the conservative wing of the party. ‘Like it or not, our base listens to that stuff.” No, you guys have got it wrong! The base listens to Senator McCain. The base listens on their own! They see what Senator McCain did with McCain-Feingold. You think that endeared him to the base? They see him sucking up to the Drive-By Media for the last six years.
You think that endeared him to the base? How tone deaf are these people? If you want the Republican nomination, you don’t make your best friend Ted Kennedy! You don’t make your friends your enemies, and you don’t run out there sucking up to the Drive-By Media and making them your big supporters, when everybody knows they’re going to throw you overboard when you get close to the nomination or the primaries. Whoever this fundraiser is in Arizona, you know who you are, and you’re probably out there listening, and I’m telling you, the base, yeah, they listen to me (lots of Americans listen to me, in huge numbers), but they listen to Senator McCain, too. You note what’s shaping up? Folks, here’s the picture that these country club, blue-blood Republicans, the RINOs and these leftist Democrats have of you. You get up and you go about your business (some of you might even work; some of you, in their minds, might even have jobs), and then from noon to three, you turn on the radio.
At three o’clock you turn it off. You expose yourself to no other media, and only what you hear on this program from noon to three informs you. You don’t watch news [It’s not true, read the Pew survey]. You don’t hear Senator McCain. You don’t watch C-SPAN. You don’t watch any of these things. You get every single morsel of information that you know from me, or perhaps some other conservative talk show. That’s the picture that they have of you. I’ll tell you something else that the base didn’t forget. They didn’t forget Senator McCain’s attacks on the religious right — although he’s come around in time for the election season. Rudy got criticized by talk radio. We’ve criticized a lot of these people! I haven’t endorsed a Republican in this race. I’ve been critical of each and every one of them on certain things. How come their numbers aren’t falling apart? You know, the idea that you elected officials have no impact on your own fortunes and futures and your own status, that you are total prisoners to what people like me say about you to other people? You can’t possibly believe that, but something leads me to believe that they do. Hence McCain-Feingold and talk radio’s gotta go.