RUSH: Elizabeth Edwards praised her husband, the Breck Girl, for apologizing for his vote in favor of the Iraq war and questioned Senator Hillary Clinton for not doing the same thing. ”She even, in the New Hampshire debate said, ‘I made a mistake.” People are looking for a mea culpa from her. And when she buried a line like that — I give her credit for saying that — but when she buries that line… we’re electing a leader of the free world, and just like the votes on this last funding bill, we’re looking for a leader,’ Mrs. Edwards said. She also questioned Sen. Barack Obama’s motives, even though he was in the state legislature in Illinois, and not the U.S. Senate, in 2003. ‘Obama gives a speech that’s likely to be extraordinarily popular in his home district,’ Edwards said, ‘and then comes to the Senate and votes for funding… so you are going to get people behaving in a holier-than-thou way.’ Mrs. Edwards had similar responses towards health care. In a reference to her personal battle with cancer, she said of Mrs. Clinton, ‘Hillary is saying we need to develop a political will. She hasn’t been talking to people if she thinks we need to develop it. We do not.”
I know what she means when she says we need to develop the will, the political will. What Mrs. Clinton is saying is she knows the American people are not for it, and so to a liberal the political will is finding a way to fool ’em and force them into accepting. Elizabeth Edwards thinks that everybody does want it, and she’s wrong. Taking aim at Obama, Mrs. Edwards continued, ‘I don’t know why it took six months, but I’m glad he has a (health care) plan now. It doesn’t cover fifteen million people. If you’re one of those fifteen million, it’s not universal for you. The fact that he says he’ll fix it later, that’s not the kind of bold response we need on a problem that is important to America.’ She added that any divide in the Democrat Party this year among the candidates is a difference between actual Democrats and rhetorical Democrats. ‘Sometimes it seems that we have these beliefs, but it turns out it’s like a Hollywood set. It’s a facade, there’s no guts behind it,’ said Mrs. Edwards, who asserts in the interview, ‘You listen to the language of what people say, particularly Obama, who seems to be using a lot of John’s 2004 language, which is maybe not surprising since one of his speechwriters was one of our speechwriters, his media guy was our media guy. These people know John’s mantra as well as anybody could know it. They’ve moved from ‘hope is on the way’ to ‘the audacity of hope.’ I’m constantly hearing things in a familiar tone.”
So she thinks Obama is stealing from her husband’s campaign. But you read this, folks, and you just have to shake your head in amazement. It’s routine now. The Breck Girl is having his wife go out after his enemies. It’s like she’s a stage mother or something. His nails weren’t dry or the hair spray can was empty or some such thing. How does he get his wife to talk mean to his foes? What a dude this guy must be. Can you imagine that those Muslim terrorists, Vladimir Putin, Ahmadinejad are shaking in their assorted footwear when they think of an Edwards presidency? In fact, the Breck Girl was asked about that on the Today Show today. Meredith Vieira interviewed him, saying, ‘Your wife has been described as your backbone, your biggest advocate, certainly no shrinking violet. She’s taken on everyone from Ann Coulter to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama. Is that part of campaign strategy or is that just Elizabeth being Elizabeth?’
EDWARDS: You can give up on the strategy. No, we’ve been married 30 years, and I’ve known her longer than that and the whole time I’ve known her she’s been exactly the same person. She speaks her mind. She says what she thinks. Most of the time we agree. Sometimes we don’t agree, but we always love and respect each other.
RUSH: Uhhhh…. (sigh) Well, you know, they say what it is. I just have trouble believing this is not a strategy, folks. Running for president’s a very serious thing. You just can’t have people running all over the place, your wife or your husband or whatever, you can’t have them running all over the place and mouthing off. It’s too risky. It has to be somewhat coordinated, the way these consultants button these people down and give them things to say and so forth. That’s why this is fascinating. The consultants are giving these things to Elizabeth Edwards to say, and not the Breck Girl. Last night, he was in Iowa at Dan’s Pizza restaurant. He was doing his Fighting for One America bus tour. The seasoned citizens were the audience, and he left them sweating for 20 minutes in the heat because he was late, and here’s why.
EDWARDS: I want to know what we can do to warm this room up a little bit. (Laughter.) Surely we can get the heat turned up a little bit, and surely we can stack a few more people into the back, right? Because there are a bunch of them outside who couldn’t get in. Do you want to know why we’re standing in a great example of global warming? And why America is not dealing with this in a serious way is because the oil companies, the gas companies, the power companies stand between us and doing what needs to be done.
RUSH: Ah, this is dangerous stuff. I actually think this guy believes it, because they were his targets when he was a trial lawyer. I think he actually believes it. It’s all equated to global warming. I’ve always had this philosophy. You say you’re going to be somewhere at a certain point, you be there. If you show up late, to me it’s a sign of disrespect to the people that you have told and committed that you would be somewhere at a certain point. If something comes up, and you’re not going to be there on time, then you call ’em and you say, ‘I’m on my way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ One more, last night from Iowa in Dan’s Pizza restaurant. Here’s the Breck Girl tipping off the Democrat general election strategy.
EDWARDS: This is what I’m going to say to the American people. You see this person? I’m trying to think. They’re all men. You see this man? He is George Bush on steroids. He will give you four more years of the war in Iraq, four more years of what you’re paying for health care now, four more years of what you’re paying for gas now. Is that what you want? Or do you want something different? We’re not going to let ’em run away from this president. We’re going to hang George Bush and Dick Cheney around their Republican nominee’s neck and they’re going to carry ’em the entire campaign. I’ll tell you that.
RUSH: Okay, so they’re going to run against Bush and Cheney. Edwards says they’re going to run again Bush and Cheney, which is really no big secret. That’s all they’ve been doing since 2001.