RUSH: ‘Nearly two-thirds of Americans do not trust press coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a new Harvard University survey, which also revealed four out of five people believe coverage focuses too much on the trivial — and more than 60% believe coverage is politically biased. The findings were among those in Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership National Leadership Index.’ By the way — sorry for interrupting myself here — I got three e-mails after the program yesterday. ‘Boy, you really sounded down in the dumps and this is not like you, you sounded really depressed.’ Did I sound depressed yesterday? I’m saying, ‘What in the world were people hearing?’ I was in a fun, frolic, and frivolity mood. The program yesterday had it all, as will this one. Anyway, more than 60% don’t trust campaign coverage, and what happened on CNN last night is a clear illustration of why.
Now, I warned these Republican candidates way back in July, it was July 30th, ‘Don’t do this. These YouTube debates are demeaning the office and all you’re going to do is you’re going to go up there and you’re going to face YouTube video selected by CNN, which has an agenda, and it also has a perverted, disgusting view of conservatism.’ CNN, none of the people there, know what conservatism really is. They just think it’s something abnormal, and obtuse, and weird, and so they’re going to go find who they think are typically weird conservatives. We had a bunch of questioners, I swear, folks, I thought the Unabomber got out of jail and was back in his cabin doing videos to ask these guys questions. What kind of questions did we get? ‘What would Jesus do about capital punishment?’ A guy held up the Bible, ‘Do you believe every word in this book?’ Then there was the obligatory gun control question, and then they had some idiot standing in front of the Confederate flag in his basement asking some question about it. Then they had some idiot also asking a Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations conspiracy theory question to Ron Paul. Think what you want about Ron Paul, but Ron Paul didn’t say a word for 35 minutes and that was the first question that he got. So, obviously, CNN thinks he’s a kook. They think everybody up there was a bunch of kooks.
Now look, I know that this is part of running for president, and I’m not making excuses for the candidates. I’m not saying this was unfair, I’m not saying any of that. What I’m saying is that CNN is who they are, and our guys should have known this. It would have been better not to do this. This demeans the audience. A lot of people on our side today are talking, ‘Wow, what a great debate. Well, we actually had some contretemps going on between Rudy and Romney, going on right out of the book there, right out of the gate on immigration.’ It did take up the first half hour, and it wasn’t bad in that sense, but this is supposed to be a Republican debate with Republican audience members and so forth, and it was just — I don’t know. It was painful for me to watch, because what the overall impression was left here is the Republicans are a bunch of kooks, that conservatives are a bunch of oddballs simply by virtue of the questions that CNN chose, not by what our guys said. Then, of course, the pièce de résistance, you’ve heard about it by now, they had a Hillary steering committee employee ask a question via YouTube, guy named Keith Kerr, retired brigadier general, and he asks his question about gays in the military.
Would somebody tell me when was the last time gays in the military became a huge issue in this presidential campaign? On the Democrat side or the Republican. Somebody tell me this. It isn’t. You had a gay agenda marching forward last night, so this guy asks his question, wants to know what’s wrong with soldiers and sailors and so forth serving next to gay men and women because he said he thinks that the US Armed Forces are professional enough to do this. It turns out the guy works for Hillary. He’s on the Hillary steering committee, the gay, lesbian, bisexual task force or whatever. Then after his question is answered, Anderson Cooper goes to the audience and there the guy is. He is from California, they flew him to Florida, he’s one of two people in the audience that was handed a microphone and had a chance to debate the candidates himself. Cooper said, ‘Did you get the answer you were looking for, Brigadier General Kerr, and he said, ‘No, I didn’t,’ and he starts making a speech and finally the audience booed the guy into silence.
Then later in the night, Bill Bennett doing commentary after the debate, people are e-mailing him, saying this guy works for Hillary. So Bennett makes this announcement and Anderson Cooper said, ‘We didn’t know this,’ and CNN said they didn’t know. All you gotta do is Google his name, for crying out loud. I don’t believe that there’s somebody at CNN that didn’t know this. Everybody tried to cover for Anderson Cooper today for some reason. ‘Well, I think somebody at CNN must have known. Anderson Cooper couldn’t have known.’ It’s his show! Anderson Cooper doesn’t come out well either side of this. If he didn’t know what was going on, then he’s not in control of the show, and he’s not the big-time talent everybody says he is. If he did know about it and is acting like he didn’t, then that’s another thing altogether. It turns out that four or five of the YouTube questions were actually plants again from Democrats who were on the John Edwards campaign or Obama campaign or what have you, or supporters of those campaigns. It’s just so typical of CNN.
This is big news today. Even other cable networks are laughing at them because they’re acting like they had no clue. They’re a news organization. They can’t vet whoever it is that’s sending in their videos? I don’t believe they didn’t know. Somebody at CNN had to know because they flew this guy all the way from California to be in the audience, and they gave him a microphone. So I don’t believe these denials that they didn’t know what they were doing. Of course they knew what they were doing. Every one of these questions, the vast majority of them that they chose were designed to be embarrassing by virtue of the idiots that they chose, the questions the idiots asked, and the pigeonholing of the candidates that resulted. But, despite all this, there was something that — and I’ve always known this instinctively — but there was something that, for the first time, just reached out of that TV screen and grabbed me and became obvious to me, even though I’ve known it, it became as obvious as anything I’ve seen last night, and that is this, very, very simple — that debate last night put on full display the genuine moderate characteristics of all but one of the candidates.
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RUSH: Now, I have to tell you, some people are saying, ‘CNN didn’t plant anything. They’re not that sophisticated. They’re not that organized.’ Some people have a theory that, ‘You know, it’s just a result of groupthink. These people are all libs, and they have a view of conservatism — and their view of conservatism is that conservatives are kooks and weirdos and oddballs, and so when they see a question like this from Keith Kerr and some of these other people, they don’t think anything about it because they think everybody looks at conservatives the way they do, and so they don’t vet.’ I don’t care what the theory is. CNN doesn’t win no matter what the explanation. If they didn’t know that this guy was who he is and some of these other questioners that they chose were who they were, what does it say about them? They’re a news organization; they’re supposed to know things before anybody else does! They’re not supposed to be informed by one of their commentators during an after-show that one of their guest appearances was a plant or a Hillary operative, and act surprised about it. If they did know all of this and still went ahead with it, it means their elitism and arrogance is such that they don’t care. I have to believe they’re a little upset about this today, though, because this goes right to their image as a news organization. Forget ‘unbiased,’ because that’s gone out the window a long time ago.
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RUSH: We’ll start in Springfield, Illinois, with John. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, I agree with everything you say, I love you, but on this particular case, I think the Republicans looked great. I didn’t mind that there were biased YouTube questions. You knew they were getting them. I didn’t mind that Anderson Cooper was going to be a little bit biased. You knew that was going to happen. What I was impressed with was every Republican candidate handled all these questions calmly, they answered truthfully, they told us what they believed, and now you know who these candidates are. Also, when they argued with each other, they handled it calmly, and they acted like true statesmen. Can you imagine Obama asking Edwards if he got all of his money from malpractice suits? Edwards would get all upset about it, but these guys didn’t get upset.
RUSH: Well, look, there is a different playing field for Republicans and Democrats in these things, there’s no question. I didn’t say it was bad. My disgust here is with CNN and a little bit for doing this. I do think that this format demeans the office. I think to take questions like this from YouTube is the pop culture low common denominator, and it demeans the office to do this, and you’re right. They’re going to CNN and they’re doing YouTube and they’ve got to know what to expect, and it looks like they were somewhat prepared.
CALLER: They rose above it. They showed their true character. I got the feeling last night that every one of these men wants to be president, and they think they deserve it.
RUSH: All right. Look, I don’t want to argue with you about this. There’s nothing really to argue.
CALLER: But when are Democrats going to show that they want to be president? When are they going to ask Hillary the tough questions? I mean, there was more toughness last night shown on the stage —
RUSH: Look, I think you’re misunderstanding me. It’s not your fault. I am a professional communicator, a highly trained specialist, and I must not be conveying my attitudes about this well. I don’t mind tough questions. I think all that’s good. It’s just that every one of these questions was clichéd, and it fulfilled, for people who are out there making up their minds or what have you, whatever these misconceptions of conservatives are. We don’t get these kinds of questions of liberals. You say they rose above it, they may have risen above the questions, but can you believe national security and the war in Iraq didn’t come up ’til the second hour? Why not? Because it’s going well. I mean, there are a lot of things far more important than gays in the military, and whether somebody has read every word of the Bible, and what would Jesus do. These are all questions that are born of a liberal mind-set, and I’m just saying it could have been so much more.
There’s so much more those guys stand for than the stuff they were addressing last night. I asked you a question yesterday: ‘When’s the last time you heard a Democrat in the presidential field mention the word ‘freedom?” I didn’t hear our guys mention it last night. This is an election about the future of the country, and I didn’t hear enough about what this country is going to be if a Democrat wins. The only reference I heard to a Democrat was when Huckabee said he hopes if we go to Mars that Hillary is on the first spaceship out, but I’m telling you, there’s a lot of stuff that was left on the table last night because of the bias of CNN, because of the choosing of the questions. You’re looking at this in the context of the questions that were asked, and you’re thinking, ‘Wow, our guys did good.’ That’s a defensive posture because you’re saying, ‘Well, they gotta answer these questions, the rules are the rules and so forth and so on.’
I’m going to tell you this, John. After that opening with this idiot who sang a song — did you guys see this? The opening YouTube video was a guy playing the guitar singing lyrics with his opinions of all the candidates. And, of course, the cameras cut to each of the candidates while this guy’s song is playing, and, of course, they have to smile and so forth. If I had been on that stage and if I had been a serious contender for president, after that, I would have said, ‘Mr. Cooper, we are running for the presidency of the United States, and this is very serious, and you are making a joke out of this, and I’m going to go somewhere where I can discuss this seriously,’ and I’d walk off the stage. And I today would be leading the pack. We sat there last night and I think there’s a defensiveness, ‘Well, we gotta answer these questions. We gotta look good. We gotta do this.’ I didn’t see a whole lot of aggressiveness other than when Mitt went after Rudy and vice-versa and so forth. McCain took some pretty good shots at Ron Paul on the war once they got to that subject. But this was a joke. I mean, it’s not hard to rise above a joke.
Jim in Hartford, Connecticut, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: Good. About the debate last night, granted, the questions were cockamamie. I agree with that a hundred percent, and, you’re right, there should have been a lot more stuff put out on the table. But I think what struck me and why I thought the debate was so good, is that if you compare it to the Democratic debates, they talked and they answered the questions directly. They didn’t subvert the question by saying, ‘Well, my Republican rival…’ and bash Bush, bash Bush. They actually talked and answered the questions directly. At one point one of the candidates said, ‘Yes, I would,’ and I thought that that was great, for the first time somebody answered the question directly without having to bash the other side. They talked about what they thought. Yes, the questions were cockamamie, and they could have been better, I agree with you. But it was technique, and technique I think last night showed through that the Republicans have technique and they can stand up and they have candor in what they do and they talk directly, as opposed to Democrats who subvert the questions and just don’t answer the question. And I don’t think that they ever can.
RUSH: I’m not disputing any of that. I’m just saying all that took place within narrow confines.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Took place in narrow confines and a narrow focus, and it was all clichés about conservatives.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Give me a break, gays in the military. When has that been an issue of any prominence recently? There was another question about homosexuality, the Log Cabin Republican guy. And then the Confederate flag, that’s long ago. Those things are all clichéd, so you’re looking at it as you liked the way our candidates answered the question about the Confederate flag. What I saw was CNN trying to make our guys out to be a bunch of racist bigots who are in favor of slavery and they were being tricked up into trying to admit it. So they get gold stars for not falling into the trap. Well, fine and dandy within that narrow context, but I’m just saying this presidential campaign is not about the Confederate flag, it’s not about gays in the military, it’s not about whether somebody’s read every word in the Bible, and it’s not about what would Jesus say. Immigration, the first thing out of the box, immigration. I hope, if you did watch this, I hope you noticed just how dominant that issue is and how important that issue is, the audience reaction to it. That was for me probably the highlight of this. Well, one thing that never came up last night was taxes, and they didn’t bring up taxes. I’m telling you, based on what’s happening around the country and these referenda that took place in October, or earlier this month, rather, taxes, tax increases, are as big an issue as immigration is if the Republicans can make it so, in an effective way.
Judy in Cedar City, Utah, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, Rush, it’s been a long time. Mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I wanted to get through to you. My husband and I were watching it last night and laughed about this group of undecided, quote, unquote, Republicans —
RUSH: They’re not undecided. They’re all committed supporters of Democrats.
CALLER: Oh, we totally agree, now after watching this, she said she was voting for Edwards, I couldn’t believe that. Why would she go to Edwards? It was just ridiculous.
RUSH: What am I missing here?
CALLER: This lady was sitting there and they asked her, the group —
RUSH: Wait a second. Are you talking about the debate, the YouTube question?
CALLER: No, no, no. You know that group they had that were sitting aside and they were undecided Republicans?
RUSH: Oh, you mean what happened after the debate?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I didn’t watch any of that because my ears were going nuts. Two hours of television audio drives me nuts, I get a headache so I turned that off. I wanted to save my projector bulbs on my TV, didn’t want to waste them, so what did they have, a focus group back there?
CALLER: Yeah, exactly.
RUSH: Oh, okay, so they had a focus group back there with these meters that register how people felt with each and every answer?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And one of the people in the undecided Republicans was an Edwards supporter and said so?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Well, hell’s bells, folks. This is absurd.
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RUSH: Well, we found another CNN plant, ladies and gentlemen. There was a kid last night, Ted Faturos from Manhattan Beach, California, and he asked a question about farm subsidies. He basically wanted to know which of the candidates will endorse the elimination of farm subsidies. He said, ‘Nothing says delicious like cheap corn subsidized by the American taxpayer. For a lot of Americans, however, a bitter taste is left in their mouth when they learn about how the US taxpayer bankrolls billions of dollars in farm subsidies that mostly go to large, agro-business interests. I am curious which candidates who label themselves fiscally responsible will endorse the elimination of farm subsidies…’ This guy is an intern for California congresswoman Jane Harman! (laughing) CNN is an outright joke. They are an outright joke! Every one of these questions, it seems like, has a connection to a Democrat candidate or a Democrat elected official, and yet they claim that they just didn’t know. (sigh) Anyway, the farm subsidy question was actually answered pretty well by Mitt Romney. What’s the deal with farm subsidies? You know, the farm bill is something… Why would CNN pick a question about farm subsidies? Would the Democrats be asked any of these questions last night? No. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. For those of you that have not heard or didn’t see any of the debate, here is YouTube questioner, Retired Brigadier General Keith Kerr.
KERR: My name is Keith Kerr of Santa Rosa, California. I’m a retired brigadier general with 43 years of service, and I’m a graduate of the Special Forces Officer Course, the Command and General Staff Course, and the Army War College — and I’m an openly gay man. I want to know why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians.
RUSH: Right. So, frankly, I’ve been paying attention to this campaign and I didn’t know that this was such a breakout, front-page issue. Did you? Have the Republicans been talking about gays in the military? Has it been a front-page issue? Am I missing something? All right, so all the candidates took their turn at answering this, and then Cooper said, ‘By the way, he’s here tonight. He’s in our audience,’ and he turns to Keith Kerr, who’s got a microphone, a wireless mike in his hand, and Cooper says, ‘Did you feel you got an answer to your question?’
KERR: With all due respect, I did not get an answer from the candidates. (applause)
COOPER: What are you — what do you feel you got —
KERR: American men and women in the military are professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians. For 42 years I wore the unif– Army uniform on active duty in the Reserve, and also for the state of California. I revealed I was a gay man after I retired. Today, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is destructive to our military policy.
RUSH: Then go ask the women you are supporting, Hillary Clinton’s husband, who instituted the damn policy, sir! These Republicans had nothing to do with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ It was a Bill Clinton issue. You never, apparently, revealed you were gay while you were serving? You revealed it afterwards? Not clear on this. But go ask the Clintons about this! This was one of two people who was given a microphone, in the audience, and was asked by Anderson Cooper, ‘Did you get the answer you wanted?’ I forget what the other guy’s question was, but he didn’t make a speech when Anderson Cooper said, ‘Did you get the answer you wanted?’ The guy just said no. Bill Bennett — this is from the roundtable discussion, the panel after the debate was concluded, Bill Bennett and Anderson Cooper here.
BENNETT: I’m getting a ton of e-mails saying that this guy who asked the question was part of Hillary Clinton’s gay steering committee.
COOPER: Uh, that’s interesting. I had not heard, uh, the possibility that he is on some sort of steering committee for a Democratic campaign. It’s something we should follow up on because certainly I had not heard that and, uh, had no knowledge of nor do I think anyone here — and if so that should have been certainly disclosed and we should have disclosed that. Uh, I do know that he is an, uh, activist of some sort but I had not heard he was actually working for the campaign. If so, duh, that would certainly be, uh, an issue that’s, uh, should be addressed, uh, immediately.
RUSH: Well, it’s being addressed today, I guess. Anderson Cooper has said in the past has said, ‘Campaign activists are people too.’ They’re real people. That’s not what CNN means when they’re going to get undecided, real people on these YouTube videos. They also threw in a question from Grover Norquist, who is not a ‘real person.’ Grover is a conservative activist in Washington at Americans for Tax Reform, and he did ask a question: ‘Will you take the tax pledge not to raise taxes?’ and it was interesting. All these candidates said, ‘I’ll make that pledge to the American people, but not Grover Norquist.’ So I think at CNN, somebody thought they were balancing all this stuff by throwing a Republican activist in there with his YouTube question. I don’t know Grover that well, but (sigh) it’s hard for me to believe that Grover would just sit down and do a video and send it in and hope it’d get picked. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody at CNN called him and said, ‘Grover, would you do one of these things, because…’ well, for whatever reason. I’m just speculating about that and I probably shouldn’t. (interruption) [Note: Grover e-mailed Rush to say he just recorded it and sent it in. So sorry about that, Grover.]
Oh, I know. (interruption) They ought to be. People ought to be livid about this. That’s why I wanted to wait ’til after we got some phone calls from people. The Republicans did look good last night, but in the context of this. They looked good within a narrow sphere. You can’t tell me that a brigadier general living in Santa Rosa, California — flown to Florida and given a microphone to assess the answer to his YouTube question — is not a plant.
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RUSH: I’m going to tell you something: For CNN, there’s a pattern here of this kind of plants, and then they act like they didn’t know. This is worse than when NBC blew up the truck on Dateline to make it look like if you buy one you’re going to die. They made it look like it was a spontaneous explosion when they blew it up. Here’s more of Anderson Cooper following Bill Bennett’s revelation.
COOPER: Bill Bennett earlier mentioned that he was getting some reports from, uh, friends of his on the Internet that, uh, Brigadier General Keith Kerr — who asked a question about gays in the military during this debate — was on a, uh, steering committee for, uh, Senator Hillary Clinton. Uh, that was certainly something unknown to us. We have just looked at it. Apparently there was a press release from some six months ago, Hillary, uh, Clinton office, uh, saying that he had been named to some steering committee. We don’t know if he’s still on it. We’re trying to find out that information. But certainly had we had that information, uh, we would have, uh, acknowledged that in, uh, in using his question, if we had used it at all.
RUSH: I was doing a lot of investigating last night. I ran into a couple people who told me — and I have not been able to confirm this — that this Keith Kerr guy was a guest on CNN some years ago. I don’t know about what, but it just stinks, folks. This is an organization that claims it’s journalistic, fair and objective. We know it’s not. It’s a fraud. I’m telling you, their arrogance and elitism aside, they have got to be disturbed by this today. But there’s a pattern. How are we ever going to trust anything like this CNN ever does again?
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RUSH: The surfer dude, Ted from California, that asked the question about farm subsidies. This guy’s a former intern for Jane Harman, Democrat congresswoman from California. You want to tell me that it’s an accident that they get some kid to read some question somebody wrote for him about farm subsidies, designed to trip up one of these candidates going into Iowa, where corn and ethanol and all that’s an issue? You think any of this is an accident at CNN? It cannot possibly be an accident. By the way, we’ve got confirmation: December 11th, 2003, retired brigadier general Keith Kerr did appear on CNN. Bill Hemmer, who is now at Fox, was at CNN. He said, ‘It’s been ten years since ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ became law for gays in the military. A controversial policy that has a number of critics, among them three high-ranking officers now retired and now revealing that they’re gay. Why, then, did these military men come out now? Retired Brigadier General Keith Kerr, lives in San Francisco…’ blah, blah. ‘Gentlemen, good morning to you. We want to start with General Kerr in San Francisco.’ So they had him on to talk about this almost four years ago. ‘We didn’t know. I mean, we had no idea you were working for Hillary! We didn’t have any idea whatsoever.’
I’m a little…not disturbed, but I’m a little fired up here. I took a couple, three phone calls in the first hour from people who said, ‘Hey, I thought it was a great debate. I thought these people did a great job.’ Within the narrow confines and context, yeah, the Republican candidates looked fine. They looked good. But I want to call your attention to some things. I haven’t talked about this yet. There was a YouTube question, an animated question from an editorial cartoonist. The editorial cartoonist caricatured Dick Cheney, and the animated cartoon question on YouTube, Cheney, was asking these Republican candidates if their vice presidential candidate would have as much power as he does. Now, where the hell does that come from if not a convicted liberal bias? And then, of course, the last words from the animated caricature of Dick Cheney were, ‘I’ll be listening’, or, ‘I’ll be watching.’ I’m going to tell you, if I had been on that stage, after watching that, I would have said to Anderson Cooper, ‘Mr. Cooper, I’m running for president of the United States, and I am not going to sit here and let you and this network caricature and mischaracterize the vice president of the United States. He is a great man. He has served his country in public service for decades, and the last seven years, and the attempts to destroy him are simply unacceptable and intolerable — and for you to facilitate this in the form of a debate about the future of this country, is something I resent, and I’m not going to deal with answering your question because it’s bogus,’ and I would be leading in the polls today.
But, of course, that’s not the attitude. It’s easy for me to say. I’m not a candidate, and I wasn’t on the stage. But, somebody at the RNC, somebody in these circles had to convince these guys to do this debate, and I’ll bet the convincing went something like this: ‘Whoa! We gotta do it. Why, the Democrats did it. If we don’t do it, what are they going to say about us? Oh! They’ll say we’re cowards. What are we going to do?’ You know, I remember when I was a top-40 deejay, and picking music, it was very, very competitive. We had a lot of stations. You would not believe… This is at KQV, ABC O&O. You would not believe what we did to try to stay ahead of the competition on music. You know, most people driving around in cars would punch a button if they didn’t like a song or if they’d just heard it. We had people that sat around and monitored all the competitors, trying to get their play list and make sure that we played songs before they did. There was one particular period of time… I forget what it was. I forget the song. It was top-ten song nationwide, and we didn’t play it, and I went to the program director and said, ‘We’re not playing the number-one song,’ or, ‘We’re not playing a top-ten song. Why not?’
‘Well, that song is offensive,’ he said to me. ‘You can never be hurt by what you don’t play. You can be hurt by playing something nobody wants to hear, but you can never be hurt by not playing something, because nobody will ever know you’re not playing it. Nobody will ever run around and say, ‘I’m not listening to that station because they’re not playing X,’ because they’ll never know, because people don’t listen 24/7. So this whole defensive posture doing this debate last night was, ‘We gotta do this, or what are they going to say about us?’ You can’t be hurt by what you don’t do. Nobody in the presidential race, a year from now, is going to remember when you did a CNN YouTube debate or not, if you don’t do it. If you do it and screw it up, then you can hurt yourself — either individually, candidate-wise, or as a party. This Confederate flag question last night, I don’t know that we have the audio sound bite. I’m going to check the roster. If we do, I’ll play it for you. But it was some hayseed, sitting in what looked to be a trailer park, asking about the Confederate flag. I must confess, I couldn’t hear the question, but I remember Romney’s answer. ‘I’m not going to have that flag anywhere where I am.’
It was Democrats who raised that flag in South Carolina! To ask Republicans about this is one of the most misrepresentative and misleading things. Mitt Romney is not running around, nor is Rudy, talking about the Confederate flag. They’re not talking about the Civil War. They’re not talking about slavery. They’re not talking about anything that people associate with that flag. In fact, I think the guy was from Houston who had the flag on his wall in the back. It was Democrats who raised that flag! Here’s another thing. You remember the last debate that the Democrats did with Tim Russert moderating, and the simple, harmless little policy question of Mrs. Clinton about illegal aliens getting driver’s licenses in New York? Do you remember the storm that erupted that night and the next day. ‘How dare Russert go personal! How dare Tim Russert launch a personal attack! Why, I’m going to make sure that Wolf Blitzer doesn’t ‘Russert’ Hillary!’ Blitzer got warned at CNN — and, by the way, what did we get during that CNN debate? We got the Clinton News Network on full display, giving her a total pass. Planted questions, of course.
Now, after the debate last night, I’m not hearing anybody say, ‘Well, these questions were a little odd, these little setups,’ this, that, and the other things. People are talking about how the YouTube people, some of them were plants and might have been Democrat activists and so forth, but nobody’s talking about the absolute ludicrous nature of the question. Yet you ask Mrs. Clinton a policy question, and you better be wearing a protective cup between your legs — and these are the kind of things, folks, that bother me, in addition to whatever you saw last night that you liked. If you’re going to go someplace — if you’re going to appear and it’s going to be on quasi-national TV on a cable network — A, you better be informed what you’re walking into so you can overcome it and shine, and the overall impression… Who are these things trying to reach? Right now they’re trying to reach the base and I will guarantee you the base of the party that watched this last night, had to be as livid as I am with just the total nature and tone of the questions that were asked, because it clearly illustrated what CNN (and Democrats and liberals; they’re all the same), think of conservatives.
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RUSH: Here is the exchange about the Confederate flag. Mr. Snerdley, suspend your call screening for a second, because I want you to hear this question. None you of you guys in there saw the debate last night, right? Okay. This is the first time I watched it and the staff didn’t. I actually paid people to do something they didn’t do last night. Nevertheless, here is the exchange.
BROOKS: Hello. My name is Leroy Brooks. I am from Houston, Texas. And my question is for all of the candidates. What does this flag right here represent? The symbol of racism? The symbol of political ideology? The symbol of Southern heritage? Or is it something completely different?
COOPER: Talking about the stars and bars. Governor Romney?
ROMNEY: Right now, with the kind of issues we’ve got in this country, I’m not going to get involved in a flag like that. That’s not a flag that I recognize or that I would hold up in my room.
RUSH: And then they kept talking about it and so forth, and that’s a good answer. ‘What has this got to do with anything?’ he’s saying. It has nothing to do with anything here, Mr. Cooper. It was Democrats that raised the flag in South Carolina. That’s what all this is. Bob Jones, all this subtle innuendo here from these holier-than-thou socialist liberals that dominant the Drive-By Media and CNN. Now let’s go to some of these others. CNN tried to make these YouTube questioners appear to be average Americans without political agendas. This is Journey, and she is a declared John Edwards supporter.
JOURNEY: Hi. My name is Journey, I’m from Texas, and this question is for all politically pro-life candidates. In the event that abortion becomes illegal and a woman obtains an abortion anyway, what should she be charged with, and what should her punishment be? What about the doctor who performs the abortion?
RUSH: Once again, another agenda question. Those kind of questions are not part of this presidential debate and haven’t been, and you know as well as I know that the purpose of that question was to trip somebody up so there would be a headline today: ‘Candidate X says, ‘Put women in jail. Put doctor in jail,” or what have you. You people at CNN really make people sick. You people have this holier-than-thou, erudite arrogance about yourselves, and you’re a bunch of uninformed ignoramus morons about this country and about the people who live in it. You have your preconceived notions, you have your bias, you have your prejudice, you are liberals, and you claim that none of that applies to you. You can’t be prejudiced, you’re good people. You can’t be biased, you’re a journalist. You cannot have preconceived notions, you’re open-minded. You are the most closed-minded, un-open, uninformed ignoramuses on the face of the media planet. And that’s saying something, given that there’s also the BBC, and the New York Times. You people are embarrassing yourselves, and you don’t even know it.
The next one, Leeann Anderson, a union activist whose union, the American steelworkers union, has endorsed John Edwards.
ANDERSON: My name is Leeann Anderson and I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and these are my kids Evan and Maya. Maya is from China, and we adopted her to give her a better life. We never dreamed that she could be exposed to lead after leaving China, and now we find trains like this that are covered with lead in our home. My question for the candidates are, what are you going to do to make sure that these kind of toys don’t make their way into our homes and that we have safe toys that are made in America again and we keep jobs in America?
RUSH: Yeah, this is supposedly an undecided Republican voter who simply wants to know the answer to the question. These are all setups. If I didn’t know better, Democrats wrote the questions, or CNN wrote the questions. What’s the difference? There isn’t much of a difference. Lead toys, and what are you going to do about toys made in America again and we keep jobs in America? Look, I know lead in the toys from the ChiComs is a problem here, but I guess every one of these Republican candidates is looked at by people at CNN as a suspect. They go out and they review these so-called 5,000 YouTube submissions, and what is it about these submissions that appeal to them? Anybody that submitted a question looks and acts like they also think the candidates are suspects, then oh, well, yeah, that’s a great question, these Republicans are suspects, who do these Republicans think they are? And this next one, this is the Log Cabin Republican guy, David Cercone, whose website says that he supports Obama.
CERCONE: Hi. My name is David Cercone. I’d like to ask all the candidates if they accept the support of the Log Cabin Republicans, and why should the Log Cabin Republicans support their candidacy?
RUSH: So that was the second homosexual or gay question, and, again, that evolves from the fact that Republicans are suspects and they’re homophobes and they’re racists and they’re bigots. That’s why you get the Confederate flag question. What’s frustrating to me about it is that people at CNN are supposed to be — anybody in journalism is supposed to be more informed and more open, and they’re just the opposite. You’ve got group gang-think in there, and so none of this stuff even occurs to them as to how it’s going to look, but that’s what it was.