RUSH: If there was somebody in the world that had more inevitability about his election future than Mrs. Clinton, it was Hugo Chavez, who, interestingly, also has the same initials as Hillary Clinton, H. C. Hugo Chavez was even more inevitable than Hillary Clinton. He had even more control of the media in Venezuela than she does here. He has even more power to kneecap opponents than she does. And yet he lost! Venezuela won! He had a reform package, quote, unquote, reform package that would have made him dictator for life. It would have eliminated term limits on him, and now he can’t serve beyond 2012, theoretically. I mean, this isn’t over. But, nevertheless, it seems that there could be a message here for the Drive-Bys and their template that Mrs. Clinton is inevitable. Hugo Chavez wasn’t. And she isn’t. They’re crying in San Francisco over this, by the way. So what we have here in Venezuela, one small setback for socialism and a giant setback yet to happen here in the United States in a setback for socialism.
Remember, now, Hugo Chavez had all the things going for him. He hated George Bush. He came to the UN and he called him the devil. He’s cozied up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We’re the most hated country on Earth, right? And Hugo Chavez was going to reap the benefits here. By the way, his oil price is falling today as well, but it’s a little too soon to get excited about Hugo Chavez and I’ll tell you why. Back in, I think 2000 or 2001, does the name Robert Mugabe ring a bell? Robert Mugabe is the dictator in Zimbabwe, and he had a package of reforms in 2000 or 2001 that was identical, I mean very close, very similar to what Chavez proposed in Venezuela, and yet he’s still in power and it was two or three months after that vote when he was defeated that he decided to start seizing all of the farmland owned by white farmers in Zimbabwe and nationalize it. So, to expect Chavez to just take this and go down to defeat and not try to revitalize his, quote, unquote, reforms, is a little crazy.
But there’s a silver lining here, because the conventional wisdom is, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but so much in the Drive-By Media was very effusive in its praise for Hugo Chavez, primarily because of his hatred for George W. Bush and his mocking him, and having a renegade like Chavez out there served the purpose and the narrative of the Drive-By Media who said the world hates Bush, and even if Chavez is a nut, look who made him a nut? Bush made him the nut, because Bush is threatening him and so forth. Venezuela shouldn’t be threatened by us, blah, blah, blah. Now in Chavez’s case, the place that he actually lost the debate, lost the vote was in the poor areas of town and the poor populations, primarily of Caracas but throughout the country, and they were going to supposedly be the prime beneficiaries of all this socialism, but it’s like the Soviet Union is or was now. There are shortages of food, I mean basic staples. Socialism just doesn’t work, and it’s not inevitable, despite leftists in this country and around the world trying to make everybody think that it is, so we’ll keep a sharp eye on this. Hugo Chavez down to defeat in terms of his reforms. He’s still the president ’til 2010, and I’m sure he’s conniving to find ways to make it even longer than that.