RUSH: I mentioned at the top of the program that Mrs. Clinton got all this fawning, loving coverage over the weekend about how presidential she was in dealing with the hostage crisis at her campaign headquarters in New Hampshire, but it didn’t last. The Drive-Bys have forgotten that. She’s bearing the claws. You know, we really owe Barack Obama a little bit of an attaboy, and I think we need to sort of be somewhat supportive of Barack Obama in this latest quest, because he’s getting ready here to face a whole bunch of garbage from Mrs. Clinton. They’re even going back and finding an essay he wrote as a kindergartener or third-grader or something about why he wanted to be president, and saying, ‘See? He’s obsessed with power. He’s obsessed with control.’ Mrs. Clinton’s out there saying ridiculous things like, ‘You don’t even get a straight answer from Barack. You can’t get a straight answer from him.’ I think what these people do is purposely accuse their opponents of everything they do — and the media, the Drive-Bys, dutifully fall in line, ignoring the same character traits in both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. An interesting thing happened on Saturday night. Mrs. Clinton was supposed to go into Iowa on Saturday night. She was supposed to go into Iowa on Saturday, couldn’t get in there because of weather, this winter storm that moved through there closed the airport in Des Moines for a while. So she had to appear at some event on the phone.
It was the Heartland Forum in Des Moines, and she had to appear on the phone, and so she did, and she got booed. She got booed over the subject of illegal immigration, once again stunning the Drive-Bys who were there. The Drive-Bys couldn’t believe it. What happened was this: ‘The hostage scare got mentioned a little bit. The announcer brushed it off quickly in order to get to questions. Clinton, who was forced to call in to speak to the crowd of thousands because of weather, took questions on topics from health care to illegal immigration. She was asked if she would make a decision to give undocumented immigrants a pass to citizenship during her first 100 days in office. She said, ‘Well, I’ve been favoring a plan to citizenship for years. I voted for it in the Senate. I’ve spoken out about it around Iowa and the country in my campaign, and as president, comprehensive immigration reform will be a high priority for me.’ Soft booing began to be heard from the audience,’ so the guy repeated his question about the first hundred days, and Mrs. Clinton said, ”Well, look, you gotta get Congress to pass the legislation, and the president to do as much as possible, which I will do,’ and then here came some louder boos from the crowd. She was thanked for her appearance and the moderator expressed sympathies for the ordeal that she had yesterday. Clinton thanked the moderator. More booing could be heard from the crowd after she hung up the phone.’ The candidate of inevitability was booed after a phone appearance with questions on illegal immigration, and we’ve got the polling data out there that suggests that Barack has either pulled ahead or soon will pull ahead of Mrs. Clinton. This has caused Clinton, Inc., to come out of the woodwork. On Face the Nation yesterday, Howard Wolfson, one of Hillary’s chief aides, had this exchange with David Axelrod, who is one of Obama’s campaign advisors. They had this exchange on the program.
AXELROD: Howard, before I answer that question one of the interesting things in this Des Moines Register poll is that by a very wide margin people believe Senator Clinton is running a negative campaign, and what you just did is one of the reasons they feel that way.
RUSH: They’re right. The Clintons are famous for dirty campaigns and negative campaigns, but here’s the thing, folks. If Barack Obama… Look at what he’s just been accused of? He’s just been accused of running a slush fund, from the Clintons, by Howard Wolfson! Slush fund? Try multiple slush funds: the legal defense fund, the illegal Chinese campaign contributions back in the nineties, the Chinatown contributions this year, Norman Hsu, and the Clintons call Obama and his PAC a slush fund? I’ll tell you if Barack Obama has the onions here, folks, he would stomp Mrs. Clinton on this. She is the last person in the country running a campaign to talk about ethics and money in the same sentence. If he’s serious about this, if he and his camp are really serious, they’re going to say more than just, ‘Well, look at this. They’re running a negative campaign.’ They are going to have to turn this around on her and on her husband, and say that this is the height of chutzpah, to be accused of running a slush fund by people who have created it as a work of art and who continue to do so to this day. Campaign slush fund! He’s got a golden opportunity here, folks, but it does mean that Mrs. Clinton is in somewhat of a state of panic. A lot of people think that they’re a week ahead of everybody in terms of polling data and understanding what’s happening, and a lot of people think that she’s panicking and coming out with the claws bared at Obama and others because they’ve got some internal numbers that show her crashing in Iowa and maybe in some other states. It could explain it.
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RUSH: I don’t know how much it matters, but it’s just been pointed out to me that Robert B. Reichhhh on his blog, and I just read it, is all upset at Mrs. Clinton for her attacks on Barack Obama. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t understand why she’s stooping so low to challenge his courage, why she is stooping so low to challenge his health care plan, and other things. This is beneath what Democrats stand for, he says. It’s alternative universe time. Anyway, I guess the bottom line of it is, is that there are some people out there in Drive-By Media circles, the Democrat Party, asking, ‘What is this?’ They don’t understand why Mrs. Clinton’s turning on him. This is who she is, Mr. Reichhhh! I can’t believe that all you Democrats have no clue who she really is. Obviously, you do. I think these are just warnings to her to pull back. Because they know exactly who she is and they know exactly how destructive it’s going to be if she doesn’t get a handle on this. You can say what you want about Obama, but he’s not an unlikable guy. She is unlikable. But he’s not. You know, he’s running around. He’s seems a nice, soft-spoken kind of guy, seems deep. He seems to care, has all the requisite requirements for a Democrat résumé. He cares, number one at the top. He’s not mean. He hasn’t been out there attacking anybody, hasn’t done anything like that, and so Mrs. Clinton, to turn on him like this, it’s like I’m telling you: There are people that think that their internal polling shows that her support is just crashing, and I’m guessing beyond Iowa. But don’t think that they think they can lose Iowa and handle this, because they’ve pumped this candidacy of inevitability.
Let’s go to Naperville, Illinois. Bill, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, you’ve often said that the Clintons were always — Bill Clinton was always in search of a legacy, and I think what you saw with Harold Wolfson yesterday, or —
RUSH: Howard. Howard Wolfson.
CALLER: Howard. The issue is, my thought has always been that the Clinton legacy is how they do politics, and look at it. They deny everything. They accuse their accusers, and they take credit for anything. She will go out, sends her minions out to accuse Barack Obama of having a slush fund. I mean, they’ve taken slush funds to an art form.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And then they have the audacity to take credit for anything. I looked back. I remember the one where Bill Clinton denied that he was having a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, you know, accused other people of the vast right-wing conspiracy, and then went out and took credit for the drop in the unwanted teenage pregnancy rates.
RUSH: Right, because he popularized a new form of sex.
CALLER: It was just unbelievable. I could not believe it, and they did it countless times.
RUSH: Yeah, but there’s only one reason all this can happen, and that is if you’ve got a Drive-By Media that will promote it and amplify it, or else look the other way.
CALLER: Do you think they’re really going to look the other way, you know, for the next nine months?
Journalists are registered nine to one, or vote nine to one Democrat to Republican. It’s like 90%. So I think the biggest threat to Mrs. Clinton is not really the media. It’s that she’s got a pull off an act for about another year, and the act is not answering a question. The act is avoiding and getting away with it, and trying to make sure she doesn’t cackle and trying to make sure she doesn’t get shrill and lose her temper. There are already cracks in this facade that are starting to happen. It’s like I said six months ago. Don’t ask me who I endorse because I don’t endorse in primaries, and besides, so many surprises are left to happen out there that nobody can predict, and now, look: Huckabee is leading in Iowa, and Obama is leading Hillary in Iowa. Nobody thought those two things would ever happen, and yet they have. So now the Drive-Bys have to get in gear and try to manage the outcome in Iowa and New Hampshire and use their ability to persuade people about what the real perceptions of these upcoming results are going to be. But, at the end of the day, I don’t see the Drive-Bys abandoning the Clintons, but the reporting on them is different this time around.
Well, let me give you some headlines here from the Hillary stack. ‘Obama Draws Clinton’s Ire Over Early Ambition.’ ‘Clinton Attack on Obama Could Boomerang,’ Chicago Tribune. Let’s see. ‘Losing Ground in Iowa, Clinton Assails Obama.’ This is Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post. I’ve been waiting for Anne Kornblut to do a 180. Anne Kornblut used to be at the New York Times. Anne Kornblut has been writing some pieces here about how Mrs. Clinton is getting away with not talking to reporters, that she only talks to certain editorial writers and pundits, and she is a reporter, and Mrs. Clinton won’t talk to her. I’ve detected… I’m not sure I’m right, but I’ve thought I’ve detected some…(sigh) I don’t want to say ‘animosity.’ Maureen Dowd is creaming Mrs. Clinton in her column in the New York Times. Now, it could well be they’re just getting it all out of the way now, getting ready for the general in which… (interruption) Mr. Snerdley just asked me, ‘What is Maureen unhappy about?’ That… That would… (sigh) Actually, the way to frame that question is: ‘What is she happy about?’ That would take much less time to answer. (Sorry, Mo.)
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RUSH: Get this. With a new poll showing that Senator Obama may be overtaking Senator Clinton in the Hawkeye Cauci, ‘Mrs. Clinton’s camp is taking the unusual step of reaching all the way back to Mr. Obama’s kindergarten days to find evidence of his duplicity about how long he has had designs on the White House. Aides to Mrs. Clinton lashed out at Mr. Obama’s claim, which he repeated yesterday, that he only recently decided to mount a presidential bid. ‘I have not been planning to run for president for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for,’ Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Iowa. The Illinois senator has previously alluded to a disputed allegation in a book by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. that Mrs. Clinton and President Clinton made a plan before he took office that she would also seek the presidency.’ I don’t care if it’s disputed or not. These people have been planning this since they met at Yale.
‘Mrs. Clinton’s team responded with an opposition research compilation pointing to news reports that Mr. Obama has expressed an interest in the presidency over the years, including as far back as third grade and even kindergarten. ‘Senator Obama’s comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates, and staff have said about his plans to run for president. Senator Obama’s campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality,’ a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Phil Singer, said in the release.’ So they’re going back to find little things he wrote in kindergarten and third grade to say that he planned on being president back then. ‘In March, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mr. Obama’s third-grade teacher, Fermina Katarina Sinaga, said the future senator ‘wrote he wanted to be president’ in response to an assignment about what he wanted to be when he grew up.’ We’re talking the third grade! We’re all asked what we want to be when we grow up, some people say fireman, some people policeman, some people say, ‘I want to be a trial lawyer.’
How many kids say, ‘I want to be president’? I mean, how many people in the third grade during the nineties say, ‘I want to be Bill Clinton in five years?’ (laughing) They found a teacher to do the hit piece. The Clinton opposition research went out and they found a teacher to do the hit piece. This is why some in the Drive-Bys, like Robert B. Reich-h-h-h-h, on his blog are upset at the lengths to which the Clintons are going here. ‘Mrs. Clinton’s campaign may have decided to gloss over those ambiguities to avoid suggestions that she was challenging his loyalty or echoing apocryphal claims from some on the right that Mr. Obama attended a school that taught militant Islam or that he is secretly Muslim. … The Clinton research sheet picks up that part of the story but ignores the quote that comes next,’ from the teacher. The quote is, the teacher wrote that the future senator wanted to be president. He wrote that he wanted to be president in response to an assignment about what he wanted to be when he grew up. ”He didn’t say what country he wanted to be president of. But he wanted to make everybody happy,’ Ms. Sinaga said. The similar kindergarten anecdote, which comes from an Associated Press dispatch, has no indication of what country Mr. Obama hoped to lead.’
Now, the Clinton campaign did not mention that to try to stay away from the Muslim deal, but ‘Yesterday may not have been the first time the Clinton campaign seized on the report about Mr. Obama’s kindergarten dreams. A Web logger for Time magazine, Ana Marie Cox, reported on November 11 that ‘a little birdie’ had urged her to fact-check the Illinois senator’s claims against his kindergarten record.’ (Laughing) So the Clintons are out there dropping little clues to reporters, ‘You know, Obama said he wanted to be president in third grade. He’s lying! He’s lying when he said he only decided recently to run.’ (interruption) Well, that’s not troubling. Snerdley says the troubling thing is that the school record follows you for the rest of your life. When you want to be president, everything you’ve done is going to follow you. That’s not the point here. The point is that the Clintons have come across a third grade reading homework assignment and are trying to turn it into a controversy that Obama can’t tell the truth! Once again from the people who have patented lying and how to get away with it, accusing Obama of telling a lie because of an assignment he had in the third grade! (laughing) I, for one, folks, find this just as humorous as it can be.
This comes on the heels of the Hillary campaign accusing Obama’s PAC of being a slush fund. (laughing) Hey, Ed, in the next break I want you to find a couple of those Al Sharpton shouting outside Obama headquarters spots. They were taking place around the ‘Barack, the ‘Magic Negro” era a couple of years ago, maybe it was this past March. I guess it was just this past March when that was going on because I eventually see Mrs. Clinton standing outside Obama headquarters and yelling the same stuff: ‘Hey, Obama, come out here and tell the truth. You wrote you wanted to be president in the third grade. Hey, Obama, come out here and tell the truth. Your PAC’s a slush fund.’ (laughter) It’s like Al Capone accusing John Dillinger of being a criminal.