RUSH: Drudge Report today has an exclusive, but I knew it, I knew this was going to be the case. I’m on the cutting edge of societal evolution. ‘Democrat party officials are avoiding any and all criticism of Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, insiders reveal. The Democratic National Committee has told staffers to hold all fire, until he secures the party’s nomination. The directive has come down from the highest levels within the party, according to a top source. Within the DNC, Huckabee is known as the ‘glass jaw — and they’re just waiting to break it.’ In the last three weeks since Huckabee’s surge kicked in, the DNC hasn’t released a single press release criticizing his rising candidacy. The last DNC press release critical of Huckabee appeared back on March 2nd.’ Yeah, the Clintons said leave him alone. (doing Clinton impression) ‘That’s right, Limbaugh, you understand this better than my own party does. We’ll take care of this guy after he gets the nomination. He’s got that glass jaw. He’s in Arkansas, I know how to deal with those people.’
‘One senior Democrat operative Tuesday morning from Washington said, ‘He’ll easily be their McGovern, an easy kill. His letting out murderers because they shout ‘Jesus,’ his wanting to put 300,000 AIDS patients and Magic Johnson into isolation, ain’t even scratching the surface of what we’ve got on him.’ The discipline the Democrats have shown in not engaging Huckabee has earned the praise of one former Republican Party official: ‘The Democrats are doing a much better job restraining themselves than the GOP did in 2003 when Howard Dean looked like he was on the brink of winning the nomination.’ A close friend to Huckabee explains: ‘Look, Mike is Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare. They should be squirming,” at the Democrat National Committee. Let’s go back and listen to me on this show, December 3rd, 2007, this is what I told you about the Drive-Bys and the Democrats and Huckabee.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Why are the Drive-Bys, why are they pushing Huckabee? Because they think that Huckabee is a nut. They think that Huckabee is a Bible-thumping preacher that’s going to be marching into every woman’s home and telling her, ‘No, you must not and cannot have an abortion.’ And then they think he’s going to hijack the Constitution and write Roe vs. Wade out of it without even going to the Supreme Court. And then they think he’s going to make every liberal kid go to Sunday school. This is what they think of him. This is what they think of any God-fearing pastor or conservative religious person. And, as such, they think that would be easy to beat.
RUSH: So, who needs the Democrat National Committee leaking stuff to Drudge? I told you this over a week ago that this is how they’re looking at him, and there’s one other aspect in addition to how they’re looking at him, and that is they need George W. Bush on the ballot and they think they can make Huckabee Bush. They have so engendered hate and rage in their electorate, they need somebody on the ballot that they can say is the reincarnation of Bush in certain ways. CNN today has a story out, a poll basically: ‘While presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is surging in new polls of GOP candidates, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Tuesday shows he would lose to all three leading Democratic candidates by double digits in hypothetical contests. In head-to-head matchups — the first to include Huckabee — the former Arkansas governor loses to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by 10 percentage points (54 percent to 44 percent), to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 15 points (55 percent to 40 percent) and to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina by 25 points (60 percent to 35 percent). The poll comes on the heels of a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Monday that showed Huckabee doubled his support nationally among likely Republican voters in the last month and is in a statistical dead heat with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.’
So here’s another story. This is in the New York Times today, and here again, another glittering jewel of an example of how, if you listen to me, you will know things before they ever show up in the Drive-By Media. The New York Times, all excited they’ve got a new poll out: ‘GOP Voters Are Uninspired by Candidates.’ Now I hate to admit having said it, but I did. Way back when Fred Thompson wasn’t even in the race, was just toying with the idea, and I would go out, I remember it was in Detroit, Rush to Excellence Tour, sometime this past spring, mentioned Thompson and the place stood up. Not a whole lot was known about Thompson then, and I said, ‘The reason this is happening is that nobody in the Republican field has really fired anybody up.’ I said it just the other week. That’s why nobody is higher than 32% among our guys.
So now the New York Times has gone out and done a poll to conclude what you in the EIB audience have already known, and you probably know this yourself because you’re the ones that create the results of the poll. ‘Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republicans voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about who to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.’ And, of course, ‘By contrast, Democrats are happier with their field and more settled in their decisions. For all the problems Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York appears to be having holding off her rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire, she remains strong nationally, the poll found. Even after what her aides acknowledge has been two of the roughest months of her candidacy, she is viewed by Democrats as a far more electable candidate in the general election than either Senator Barack Obama of Illinois or John Edwards of North Carolina.’
And get this: ‘More Democrats said Mrs. Clinton could bring the country together than those who said Mr. Obama was someone who could unite different groups.’ It’s just a flowery presentation of how wonderfully qualified and experienced Hillary Clinton is. She’s got the highest negative of any candidate that’s ever run for president! Her negatives are 49, 50%, and so that’s precisely why the story. The way these polls work, okay, let’s say average John Q. Public out there, Joe Six-Pack, and he looks at Hillary and he sees all these negatives. ‘I don’t like her. She’s too icy. She’s like Nurse Ratched,’ whatever they say. Then they read a poll somewhere and see on TV that, why, Democrats love her, so happy, she could be the best one to unite the country, they go, ‘Maybe I’m wrong about this.’ So this is just another example of polling data attempting to change people’s minds about Mrs. Clinton. Something else, we got two See, I Told You So’s in one story. ‘The poll found that former President Bill Clinton could be an effective campaign weapon for his wife. Forty-four percent of Democrats said Mr. Clinton’s involvement would make them more likely to support Mrs. Clinton.’ So close to half of people who like Hillary actually are voting for Bill, which is something else you heard on this program prior to the New York Times and their brave, courageous publication of this fact.
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RUSH: I want to document one more thing about the Democrats needing Bush on the ballot. They have enraged their base so much, those people when they go in to vote for Hillary or whoever in November next year are going to need voters to think Bush is on the ballot. They’re going to try to make Huckabee into Bush 2. Listen to this classy comment from The Forehead, Paul Begala, yesterday on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer said, ‘If you’re a Republican, that’s not (running on Bush’s record) necessarily going to get you a lot of votes. But going after Hillary Clinton might?’
BEGALA: Hillary Clinton, in some Republican areas, is unpopular. George W. Bush across America, he’s — he would poll behind several different forms of venereal disease in most of this country. They hate Bush in America. That’s what I would do, I would put Bush out there if I was the Democrats. I’d put him out there every day.
RUSH: What do you mean if you were Democrat? Very classy, there are several venereal diseases that Bush would poll behind. So they’re committed. They’re invested in defeat in Iraq. They’re invested with Bush on the ballot.
Other news here before we continue on with the serious stuff of the presidential campaign.
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RUSH: I’m getting some e-mails from people, ‘What, are you joining a cabal here against Huckabee? Say it ain’t so.’ I’m not doing anything, folks, about Huckabee. I’m not against Huckabee or any of these guys yet. You know I don’t choose sides in primaries. I’m just telling you that’s what’s out there. Please try to keep this stuff in context. It was I, not the Democrat National Committee, who told you within the last week or two that the Democrats were going to set Huckabee up as the next Bush, Bush 2. They need somebody they can hate, and I was also telling you that they despise and fear anybody of faith, particularly a candidate like Huckabee who’s out there making no bones about his Christian faith and beliefs. That just instills great fear in the hearts of liberal Democrats. As such, they’re going to be making moves on him. Even though they say they’re withholding their fire, they’re not withholding their fire because they’re leaking the fact they’re withholding their fire. In the process of the leak, they gave some indication of what they’re going to do when they do start firing, which they did with the leak to Drudge.
I am merely pointing out what’s happening out there. You want me to ignore it? You want me to ignore what’s going on on the Republican side? We had some sound bites on this yesterday. I didn’t get to them we were so jam-packed yesterday, but look at Tim Russert. Tim Russert asked Rudy Giuliani personal question after personal question — fair enough. But where are the personal questions aimed at Democrats? You know, who gave the money to the Clinton library? What countries? What businesses? Clinton’s not releasing any of that data. (Clinton impression) ‘I gotta protect the privacy of my donors, Limbaugh, promise them confidentiality. You understand how that works.’ Not releasing any papers from the Library and Massage Parlor about Mrs. Clinton’s experience. All these questions to Rudy about whether the NYPD was used to ferry his girlfriend around. What about Secret Service ferrying Clinton’s girlfriends around? Why are those questions not asked? Well, I know the answer to this. I’ve endeavored to explain it a number of times.
There are no standards on the left. They can’t violate standards which don’t exist. Republicans, on the other hand, have made it clear and conservatives as well over the years that they believe in standards and differences in the things that are defined in the founding documents of this country. Democrats don’t; liberals don’t. They’re doing all they can to tear all that down, remake the country in their own image, primarily what the sixties anti-war crowd would love to do with the next presidential election. But the fact is that Democrats are on a warpath against any and all of these Republicans, and when it happens I’m going to sit here and tell you about it regardless, because that’s what we do here, comment on it at times, tell you about it at all times.
Michael, Grand Rapids, Michigan, we’ll go to the phones first with you today. Nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush, for taking my call. I have two questions for you.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Do you think if the Clintons get the nomination, that they’re going to ‘Willie Horton’ Mike Huckabee, if he was to get the nomination? And number two, you think if Mike Huckabee is to get the nomination, that all those pardons that President Clinton had at the end of his term would be off the table since Governor Huckabee pardoned 12 convicted murderers?
RUSH: I don’t think, regardless the Republican candidate, the Clinton, Inc., war machine is going to go into destroy mode. Whether it’s Huckabee, whether it’s Rudy, whether it’s Fred Thompson, and their opposition research is busy now collecting all the data, they’ve been working on it for months and years, and whoever the nominee is, they’ll go after. They’re not going to be immune from it, as I was just discussing. The questions that Tim Russert asked of Rudy Giuliani and he would ask of a lot of other Republicans will not be asked with any kind of the same zeal by anybody in the Drive-By Media of Democrats. So in your pardon question, go after Huckabee for his pardons, the media is going to — well, the Clinton pardons are an old story. Besides, he’s not on the ballot. Mrs. Clinton is, blah, blah. There’s any number of ways that they will finesse it. The Willie Horton thing? I’m sure that they will use that, but I think Republicans are going to end up using that on Huckabee before the primaries are over. Look it, if Huckabee moves into the upper tier here and in the lead in certain places, Romney is already readying what’s being called a negative ad in Iowa. It’s not really all that negative. In fact, let me consult my audio sound bite roster here. I think we have the audio. This is the Romney ad, number 20, Mike, and just the audio of it, 30-second ad, said to be negative.
ROMNEY: I’m Mitt Romney, and I approved this message.
ANNOUNCER: Two former governors, two good family men, both pro-life, both support a constitutional amendment protecting traditional marriage. The difference? Mitt Romney stood up and vetoed in-state tuition for illegal aliens, opposed driver’s licenses for illegals. Mike Huckabee supported in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants. Huckabee even supported taxpayer funded scholarships for illegal aliens. On immigration, the choice matters.
RUSH: Okay, so this is heating up, and there are going to be more and more of these kind of ads aimed at Huckabee. He’s going to be sliced and diced by the Republicans before the Clintons get their shot at him, is the point. So we let this stuff play out and see where it heads.
Chris in Searcy, Arkansas. Now, this happens to be where my sweet blessed mother was born. Searcy, Arkansas, and it happens to be also where my mother met Margaret Thatcher. And it also is the case that Margaret Thatcher and my mother were born on the same day in the same year, October 13th. So, Chris, welcome to the program. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Good to talk to you, Rush, good to talk to. Here’s the question I have for you.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I’m wondering if possibly the reason for the Dems not attacking Huckabee thus far could be their take on his lack of viability, and maybe a desire not to give him any viability by attacking him. And the reason I wonder that, part of the reason, there’s a story that is being reported on The Politico by Jonathan Martin right now, he’s posting a response all this by the communications director of the DNC, Karen Finney, and she has apparently put up a statement saying, ‘The Romney campaign should take heart in the fact that the Drudge Report is buying their spin hook, line, and sink because nothing in that story came from us,’ and she says they’ve been tracking Huckabee for a year. So I’d like your take on that.
RUSH: Wait a second. The Politico’s got a story from Karen Finney at the DNC saying we didn’t give Drudge the story?
CALLER: Exactly. They’re saying nothing in that story came from us, and even charging the Romney campaign with something to do with it.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Who is ‘us’? Story came from us. Who is ‘us’?
CALLER: This quoted is coming from the communications director of the DNC, Karen Finney.
RUSH: No, no, wait a minute. You’re confusing me, because I’m having trouble hearing you so I’m having to read the transcription. Did you say at first that Karen Finney says the report did not come from us, the stuff about Huckabee, we didn’t give Drudge that?
CALLER: Exactly. That’s what is being reported on The Politico by Jonathan Martin currently.
RUSH: Okay. But then I thought you said they’re saying the story did come from them.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: So they’re saying Romney put that story out to Drudge as the DNC and that Drudge fell for it?
CALLER: Right. The exact quote is: ‘The Romney campaign should take heart in the fact that the Drudge Report is buying their spin hook, line, and sinker because nothing in that story came from us.’
RUSH: Hmm. Plot thickens out there.
CALLER: It does.
RUSH: (laughter.)
CALLER: It does.
RUSH: So the DNC is saying, ‘We didn’t do it, we didn’t do it.’
CALLER: ‘We didn’t do it, maybe Romney did.’
RUSH: Interesting. Well, politics is what it is.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I think back, and I hate to keep rewinding the clock here and going to my mental archives, but this was way before Thanksgiving, too. I asked you people, ‘What happens if Huckabee wins Iowa? What does that change in the conventional wisdom? What if Hillary doesn’t get the nomination?’ And look how prescient on my part were those thoughts.
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RUSH: Now, about this report that’s on Politico, Karen Finney, the spokesbabe of the DNC said, ‘Hey, this story about us creaming Huckabee on Drudge, it didn’t come from us. It’s nice to know that they’re accepting spin from the Romney campaign.’ Now, look, the DNC doesn’t speak with one voice. It could be any number of people at the DNC leaking this and Karen Finney wouldn’t know about it. Plus, why should we accept the word of Karen Finney? She’s at the DNC. Of course, they’re going to deny it if somebody leaked this and they didn’t want it out. Don’t forget that CNN poll that I mentioned to you in the first half hour of the program. This stuff is not coincidence. Here we have a CNN poll that says that Huckabee would lose to top Democrats by double digits if he were the nominee, and the same day we got a story that the Democrats are so excited that Huckabee might win the nomination, they’re withholding all fire until he becomes the nominee, because they’ve got enough to wipe him out. Where the Drive-Bys are concerned, there are no coincidences, particularly with essentially the same story. He loses, CNN did their duty, DNC got hold of Drudge, somebody got hold of Drudge, it shows up. But look at who it is that’s being talked about? Huckabee, and Huckabee will take it, I guarantee you.
Adam in Barrington, New Jersey, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush, from a longtime Rush Baby.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Following up on your story about Huckabee being the glass jaw of the Republican Party, I personally know a college Democrat student who’s real big into getting on the campaigns and helping out and stuff like that, and I found out he’s going up to New Hampshire to help out with the Huckabee campaign. I’m thinking, ‘Why in the world is he going up there?’ I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well, it’s a mystery what my beliefs are,’ and stuff like that. I’m thinking, ‘Wait a minute,’ he’s been to all these Democrat campaigns and so now I’m thinking, ‘Wait a minute, is he possibly trying to help Huckabee so that the Democrats could cream him in ’08?’
RUSH: Anything’s possible. Look, when you started asking me a question about what’s possible in politics, this wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened. I think my memory is a little vague on this, but I think in the 2000 Republican primaries McCain was out doing everything he could to attract moderates and to get them ending up voting in the Republican primary. There were all kinds of tricks being played to pull that off. If the Democrats have got stealth employees supposedly drumming up support for Huckabee… (laughing) when did your friend tell you this?
CALLER: Maybe like a week ago or something like that, and it was really weird because —
RUSH: Is he up there now? Is he up there now working for Huckabee, or is he going to go?
CALLER: He’s going to go in maybe a couple weeks, like between his winter break for college.
RUSH: Oh, that means he’s probably going to be replacing people who are already there doing this. Hell, I don’t know what’s going on with this kind of stuff. I just don’t discount any of it. But again, at this point, what you have to look at here, and I know the substance of what’s being said is relevant in some ways, but look at who’s being talked about here today, and look at who’s making all the news, look at who it is the Democrats are talking about, it’s Huckabee. You know, Huckabee will take that at this point. He’s probably eating all this stuff up. Adam, thanks for the call. I appreciate it.