RUSH: I want to go back, show you the cutting edge, societal evolution. This is how this program with very little acknowledgment from outside the program does impact the presidential campaign on both sides. This is me from this past Monday on this very program.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Look, what they did to Carl McCall, running for governor of New York. They trashed Carl McCall. We ended up raising funds for Carl McCall, you and I on this program together because the DNC and Terry McAuliffe hung him out to dry. Maynard Jackson, mayor of Atlanta, wanted to be chairman of the DNC. The Clintons moved in (Clinton impression): ‘There ain’t no way, pal. Terry McAuliffe’s getting it.’ Whenever blacks get to the point that they’re rising to areas of prominence, positions of prominence in the Democrat Party, guess who comes along and slaps ’em down? Clinton, Inc. He was the nation’s ‘first black president’ and of course Andrew Young’s out there saying, ‘Yeah, he’s had more black women, he’s been with more black women than Obama has,’ and, of course, it’s a big applause line, ‘Wowie, what a great recommendation,’ and nevertheless here’s the first black presidential candidate, and who’s trashing him? It’s not Republicans. It’s not conservatives. It’s the Clintons.
RUSH: All right, I said this on Monday, and I’ve said that even before Monday. You know you have Billy Shaheen is out there (paraphrase), ‘Yeah, cocaine! He may even be selling drugs.’ Obama is a black guy. You know, they’re playing the race card on this guy. Any time a prominent black rises to a position that threatens the Clintons, pshew! Smackdown, baby. This isn’t the party that’s supposedly tolerant, affirmative action. If Mrs. Clinton, the Democrats, believed all they really say about this, they’d quit. Pull out of the race; give it to Obama, for the good of America, for the good of race relations in this country. Last night on Anderson Cooper 180, David ‘Rodham’ Gergen and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ Jennifer Donahue, and they’re talking about Clinton campaign playing the race card against Obama. Anderson Cooper says, ‘Jennifer, is there a perception that Hillary Clinton is being singled out unfairly?’
DONAHUE: What Kerrey did the other day and what happened last week on the drug issue with Shaheen — and moreover with Mark Penn, who then kept repeating it over and over and over — they’re playing the race card. They’re attacking his race.
RUSH: And it’s out there! It’s finally out there in the Drive-Bys on Anderson Cooper 180. It was first introduced into the domain, if you will, by me. So David Rodham Gergen has to jump in here to the defense of Clinton, Inc. Cooper says, ‘David Gergen,’ David Rodham Gergen, ‘do you agree with that?’
GERGEN: No, I don’t. I don’t think they’re playing the race card at alllll! He happens to be black, and he also happens to be a very major, dramatic candidate.
DONAHUE: You don’t think that saying that selling drugs and did he buy it, did he use ’em, did he sell ’em, has anything to do with race?
GERGEN: Wait a minute. We went through a whole campaign back in 2000 in New Hampshire about George W. Bush and drugs, and he happened to be white. Playing the race card suggests it’s racially motivated, and, in fact, it’s racist. I think that’s unfair to them.
RUSH: Oh, of course it’s unfair! Why, they would never, ever, do anything like that. Never, ever, ever, ever! Oh. The Clintons play the race card? No, of course not! It would never happen. But of course, ladies and gentlemen, it did. So they had to do some damage control after Anderson Cooper 180 so we go now to the Today show this morning. Fill-in host David Gregory was interviewing Barack Obama. Yesterday, it was Chris Cuomo; today it’s David Gregory taking every Clinton, Inc. charge and talking point and making Obama answer it.
GREGORY: I’d like to begin with something that former Senator Bob Kerrey said this week and later apologized for. He said the following, ‘I like the fact,’ speaking of you, ‘that his name is Barack Hussein Obama and that his father was a Muslim and his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.’ Senator, do you think that warrants an apology, or do you take that aspect of your background as a point of pride?
OBAMA: I don’t think that Bob Kerrey intended an insult in some way. I think Bob was pointing out that some of the remarks were taken out of context, and left out the fact that he was arguing how qualified he thought I was to be president, and how the experience that I have,uh, outside of our shores will, actually, inform my judgment and allow me to be a more effective commander-in-chief.
GREGORY: That background in pointing out a Muslim background, not an attempt to poison the well in your judgment?
OBAMA: Well, I don’t think, David, that he was trying to point out that I had a Muslim background.
RUSH: And there is Barack Obama taking the high road. They’re trying to bait him. They’re trying to get him to act a little upset and angry at, A, the question being asked, and, B, angry at Bob Kerrey and Billy Shaheen, and he’s not taking the bait.