EIB Pop Quiz: Who Said It?

RUSH: Let me give you the latest polling data. Insider Advantage, this is the Republican side, Huckabee 30, Romney 24, McCain-Thompson 11. American Research Group, ARG, Huckabee 29, Romney 24, Thompson 13, McCain 11, and Zogby is reporting Huckabee 31, Romney 25, Thompson 11, McCain 10. These are the final polls out today as we head into the Hawkeye Cauci tonight. Let me read something to you. I want to ask you if you know who said this.

‘You know when I’m asked which of the current group of Democrat candidates I prefer to run against, I always say it really doesn’t matter. These days all those candidates, all the Democrat leaders are one and the same, they’re all NEA, MoveOn.org, ACLU, Michael Moore Democrats. They’ve allowed these radicals to take control of their party and dictate their course. So this election’s important not just to enact our conservative principles, this election’s important to salvage a once-great political party from the grip of extremism and shake it back to its senses. It’s time to give not just Republicans, but Independents and, yes, good Democrats a chance to call a halt to the leftward lurch of the once-proud party of working people, the Democrat Party. So in seeking the nomination of my own party, I want to say something a little unusual. I’m asking my fellow Republicans to vote for me, not only for what I have to say to them, for what I have to say to the members of the other party, the millions of Democrats who haven’t left the Democratic Party so much as their party’s national leadership has left them.’ Who said it? Who said that?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I will read the last paragraph again and ask you who said this. ‘So, in seeking the nomination of my own party, I want to say something a little unusual. I’m asking my fellow Republicans to vote for me and not only for what I have to say to them, but for what I have to say to the members of the other party, the millions of Democrats who haven’t left the Democrat Party so much as their party’s national leadership has left them.’ It was interesting; members of my staff during the break answered my question.

‘That was Lieberman that said that, right?’

I said, ‘No.’

H.R. said, ‘It was Reagan that said that, right?’

‘No. It was Fred Thompson who said this in, I think, the middle of that 17-minute YouTube video that he did that was broadcast throughout the state of Iowa.’

By the way, speaking of Thompson, Politico.com posted a piece last night about 11 o’clock in which someone close to the Thompson campaign said that if Thompson does poorly in Iowa, he’s going to quit the race and endorse McCain. Well, I had heard about seven o’clock last night that this was in the works. The story was in the works. So I began to dig deep. I wanted to find out if this is actually true. I found out before the Politico story went up that the Thompson people were saying it wasn’t true, that there was nothing to it. It has been further denied this morning by Rich Galen. He was spoken to by Byron York at the National Review Online. Byron wrote, ‘Good morning from Des Moines. I just got off the phone with Rich Galen, top advisor to Thompson. It would be an understatement to say he is strongly denying The Politico story, reporting Thompson will drop out and endorse McCain. The story cites several Republicans close to the Thompson campaign, but Rich Galen said, ‘I’m a Republican official in the Thompson campaign, and I am denying it.’ Galen also said that no one inside the campaign was the source for the story. Galen said, ‘I can’t put enough adjectives in front of ‘deny’ to accurately describe how vehemently I am denying the story,’ and Galen said just to make sure, he checked with Thompson himself who told him the story was not true. ‘We have the schedule for Saturday and Sunday in New Hampshire, and then we’re going down to South Carolina,’ said Galen.’ So The Politico story about Thompson bailing if he didn’t do well tonight and endorsing McCain, has been specifically denied.