RUSH: I called it! I told you the Clintons were going to play the race card. Not only did they play the race card, people have been asking me all weekend, ‘What do you think of this?’ I said, ‘It’s very simple to explain. We have gone from Bull Connor to Bull Clinton,’ ladies and gentlemen. That’s the way to express what has happened to the Democrat Party, now totally divided along the lines of race and gender, but particularly race, from Bull Connor to Bull Clinton. Here is Bill Clinton Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina. This is outside a polling station and the former president is speaking with reporters, an unidentified reporter says, ‘What does it say about Barack Obama that it takes two of you to beat him?’
CLINTON: Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in ’84 and ’88, and he ran a good campaign, and Senator Obama’s running a good campaign here. He’s run a good campaign everywhere.
RUSH: Bill Clinton has compared Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson. We’ve gone from Bull Connor to Bull Clinton in one little nine second sound bite. Now, you remember that Clinton also took out Jesse Jackson. The Reverend Jackson was Sister Souljah’d out there. A lot of people are saying, ‘Rush, you were right. This is exactly what the Clintons wanted to happen. They wanted a big racial defeat so they could go out–‘ and their firewall is going to be Hispanics. Mrs. Clinton is going to go out there and try to shore up Hispanics now playing the race card again. But I don’t think they expected to be in this position. I don’t think they expected Toni Morrison, who claimed that Clinton was the first black president, to endorse Barack Obama, and I don’t think they expected the JFK side of the Kennedy family to endorse Barack. Now, Ted Kennedy has his endorsement speech coming up in a few minutes, about six and a half minutes. We might JIP this, depends on whether it starts on time and of course it might start with a bunch of introductions before we get to Senator Kennedy. I hope, folks — I really mean this — I hope they’ve got Senator Kennedy backstage saying, ‘It is Obama, remember the B, it is Obama. Don’t do what you did at the National Press Club and say Osama, and don’t say bin, just say Barack. You know, just stick with Barack.’ I think that’s why they’re doing it in the early afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, rather than the late afternoon or evening endorsement.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I happen to have here, here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, a copy of an e-mail Senator Kennedy sent out today, just about midmorning today. It’s a combo fundraising and endorsement letter, and it’s from the Committee for a Democrat Majority. Let me give you just some highlights from this letter that Ted Kennedy has sent out. I think you’ll probably hear these lines in his speech endorsing Senator Obama. He says, ‘Through Barack, I believe we will move beyond the politics of fear and personal destruction and unite our country with the politics of common purpose.’ Whoa ho-ho! Whoa! Folks, it’s going to be hard to heal after this one, because he is accusing the Clintons of the politics of personal destruction. He is taking the Clintons’ line that they have used about conservatives and turning it right around and boomeranging them with it. You know, there are a lot of other Democrats, liberals, members of the media and people who are working on the Obama campaign, who say, ‘You know, it was fun when the Clintons were doing this to Republicans, but we got a new perspective here of what it’s like running against these people when they’re doing it to us.’ This guy Jonathan Chait at the LA Times personally hates George W. Bush, and has written that he personally hates Bush, said he’s starting to see the light on the Clintons.
He’s starting to understand a little bit why conservatives had such personal animus toward Clinton. Frank Rich at the New York Times. Maureen Dowd the New York Times. I am telling you that this is not what the Clintons intended when they started playing the race card in the South Carolina primary. Two more little clips here or excerpts from Senator Kennedy’s endorsement letter, which I feel confident will be in his speech today. He said, ‘I remember another leader who inspired the nation, especially our youth to fulfill a promise of change. Those inspired young people marched. They sat in on lunch counters. They protested war in Vietnam, and they served honorably in that war even when they opposed it.’ Now, that’s a little veiled attack at Bill Clinton, too, and his ‘loathe the military’ letter. And then comes this from Senator Kennedy. That leader challenged them to ask what they could do for their country and together they changed the world. So in the words of that leader, John Kennedy, ‘The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is time for a new generation of leadership.’ It’s a full frontal on the Clintons — and then this. ‘Barack will be a president who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past. He sees the world clearly without being cynical. He fights for the causes he believes in but refuses to demonize those who hold a different view.’ He has just accused, in this fundraising letter and this endorsement letter, the Clintons of politics of personal destruction, the politics of fear, and the fact that they ‘demonize those who hold a different view.’
What this all means is that everybody in the Democrat establishment has long known exactly who and what the Clintons are, and as long as the Clintons were turning their venom on Republicans and conservatives, it was hunky-dory. It was fine. But now that Bill Clinton has become Bull Clinton (from Bull Connor to Bull Clinton), now that Clinton is turning and his wife are turning their tactics on fellow Democrats — particularly a likable young black guy — the Democrat establishment doesn’t like what they see. We have the Kennedy wing in a head-on assault against the Clinton wing, and it’s delicious. Now, the RFK wing of the party is still hanging in there with the Clintons, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. By the way, did I not tell you…? I have warned you people about this: Every time Clinton goes out there and endorses somebody and tries to help ’em, he hurts ’em. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was running for governor in Maryland, went out and endorsed her, campaigned for her. Pfft! Nothing for her. So the RFK wing of the family is for the Clintons, but that’s about it. The JFK wing in full tilt and passionately so, not just for Obama, but they’re letting it be known they don’t have any respect or regard for what the Clintons are doing.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, Ted Kennedy saying that he’s against the politics of personal destruction is like Bill Clinton saying he’s for monogamy. It might arguably be stated that it was Ted Kennedy and his Robert Bork statement from the floor of the Senate which started the modern era of the politics of personal destruction, but no matter, he’s going to go out there, he’s going to rip Clinton for the politics of personal destruction. It’s going to be fascinating to see how the Clintons respond to this. I mean, they’re going to get the impression everybody’s ganging up against them here in the Democrat Party, and they just don’t go away. And remember, they are the villains in the soap opera. As I have told you, soap opera villains never die off; they’re never written out of the script; they are the reason people keep watching.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I want to mix it up here today, so we’re going to start in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Bill, glad you called. Thank you for waiting and welcome to the big show.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. It’s an honor. I’d like to say, do you think that these words by Senator Kennedy can come back to haunt the Democratic Party if Hillary goes on to get the nomination? I mean, this is an attack from a very influential member of the Democratic Party. They’re not going to be able to say this is right-wing conservatives attacking them. Is this going to be ammunition for whoever goes on to win, hopefully Mitt Romney?
RUSH: Normally my knee-jerk reaction to this question would be, ‘No, no, no, no. It isn’t going to happen. By the time we get there, the Democrats will make nice with each other and the Kennedys will be out there full-fledge endorsing the Clintons and so forth, and that will negate any of the acrimony that existed during the primaries. That is normally what happens.’ I’m trying to temper this. I’m trying to stay objective about this. I’m trying to temper my wishful thinking. I don’t think that the Democrats had any intention of these kinds of true divisions in their party being wide open for everybody to see. I mean, you and I know that the real racism in this country is in the Democrat Party, that the really bigotry in this country is in their party, and that they promote it politically and try to blame it on Republicans and conservatives, but this rift is just huge. People who are not Democrats are seeing this, and people who are Democrats are seeing it, and I think people who are Democrats… You know, Obama has a lot of support here. It’s not as though he’s a second-tier candidate with no chance. He has a legitimate chance now, and there are Democrats who have worked for the Clintons or worked for other Democrat candidates who are working for Obama, and they’re getting a taste of what the Clintons are like. So my judgment here is that this has a chance to have some long-lasting impact on the Clintons, not so much within the Democrat Party because they’ll come together regardless who gets the nomination because remember: Their real hatred is always reserved for us.
The real hatred that liberals and Democrats have is for conservatives. All this that’s going on now is giving them a chance to vent, but the minute the Clintons turn this same behavior on us, they’ll be heroes again. The real question here is the black vote in the Democrat Party and what their memories will be. You have to understand this, and I’m sure most of you do. When you get to the presidential race, the Democrats’ margin of victory or their narrowness of defeat is largely attributable to bloc voting by the Democrat blacks. When you get 92% of the black vote in every presidential race, that’s considerable. However, if you just lose 5% of it… Remember no Clinton has ever gotten more than 50%. Well, Hillary might in the Senate, but Bill Clinton never got more than 50%, 49% in a national race. You take away the black vote, he doesn’t win. Just a small portion. You don’t have to take away all of it. And I think that one of the things that’s happening here is that there is a genuine acrimony occurring in the black Democrat population against the Clintons, by virtue of what they’re doing to Barack Obama. Even though they don’t personally identify with Obama as a civil rights guy and as somebody who’s been down for the struggle, they still see Obama as a nice guy, a soaring visionary. Their view is that Obama’s got this great vision and he’s above the fray and he’s not taking the bait and he’s just younger, and all this Kennedy appellation.
Some Democrats are just so desirous for another Camelot, and that’s Obama! The Clintons are not Camelot, folks. The Clintons are the evil knights hiding out in the jungle and in the woods to come and steal from everybody, and get rid of people that get in their way. They don’t view Obama that way. So I think the real fallout here would be among the black vote, and especially… You know, Mrs. Clinton’s gotta do something about this, and her ‘firewall (as it’s labeled by everybody in politics) is she’s going to go out and she’s going to be playing the race card get up, and this time she’s going to be doing it with Hispanics. Mark my words on this, folks. Her efforts next are that. Why she’s heading to California? Just like she did in Nevada, she’s heading to California to shore up the Hispanic vote. One of the problems is, the Hispanic vote, they’re the largest minority in the country, but their record of turning out is less than blacks. So she’s going to go out once again and she’s going to try to stipulate, ‘Look at what’s happening on our party! Black people are siphoning out and all they care about is themselves. All they care about is each other.’ She isn’t gonna say this in so many words and point out, ‘Look what they did in South Carolina. Here I am the savior and the mother superior of this country, and look what they did! They just rallied around somebody because of their skin color,’ and the message is going to be, ‘Hispanics, don’t let them take me out, and don’t let them — those black people — marginalize you.’
So these divisions are going to continue to happen the longer this goes, and I think there will be some residual fallout for Democrats if it’s Mrs. Clinton in November as a result of what’s happening here with the blatant playing or the race card. Look, when I say that we’ve gone from Bull Connor to Bull Clinton, believe me, there are plenty in this audience, black voters, and they will spread that. They know exactly what that means — and he looks like Bull Connor. The only thing he doesn’t have is the hose, you know, Bull Connor spraying the fire hose on these guys, but Bill Clinton is doing his best to marginalize them, to say they’re not important. That slam that Clinton made against Obama (doing Bill Clinton impression), ‘Well, I mean, just like Jesse Jackson.’ Jesse Jackson is a nobody in the Democrat Party, without the Clintons. Jesse Jackson never got close to anything. What they’re saying is (impression), ‘Hey (chuckle), you people are getting all worked up here. He’s just another loser. He’s just Jesse Jackson. Jackson ran a good campaign down here. What the hell do you expect to happen a guy like Jesse Jackson comes in, Obama, with a bunch of black people in the state? What the hell do you people think will happen? You think they’re going to vote for a bunch of white people? Hell no!’ What he’s saying is these blacks in South Carolina are a bunch of racists and they’re hanging together. Don’t doubt me on this. The black population of this country hears this, those that pay attention to this, and they are getting it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I have been saying, ladies and gentlemen, that the Democratic race can be typified by the following statement. We’ve gone from Bull Connor to Bull Clinton, and Mr. Snerdley has suggested it might be helpful for me to tell you who Bull Connor was. Some of you may not know because of your age. His real name was Eugene Bull Connor. He was a member of the Klan. Bull Connor was a member of the KKK, the Ku Klux Klan. ‘Bull Connor was a staunch advocate of racial segregation, much as was Bill Clinton’s mentor, Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. As the public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s, Bull Connor became a symbol of bigotry. He infamously fought against integration by using fire hoses and police attack dogs against unarmed black protest marchers and even white protest marchers who were marching with the blacks. All of this was broadcast on television. The spectacle served as one of the catalysts for major social and legal change in the South and helped in large measure to assure the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Connor’s tactics backfired dramatically into helping to bring about the very change that he was opposing.’
The bottom line is he was a member of the Klan, he was a sheriff, police official, staunch advocate of racial segregation, fire hoses and police dogs on protesters. So when we say we’ve gone from Bull Connor to Bull Clinton, what I mean is that Bull Connor lives in spirit today in Bill Clinton by virtue of his behavior in South Carolina and his dissing of Jesse Jackson when asked to explain Obama’s victory. (doing Clinton impression) ‘Well, Jesse Jackson ran down here, too. He did good in two elections. He ran a good campaign. Obama ran a good campaign, too, but I mean what the hell you going to do? You got black people down here that support black people, they support losers. Jesse Jackson is a loser. I mean I had to go in, I had to Sister Souljah that guy in order to get elected myself. You can’t get anywhere with these people. You can’t get anywhere with these people.’ That’s what he’s saying. So Bull Connor to Bull Clinton.