RUSH: Controversy has erupted in the Obama campaign. He has been accused of plagiarism now by Howard Wolfson, who is one of Hillary’s big-time campaign advisors. Jim VandeHei at The Politico will soon post that Howard Wolfson has called this plagiarism. The plagiarism is of Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts. During Deval Patrick’s campaign for governor of Massachusetts, he, too, was accused by his opponent of making a bunch of nothing speeches. Great words, flowery lingo, inspiring, uplifting, elevating rhetoric, but devoid of substance, and now Obama has been accused of copying him. Here are some sound bites side by side. Let’s start with number 13 here. We’ll go back to October 15th of 2006 in Boston at a campaign rally. Here is Deval Patrick, the ultimately successful Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate responding to then Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.
PATRICK: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. I have a dream.
RUSH: Could you hear all that amidst the applause? Could you hear what he was saying? He’d been accused there of just a bunch of meaningless words and so he came back with some words of his own, we hold these truths to be self-evident, all men created equal. Yeah, just words. Here is Obama Saturday night in Milwaukee, the Democrat Party Wisconsin Founders Day Gala, a portion of his remarks.
OBAMA: Don’t tell me words don’t matter. I have a dream. Just words? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Just words? We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Just words? Just speeches?
RUSH: There is Barack Obama responding to the claims of the Clinton campaign that he’s just making speeches while she is offering substance. My question, ladies and gentlemen, how many speeches that say absolutely nothing can there be to plagiarize? So I don’t know if this is going to have a negative effect on Obama. In fact, a Massachusetts congressional representative, a guy named Jim McGovern is saying, (paraphrasing) ‘If Obama is going to use those words and doesn’t credit their origin, why, those words seem a little less inspiring.’ Now, the Clinton campaign is obviously showing many signs of defensiveness and that they’re losing. Among those signs are things like this, demanding more and more debates, toying around with the delegate process in Texas, Mrs. Clinton continuing to have trouble with her undies, meaning the undecideds that once were decided who are now undeciding against her. It’s looking grim for Mrs. Clinton on paper right now, but way, way, way too soon to cut her out.
Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, 1968, when I was 17 years old and actively interested in this — (interruption) well, I know, this is sort of lame of Mrs. Clinton to go after this kind of plagiarism. We expect better from them. Kneecapping personal smears, leaks of FBI file information, knife-in-the-gut kind of stuff, not parsing Barack’s speeches. But it goes to show you how weak the Clintons are on this and this is how they’re going after them, trying to take away from his inspirational value by saying it’s not him, he’s lifting the words of others. In 1968 when I was 17, Hubert Humphrey — see if you remember this, Mr. Snerdley — Hubert Humphrey got the Democrat nomination without winning one primary. Do you remember that? It was in smoke-filled rooms, that was how it was done in those days, and that’s what Mrs. Clinton is counting on now. They’re trying to go through all kinds of machinations and manipulations, particularly in Texas, the way delegates and the popular vote are apportioned district by district there, which I will ‘splain to you as the program unfolds. Now, on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ this morning, they are discussing Barack Obama’s speech, and Scarborough asks a question here of Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, and Mika Brzezinski, the cohostette with Scarborough. ‘Is Obama guilty of plagiarism?’
MITCHELL: David Axelrod, who was the chief political strategist for both of them, said that they are good friends, that they trade lines all the time. Nobody is denying the similarity. But what Axelrod and others in the campaign are saying is that it’s just that they trade lines and they’re friends.
BRZEZINSKI: That’s backed up, Andrea —
MITCHELL: Look at the tape.
SCARBOROUGH: Close friends.
BRZEZINSKI: Deval Patrick himself says this, and the Obama campaign e-mailed this to me. ‘Senator Obama and I are long time friends we often share ideas about politics, policy, and language. The argument in question on the value of words in the public square is one about which he and I have spoken frequently before about, given the recent attacks from Senator Clinton, I applaud him.’
RUSH: (laughing) So you see what’s happening here. The Clintons are not used to this. They launch a salvo, somebody plagiarizing somebody, and here goes DNCTV, MSNBC circling the wagons for Obama. ‘Ah, come on, it’s no big deal. He and Deval Patrick are good buddies. They trade lines all the time.’ Why, Snerdley and I do that, folks, we sit around here during the breaks, the top of each hour, we trade lines back and forth. Everybody trades lines. There’s no originality out there at all. Everybody trades lines. Hardy-har-har. (laughing) What do you expect Deval Patrick to say? ‘Yeah, yeah, the dude is plagiarizing me.’ You expect him to come out and say that? Hell no, it isn’t going to happen. I just got a note here from H.R., says there’s going to be a special on DNCTV tonight devoted to the issue of Obama plagiarizing. Joe Biden and Mike Barnicle will lead the panel. (laughing) Doris Kearns Goodwin with a special appearance. (laughing) Joe Biden, Mike Barnicle, and Doris Kearns Goodwin on: ‘Did Obama plagiarize?’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me ask you another question. All men are created equal. Thou shalt do what no other shall do. All the famous phrases, famous words, how in the world do you plagiarize them? How can you plagiarize Dr. Martin Luther King, something that’s well known and you repeat like that? Why wasn’t, for example, Deval Patrick accused of plagiarism with his original line and now Obama is — let me ask you, which is worse, what Obama supposedly plagiarized from Deval Patrick or the fact that Bill Clinton is running around bullying Obama supporters?
From Canton, Ohio, the home of the pro football Hall of Fame, ‘Robert Holeman came to Timken High School–‘ This is on February 17th, yesterday, ‘–with a message to deliver to Bill Clinton. He did — and he said the former president wasn’t happy about it. Clinton spoke to a capacity crowd–‘ By the way, have you noticed, did you watch any of the Sunday shows yesterday? All of a sudden now the Drive-Bys are starting to talk about what a campaign liability Bill Clinton is. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, where did you first hear that theory espoused? You heard it here by me and not just this campaign season. You heard it back in 2006 and you heard it back in 2004. Wherever Clinton goes to campaign for people, the results generally are negative for the people he’s campaigning for or endorsing. All of a sudden, the Drive-Bys are now on to this phenomenon as though they’ve just discovered something.
Anyway, ‘Clinton spoke to a capacity crowd in this Northeast Ohio town, the third of five events today in the Buckeye State. He told voters that the contest was ‘the power of speeches against the promise of solutions by a world-class change maker.’ Throughout the event, as Clinton made his case for his wife, Holeman’s dissenting voice could be heard. At times he simply shouted Obama’s name. When Clinton would set up a sure applause line, Holeman could be heard heckling. As soon as Clinton finished speaking, the Canton native made a beeline to the ropeline to give Clinton a piece of his mind. ‘I asked the president to please stop the bickering between the campaigns,’ Holeman said in an interview afterwards. ‘All this name calling is like the bully in the yard. He can’t get his way, he can’t get nothing done.’ Holeman said he thought Clinton was ‘gasping for air.’ ‘This is the last hurrah. After March 4, Hillary Clinton will be out of the race for good, and Obama will take the commanding lead,’ he said. ‘She should back him with her delegates immediately. That’s what I’m asking them to do.’ Holeman said that Clinton responded by saying Obama came after him first. Holeman also described Clinton’s reaction to him as ‘irate.’ ‘I think he even hit me in the face with his hand,’ he said. ‘He did give me a little pop. It was okay, because I understand his tenacity for his wife.’ Clinton did engage Holeman for a few minutes, at times pointing directly at him. It was unclear whether he did make physical contact, however.’
One thing about this that’s fascinating, the Drive-By news media did not disclose that Robert Holeman is African-American. The guy that was hassling Clinton about Obama was African-American, and Clinton, the first black president, went up and started jabbing his finger at him in his usual Clinton way, and the Drive-Bys didn’t report this. But our buddies at NewsBusters did, and they write about it this way: ‘If a supremely prominent Republican who was John McCain’s chief surrogate had gotten into an angry confrontation at a campaign event, do you think the broadcast networks would have promptly let us know his interlocutor was African-American? I do. But none of the broadcast network’s morning news shows, at least during this morning’s crucial first half-hour, disclosed the African-American identity of the man with whom Bill Clinton got into just such an argument yesterday in Ohio.’ Robert Holeman. There was another argument that Clinton got into at a different place in Ohio, with an abortion rights supporter, or a pro-life supporter. He’s just lashing out at everybody on the campaign trail. What’s worse, Obama and his reputed plagiarism, or Clinton and his campaign antics of actually engaging these hecklers or these people who have questions for him?
And how about this, I need to ask you people your thoughts on this. I saw the video, the YouTube video, and I’ve read the reports that people are fainting at Obama rallies. Well, now that’s interesting. I mention that, I look at the facial expressions of the three people on the other side of the glass here, and their looks go, ‘Yeah, right.’ You don’t believe they’re legit? You think these are staged and set up? The idea here is that Obama’s presence is so messianic that people cannot handle it and that they are so overcome with joy, salvation, what have you, that they are fainting. And Obama does a great play-by-play when this happens. ‘I think she’s going to be all right. She’s going to be fine. Bring some water here, get it over here. Bring that gurney in,’ and the water and the gurney materialize very quickly. You know, it is kind of tough to believe, because it’s happened more than once. Well, he hasn’t gotten to the point of saving anybody or curing anybody that walks up there with a limp or anything, but depending on how successful Mrs. Clinton’s attacks are, wouldn’t rule anything out here.