RUSH: Now, before we get to the Obama speech and the sound bites from the speech. It was a fabulous speech. It was just oratorically fabulous. The energy in the room… There were something like 17,000 people in the room and 15,000 people outside. The line of people extending outside who wanted to get in but couldn’t, according to officials in St. Paul, was a mile and a half. The energy inside that room was electric. He gives a great speech. He’s a tremendous orator. In most instances of the speech he said nothing again, but he said it better than anybody else is saying it. This has a lot of Republicans worried because McCain’s speech last night was… Well, it was a bomb. I mean, if you read the speech, it looked pretty good. If you just read what he was going to say, ‘Wow. Okay. There’s some potential here.’ Then he gave the speech, and it was, ‘Ugh! Dull,’ because we know that there’s this great orator on the other side. Now, this, my friends, has caused a lot of Republican commentators to say, ‘Yeah, Obama gives a great speech, but Americans don’t elect presidents on the basis of great speeches and great oratory.’
And some of them are using examples from great orators of our history who have lost elections. In many of these examples, they are citing great orators who existed before there was radio or TV; pointing out, by the way, both Bushes (Bush 41, Bush 43) won without being great orators and so forth, and all that’s true. In a historical sense, there’s no question that’s true. However, this circumstance is different. I think the oratory of Obama is going to matter. In addition to running into — and this is, by the way, over a number of years — these anecdotes. Again, I make nothing scientific about this, but I’ve talked to enough people over the years on both sides of the political aisle, who have just been frustrated as they can be that the president of the United States doesn’t seem to be able to communicate; just is not a flashy orator; is not a riveting, spellbinding speaker; is not inspirational and so forth; mispronounces the word ‘nuclear’ and so forth; and I’ve heard a bunch of Democrats say, ‘I just want somebody that sounds smart. I’m embarrassed as an American to have a president who can’t talk.’
Well, they’ve got Obama, and when you come off the comparative, this flashy oratory, I think, is going to have more impact on voters than some of the McCain people who think, ‘Ah, it will wash itself out at the end of the day.’ It might, but I think there’s a greater chance that the oratory is going to be a factor here for one simple reason. If Obama’s charisma on television hasn’t gotten him where he is, then what has? All Obama has is his oratory. All he has is his charisma. He does not have substance. He doesn’t have anything that you can really grab onto and say, ‘Yeah, that’s America!’ He’s not talking about the greatness of America. Somebody in this election needs to defend that which is great about this country and that which needs to be conserved in this country. This doesn’t mean that we oppose change; it means we support our society. McCain is out there trying to make a big deal he’s the reform candidate, and I’ve had a number of people ask me, ‘Reform what, Rush?’
Well, let me let you in on the dirty little secret. When Senator McCain talks about reform, he’s talking about reforming the conservative movement. He’s talking about reforming the Republican Party, as much as he is talking about reforming the country. But he’s talking about reforming the political system. Like he had a town hall meeting today, and he says he wants a whole bunch of town hall meetings with Obama, because this is a special election, and we need to have these issues out. He wants Obama to fly with him on the same plane to these town hall meetings in order to save energy, and so forth. So his reform is not so much reforming the country; it’s reforming our politics and reforming the Republican Party’s politics specifically. All right, we’ll have more on McCain here in just a moment. Let’s get started with Obama. Remember back in the race speech in Philadelphia, Obama — and, by the way, we will have a segment coming up in the next half hour from our Official Obama Criticizer, Bo Snerdley, reacting to Obama’s speech. You don’t want to miss that. But Obama threw his grandmother under the bus in the race speech. Last night, he brought his grandmother back on board the bus.
OBAMA: Thank you to my grandmother, who helped raise me and is sitting in Hawaii somewhere right now because she can’t travel, but who poured, uh, everything she had into me and, uh, who helped, uh, to make me the man I am today.
RUSH: That’s Obama bringing back his grandmother, who used to be ‘a typical white person.’ Now she is the woman who poured everything she had into him. Does that mean he’s a typical white person now? Let’s go back. This is how he described his beloved, ignorant, racist grandmother March 20th of this year.
OBAMA: The point I was making was not that my grandmother, uh, harbors, uh, any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a, uh, typical white person who, if she sees somebody out street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into our experiences that — that don’t go away and that sometimes, uh, come out in — in the wrong way.
RUSH: All right, so ‘typical white person.’ But now she’s back on the bus because she poured everything she had into Obama. Here’s the next excerpt from his speech.
OBAMA: Because you decided that change must come to Washington, because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest, because… (cheering) because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another (cheering), a journey… (cheering) a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States of America. (cheers and applause)
RUSH: I told Cookie to leave the applause in on some of these bites today just to give you an example of some of the energy in the room last night — not room, it was an arena — in case you didn’t see the speech. So ‘we’ve marked the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another.’ And if you go through the newspapers today, you will find reference after reference after reference after reference after reference in the Drive-By Media to his race. Washington Post: ‘Black President This Century? Black president…. Black president… Black president… That is how four consecutive paragraphs begin. Also in the Washington Post, ‘A moment of triumph with a little disbelief,’ focusing on his race.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the Obama sound bites, from last night’s speech. Now, this is a guy very gracious, right? He represents something new! And I was just discussing with Senator McConnell, there’s nothing new about what he’s proposing. It’s all been tried. It’s been tried in this country. It’s all failed.! It’s been tried all over the world. It’s all failed! There’s not one thing new from Barack Obama. There is no ‘change,’ unless you want to go backwards. His foreign policy is 60 years old, from the 1930s, forties; and his domestic policy is right out of the 1960s. There’s nothing new about the guy. For a guy who’s supposed to be so gracious, he takes a little shot here at Senator McCain.
OBAMA: In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. (booing) They will… (booing) They will come here to nominate John McCain (boos), a man who has served this country heroically. (begrudging applause) I honor — we honor — the service of John McCain, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine.
RUSH: I saw that last night, and I said, ‘That’s a good point, Obama. What are your accomplishments? What are your achievements? What are they?’ He’s been in the Senate less than three years — or maybe four, something like that, whatever it is. He hasn’t done anything; he’s not distinguished himself. He was a ‘community organizer’? Whoop-de-doo! Harvard Law Review? Whoop-de-do. Let’s see. Runs around with terrorists. Whoop-de-do. Has a mentor and spiritual relationship with a wacko preacher. Whoop-de-do. What are his achievements? He doesn’t have any, not in the sense of a presidential resume. This is another reason why I say his oratory is going to be a factor, because that’s why he’s where he is. Plus, his name isn’t Clinton. But his oratory is why he’s drawing these crowds, not his achievements. He doesn’t have a resume. I don’t know that McCain is denying Obama’s achievements. He just doesn’t know what they are. Here’s another little excerpt. Now, this one’s interesting.
OBAMA: While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign. (applause) It’s not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95% of the time as he did in the Senate last year.
RUSH: All right. Now, this is a fascinating bite to me, and I’ll tell you why. ‘While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past…’ This whole statement is rooted in typical liberal arrogance. McCain, in his own speech last night, the theme of his speech last night was: I’m not George Bush. (doing McCain impression) ‘Don’t you call me Bush. I’m not Bush! Got it?’ It was very defensive. He wanted to make it plain to everybody he wasn’t George W. Bush. It’s a mistake to run around and be critical of the president of his own party. He can do it in different ways than he’s doing it, but he touted his independence last night — and what does ‘independence’ mean in this context? Independence in this context means he abandoned his own party and walked across the aisle and sat down with Democrats and did deals. And he’s touting that. And you will hear him expressly say so in a sound bite I have coming up in the next hour when we get to the McCain sound bites.
And Obama acknowledges it. Oh, yeah, that’s true. ‘While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party, such independence is not been the hallmark of his campaign.’ Barack Obama can tout zilch, zero, nada independence. Barack Obama has not crossed the aisle — on meaningful legislation, just symbolic things. Barack Obama has the most left-leaning liberal voting record of all senators, and that’s saying something, in his short time there in the United States Senate as present constituted. So here’s McCain — who’s making a biiiig deal out of his independence, a biiiig deal out of the fact that he has abandoned his own party, a biiiig deal that, while we are Republicans and Democrats, ‘We’re all still Americans.’
He’s making a big deal out of making deals with Democrats. You see how it counts? You see where it’s getting him? Obama is mocking him. Obama is saying, ‘Hey, you want to be fully independent? Quit the Republican Party. Your independence isn’t counting anything from me, dude. You say you’re independent and you’ve crossed the aisle and you’ve worked with us? Fine, but not enough.’ It’s typical. No matter what you do for the libs, no matter what you give them, incidents enough. McCain would have to switch parties in order to show his independence. So here’s Senator McCain trying to score all these points with Democrats and independents by touting his independence and the Democrats are saying, ‘That doesn’t count for anything; he hasn’t even been independent enough from Bush.’ So the point is the whole thing gets you nowhere and it gets you mocked. And it points how the Democrats never waver like this, they never scram from their own side.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So I’m in Snerdley’s office here at the top — by the way, those of you on the phones, please be patient. I’m going to get to you as quick as I can, and I mean that. So I’m in Snerdley’s office at the top-of-the-hour break and there’s McCain in there doing a town hall meeting, and he’s talking about, ‘The town hall meeting is the purest form of American democracy, and the American people are tired of politics as usual.’ They’re tired of this; tired of that. I’m asking myself, ‘Where have I heard that the American people are tired of this?’ I hear it in the media! I hear it all the time in the Drive-By Media, that the American people are fed up with this and tired of politics as usual. If that’s true, how come negative ads keep working? Let me tell you what I’m not tired of, folks. I am not tired of somebody leading my party, slugging it out for what I believe in! I am not tired of that. That is not politics as usual. If it isn’t, it should be! I mean hell’s bells, what the hell is going on here? We have widely divergent, differing views from liberal Democrats. We want our side to slug it out with them, to beat ’em, to prevail — and not proclaim ‘independence’ as a resume enhancement. Here, listen to this Obama bite again. Basically he’s saying he’s not going to let McCain separate himself from Bush.
OBAMA: While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign. (applause) It’s not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95% of the time as he did in the Senate last year.
RUSH: All right, can we talk about that for a minute? Some of the things that McCain stood with Bush on were McCain ideas, such as McCain-Kennedy and amnesty and the immigration reform bill, and what else? Campaign finance reform. Things that Obama would support, too! I don’t know why I care so much. Both of these people are weak candidates. But I’m sitting here; I’m getting mad as I can be. This independence crap? McCain is out there touting his independence. You’ll hear it in his sound bites later (we have some of them from last night) as though it’s a resume enhancement, a selling point. (doing McCain impression) ‘I’ve abandoned my party on numerous occasions and worked with Democrats. I seek to continue doing it.’ Well, whoop-de-doo and look what it’s getting you! Obama still mocks the independence. It’s not enough. Well, when the hell has Obama ever criticized his party? When the hell has Obama ever crossed the aisle and joined the Republicans?
Why don’t we ask that? Why don’t we say, ‘Senator, you sit there all arrogant and cocky and say that McCain’s independence still isn’t enough for you. Where’s your independence? You have zilch, zero, nada independence. You are following a 30- and 60-year-old liberal playbook. For criminetly’s sake, why are we not attacking the Democrat Party, attacking the Democrat Party for its policies and Obama toeing that line?’ Senator McCain’s difficulty here is that he’s attacking his own party to prove his credentials with non-Republicans, but Obama does no such thing to his own party. No Democrat does. That’s why there are no such things as Democrat mavericks. Democrat mavericks are run out of the party. Hello, Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman. By the way, McCain doesn’t even criticize the Democrat Party. He only criticizes the Republican Party. That’s how he gets credentials as an independent. He doesn’t even criticize the Democrat Party. Now he’s boxed in by his own rhetoric.
This is what’s so damn frustrating to me. You’ve got the most left-leaning liberal, socialist candidate the Democrats have ever nominated; a golden opportunity to contrast what we believe with what the Democrats have put up there. A guy who barely crawled across the finish line securing the nomination, he just barely made it, is being touted as this landslide guy who’s overwhelmingly rocked the country. It’s all Drive-By Media BS. But the problem is that Senator McCain is now boxed in by his own rhetoric. He joins the Democrats to establish his credentials so the ability to contrast himself and the Republican Party ideologically with the most leftist, socialist candidate the Democrats have nominated in my lifetime is now going to be very difficult if not impossible for Senator McCain to do. (sigh) What are we to conclude here as we watch all this play out it? It seems like Senator McCain’s idea how to rebuild the Republican Party is to criticize it and to explain to liberal reporters he’s not really a Republican.
He’s different; he’s independent. I’ve never seen anything like this! I have never seen a Republican try to establish his bona fides by ripping his own party, praising the other party. That’s why so many of us are outraged. I mean yesterday, he trashed President Bush again. In his speech last night, he trashed Bush over Katrina, trashed Bush over New Orleans. He praised Hillary, praised Obama. We can confront Obama, you and I, the conservatives in this country, we can confront Obama and his radicalism better than the Republican Party can today. We know how to beat leftist radicals like Obama. But in an official sense, we have no say in this. The truth be told, Obama should lose. Obama should be beaten as badly as Dukakis, as Walter Mondull, as John Kerry, ’cause he’s just another one of them. He’s just another one of them. He’s reading out of the same playbook. We have, let’s see, two more Obama sound bites, and then the Official Obama Criticizer. Despite McCain’s attempt to elevate the debate… Well, here. Listen to what he says.
OBAMA: What you don’t deserve is another election that’s governed by fear and innuendo and division. (cheers) What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon. (cheers and applause)
RUSH: Remember that line. I have a comment coming up about that line.
OBAMA: What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is a politics that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to polarize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first. (cheers and applause)
RUSH: I’m rubbing my hands together here, folks, ’cause I am deathly afraid of uttering a string of profanities. I have never had to censor myself on this program. I have never had to hit the bleep button because of anything I have said in almost 20 years of broadcast excellence. But I am so damn close to it. You’ve been warned. ‘What you don’t deserve is another election that’s governed by fear and innuendo and division.’ Can I translate that? ‘What we are not going to allow is another election that tells the truth about me and Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and Father Pfleger. Those things are off limits. We’re not going to have another election governed by fear and innuendo and division. I’m not going to let you talk about Jeremiah Wright. I’m not going to let you talk about Michelle (My Belle). I’m not going to let you talk about Pfleger. I’m not going to let you talk about Ayers. I’m not going to let you talk about Dohrn. I’m not going to let you talk about my association with Hamas and the Palestinians. I’m not going to let you talk about any of it!’
Then he says: ‘What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon.’ I’ll translate that for you. What that means is: ‘Nobody is going to be able to discuss religion in this race. We’re not going to talk about my religion, not going to talk about my grandfather’s religion, not going to talk about my father’s religion, my grandmother’s religion, my wife’s religion, Jeremiah Wright’s religion, Bernardine Dohrn’s religion. We’re not going to talk about Calypso Louie’s religion and we’re not going to let the Republicans talk about theirs.’ That’s what this means. He’s sending the signal: None of this stuff. You can’t talk about it. ‘We are not enemies to polarize. We may call ourselves Democrats or Republicans. We’re Americans first.’ No, you’re not. You are the Democrat part first. That’s what defines Democrats.