Flip-Flop Charge Won’t Stick to Obama

RUSH: Alex in Frisco, Texas, I’m glad you called. You’re next.

CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: Hi, Alex.

CALLER: Hi. Mega dittos. I’m 16. I’ve been listening to your show since I believe I was 8, so I’m a huge fan.

RUSH: You are a Rush Baby?

CALLER: Yes, I am. Thanks to my dad. He and I came up with a potentially sure victory for John McCain, though it’s not really a great thing, but better than Obama. He launches a series of ads that, you know, show how, you know, this is Obama’s kind of change and show how he flip-flops on all the issues. It kind of destroyed John Kerry back in the last election.

RUSH: Yeah, you know, here’s the difference. A lot of people have suggested that Obama’s flip-flopping. The problem, Kerry actually comes off as a huge lughead dope. Obama doesn’t. When John Kerry says, ‘I voted for it before I voted against it,’ that’s made to order. Obama hasn’t done that. He’s said one thing last year and another thing this year, and you have to go back and contrast the two. In Kerry’s case, he admitted it in one sentence that you could exploit. He thinks he’s so smart, and he thinks that nobody’s going to be able to keep up with him when he does dumb things and says dumb things. Now, another reason why this is a problem, it could work, but Drive-Bys are in the process of handling this. They are covering for Obama. Let me call to your attention, Alex, a story today by Michael Powell. This is a story about Obama’s flip-flops. But the Times is not calling them flip-flops. The Times is referring to these as, ‘Obama recalibrating his positions.’

‘For Obama, a Pragmatist’s Shift Toward the Center.’ And they list all kinds of issues. The Second Amendment. He’s a policy pirouette. They are covering. They are saying that what you’re calling flip-flops, Alex, are pragmatism, recalibrations, and maturity, and a historian in this story even admits, hey, he could be honest about these things, too. They could not be just convenience shifts. He could really mean this. At the same time, the Drive-Bys are doing stories asking for some substance from Obama. They want him to actually get serious. He’s out there saying a lot of nothing. They want him to get serious. They think they got this in the bag. They want to hear what he’s going to do. They want to hear liberalism out of the guy. The last line of the story: ‘Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style.’ Now, stop and think of that. The Drive-Bys are allowing Obama to analyze his style. You think they would allow McCain to analyze his style or me or George W. Bush? No. They’re going to sit there and be in judgment of it. ‘Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style. ‘I serve as a blank screen,’ he wrote in The Audacity of Hope, ‘on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

So he’s basically saying I don’t have to take a position because I am what people think I am. I have managed to be whatever they want me to be, and that’s my secret. If they want tough on foreign policy, that’s what they think I am. If they want somebody that’s going to go talk to these evil despots around the world and tame them, that’s what they think I am. If they think I’m going to raise taxes on Big Oil and make the gas price better, that’s what they think I am. I don’t have to say word one. That’s what this means. I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. So for those of you in the Drive-Bys, you want substance, call this what it is, call the guy a blank slate and challenge him on it. Instead, the Drive-Bys are calling him a pragmatist, that he has executed several policy pirouettes, that he is recalibrating his positions. So while McCain’s camp could put together these commercials that show flip-flops, the Drive-By Media reaction is going to be, politics as usual, there goes McCain, personal attacks. Of course Obama has evolved. Of course he has done policy pirouettes. He’s learning as he goes.

They’re going to have to be other ways. For example, I think Obama is an empty suit, but a lot of people think that he is a 140 IQ Mensa. He’s probably a little bit of a tutu if he’s pirouetting, too. But the point is that going after this guy is going to require a different technique than the standard, ‘He’s lying, he’s lying, he’s lying.’ I think the American public are sick and tired of us saying he’s lying. We said Clinton was lying, it didn’t help. Because I think frankly they think all politicians lie. The way to go after Obama, I don’t know how to do it, this is not my business, but he’s likable, and something’s going to have to happen to change that. See, Kerry was not likable, you couple that with all of his arrogance and condescending flip-flops, and he still got a tremendous number of votes.