RUSH: An amazing thing happened on Hardball last night. Heather Wilson, Republican congress-babe from New Mexico, was a guest on Chris Matthews’ show and the other guest was Robert Wexler, the representative from Congress from down in Boca, although he doesn’t have a house there. We just learned this. He lives in Maryland. His official residence is his mother’s house where they don’t allow kids. He’s got three kids. Nevertheless that’s not the story. They were on discussing the Obama speech in Germany and Chris Matthews said, ‘Congresswoman Heather Wilson, what do you make of those remarks by Barack Obama today?’
WILSON: Saying something like there’s a wall between the United States and Europe? I mean, we’ve been allies with Western Germany and Germany as a whole since the end of the second world war. NATO is one of our strongest alliances and so what is he talking about? What’s the substance behind that?
MATTHEWS: He’s talking about the fact that Europeans hate George Bush. (crosstalk)
WILSON: — assure Americans that the mistakes that he made with respect to Middle East policy because of his experience, maybe they shouldn’t be concerned about that. He went there because of his inexperience to try to give himself some kind of patina of credibility.
RUSH: Matthews said, ‘Are you saying the United States has a good relationship with Europe in the last seven years?’
WILSON: Absolutely, yes. The U.S. relationship with NATO, with the U.K., our relationship with the United Kingdom has never been closer and that’s been spurred by common mutual interests. I used to serve at NATO when there were 16 NATO countries and we were facing the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. We have very close relationships with our Western European allies and I think that continues, with Angela Merkel or with President Sarkozy or with the Brits, I think very close relationships.
RUSH: Matthews says ‘Congressman Wexler, do you agree with that, the Europeans have liked the Bush administration? I haven’t seen that love affair at all.’
WEXLER: Transatlantic relations have suffered greatly under the Bush administration and what does that mean to Americans? What it means is we were not effective in engaging a coalition of countries to participate with us in the Iraq war, the tragedy of the Iraq war. This president unfortunately — excuse me. (crosstalk)
WILSON: The Brits are there fighting and dying alongside American troops in Iraq.
WEXLER: Yes, and I applaud the British.
WILSON: The Canadians, Germans, the British are there in Afghanistan, and you know it.
WEXLER: This President has been ineffective in convincing our allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, the fight we need to win. But let me tell you where Senator Obama where — (crosstalk)
WILSON: The Germans are increasing by 1,000 troops this year, Robert, and if Barack is so effective, did he convince Angela Merkel today to reduce the restrictions on the German forces there?
RUSH: Let me tell you something. I’ve never heard anybody shut up Bob Wexler, but she did and she did so brilliantly and effectively. See, this is another one of these media narratives, that the Europeans hate us. Tony Blair and George Bush were inseparable. Sarkozy and Merkel, big time on board. This is just a continuation of the myth. And Heather Wilson is very reserved here and she’s very on point. Germans increasing by 1,000 troops this year, Robert, if Barack is so effective, did he convince Angela Merkel today to reduce the restrictions on the German forces there? Finally, Matthews says to Wilson, ‘But the French, the Germans, so many other countries in Europe, they did not support our war in Iraq.’
WILSON: We have British troops with us in Iraq. There’s no question that there were differences on policy. But to say that somehow there is a wall in NATO that’s running somewhere down the Atlantic shows Senator Obama’s inexperience when it comes to understanding where we are. You see that in a number of other things. I mean, look at his platform. He has these kind of message-tested, poll-tested things like we should — Barack Obama will make sure that we take, he will negotiate with the Russians to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert? It’s a great idea. It was done 20 years ago. He seems to be unaware of American history, and that’s inexperience which causes people some real concern about whether he’s ready for the Oval Office.
RUSH: I guarantee you Matthews was blindsided because he’s got this notion the Europeans hate us. Heather Wilson: ‘No, no, no, you’ve never been right about this. The French may not have been our friends early on in this.’ But Matthews is sitting there — it’s kind of like — I can imagine what went through his head when he’s hearing all this. Remember after Vaclav Klaus came to the National Press Club and gave his dissertation on global warming and Juan Williams said, ‘I’ve never heard anything like this, I’ve never… I didn’t know. I’ve never questioned the environmental movement, I’ve never heard this.’ And his eyes were opened, even though it’s all over the place, the environmental movement gets questioned. So the same thing here with Matthews. Europeans hate us, that’s it, period. Wexler says yeah, they didn’t help us out, Bush didn’t have a coalition, Bush screwed up, Bush is horrible. Heather Wilson says it’s not true and here’s the reason why and here are the facts.