Democrats Announce Compromise in Panic Move to Preempt McCain

RUSH: Okay, Democrats and Republicans have reached an agreement in principle on the rescue plan. Now, what does this tell us? Well, it tells me a couple of things. One, that the Obama Democrats panicked into a quicker compromise to try to show that McCain didn’t matter. You know, McCain’s not meeting with Bush ’til four o’clock and Obama’s going to be in the meeting, too. So they get this done before four o’clock, before Bush and Obama and McCain meet, so the fear of McCain coming in and getting this done forced the Democrats — ’cause, look, one thing, despite all this talk about how great the bailout plan, how huge it is, how it might really just expand the size of government in ways we’ve never seen, the Democrats here, their strategery was to try to only commit to about 25% of the 700 billion at first, sort of like a trial balloon to see if it would work.

Now, what does that tell you? It tells you they’re afraid to do nothing because they are in control. I’m very cynical about Democrats, as you know. I think if they could, their preference would be to not fix the whole thing more authoritatively because they thrive on chaos. They thrive on chaos and despair, particularly with 40 days to go to the election, they love this! They love this chaos and despair. That’s why Harry Reid said, (paraphrasing) ‘Stay away from here, McCain. We don’t need you.’ That’s why Obama said, (paraphrasing) ‘Hey, call me if you need me.’ So two things happened. Everybody says it was the Republicans holding this up. Do not be fooled, my friends. It’s the Drive-By Media telling you that. The Democrats did not want this thing to go this fast. They wanted to string it out; they wanted us to be teetering on the verge of national destruction and bankruptcy. They wanted you to be thinking that. And then all of a sudden McCain decides to suspend the campaign, leaving Obama in the bathroom primping in Clearwater, Florida, for the debate tomorrow night that now wasn’t going to happen. He’s going to go to Washington. (doing McCain impression) ‘That’s right, leadership, I’m going to get this done, somebody has to.’ Democrats, ‘Oh, no! No!’ So they got rushed. Now, that tells me we coulda gotten a lot. I don’t know what we got, as Republicans, we coulda gotten a lot for the haste the Democrats wanted to get this done before McCain could get credit for it. I hope we didn’t screw up too bad.

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RUSH: Audio sound bite time here, competing sound bites in a sense. Chris Dodd, one of the architects of this mess and one of the profiteers, in a sense, all the campaign donations he received and a favorable mortgage rate from Countrywide, Chris Dodd this afternoon in the rotunda of the Capitol.

DODD: We’ve reached a fundamental agreement on a set of principles, one for taxpayers, which is tremendously important. We’re giving the secretary authority that he will need in order to act and the funding that he will need. We also have dealt I think effectively with the issue of effective oversight with home ownership preservation as well as executive compensation.

RUSH: White House caved on that, by the way, they caved on exec compensation yesterday. Okay, so Colonel Sanders walks out and has just told us that the chickens he killed are okay and that we don’t have anything to worry about. Here’s Barney Frank who apparently — this is at the same place, but I don’t know that he got the message.

FRANK: Some of us have been invited to go to the White House today to try to break a deadlock, and I’m glad that we’ll be able to go and tell them that there’s really not much of a deadlock to break, but I’m always glad to get to go to the White House.

RUSH: I’ll bet they’ll be glad to have you up there at the White House. So Barney is going to go to the White House. But there’s not much of a deadlock to break. Did you understand that? Did you understand? You didn’t? Let me see if I could help. Snerdley said he didn’t understand what Barney said. (doing Barney Frank impression) ‘Some of us have been invited to go to the White House, to — to — to — to — to — to — to — to — to — to — to break a deadlock — it’s not a deadlock — I don’t know why because all of — run into.’ Barney Frank.

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RUSH: John Boehner is saying that House Republicans have not signed on to any bailout deal. It may yet require John McCain to get this done. The Democrats went out there and announced that there’s a deal, that they have a deal in principle, and I think they did this prior to four o’clock. That’s when McCain is meeting with Bush and Obama at the White House, and they wanted to preempt any involvement by McCain in this, but Boehner is saying that they have not signed any bailout deal. The House Republicans haven’t. Chris Dodd is also saying, (paraphrasing) ‘Hey, look, we’re going to negotiate this; we’re going to have a couple days here to debate this; we hope we get this legislation passed very soon.’ A lot of people are waiting to see what this so-called deal in principle has in it. Now we learn that there is no deal in principle from John Boehner.

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RUSH: From Marc Ambinder at TheAtlantic.com: ‘John McCain’s vow to return to Washington and get this mess settled has lit a fire under the behinds of Democrat negotiators who worry that his presence will suspend their negotiations and give House Republicans a figure to rally around in opposition to a compromise and generally weaken their negotiation position. ‘ See? They are desperate that McCain not get any credit for this, whatever happens. That’s why they’ve come out and said we’ve got a deal in principle. And then John Boehner, the House leader, said: No, no, no, no, we’ve not signed anything. Now, Marc Ambinder then adds this to his blog post. ‘My colleague Nora McAvalnah tells me that sources close to Senate Democratic leadership,’ that would be Dingy Harry, ‘now fear that McCain’s true motivation for calling off his campaign and coming back to DC is simply to cast a ‘no’ vote against the bailout, despite his private statements to the contrary.

‘And it’s a smart maneuver: Nothing says ‘maverick,’ like voting against Bush and standing with the American public, who remain very wary of the proposal.’ That’s true. I have e-mail here from all of you. I’ve spot-checked it, and I can’t find a whole lot of support for this. Your instincts on this are right, but I’m not going to bother repeating the analysis of the first and second hours. It will be up at RushLimbaugh.com later. But they’re worried he’s going to come in here, steal the credit, and then vote ‘no’; vote against Bush, side with the American people, and totally screw up the plan. Frankly, folks, George Bush is gonna get what he wants, and so are the Democrats, and I think it would be worthy of maybe a minute of fanfare music to celebrate McCain voting against the Democrats. It doesn’t happen much, and it would be noteworthy. We would raise the flag here symbolically. It could be a big event. We’ll keep a sharp eye.