RUSH: This is Randy in Myrtle Creek. Myrtle Creek, Oregon? There’s a Myrtle Creek in Oregon. Welcome, Randy, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Longtime student of advanced conservative studies.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, you’ve been talking about Obama’s campaign accusing McCain of cutting Medicare, but let me just point it out that in the last debate, Obama came right out and said he was going to cut Medicare.
RUSH: Obama said he was going to cut Medicare?
CALLER: Yeah. He was talking about looking at programs that aren’t working. For example, Medicare is getting billions of dollars.
RUSH: Now, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What he meant was not Medicare. He meant Bush’s new entitlement, the Medicare Part B, the free prescription drug thing. They want to wipe Bush’s thing out because they claim it’s not working, even though it is.
CALLER: Well, that’s not what it sounded like to me. It sounded like he was looking at Medicare, because he wanted to look at programs that aren’t working, for example, Medicare.
RUSH: Look, Medicare means, because we need more money in Medicare… Stay calm, El Rushbo. Stay calm. Look, let me try it this way, Randy. I appreciate your calling and pointing this out. See, I have a different view. I watched that debate, and this was the third debate. In the first debate as well, whoever moderated that also asked this stupid, irrelevant, useless question, and the question goes like this: ‘Well, Senators Obama and McCain, the bailout money and the economic crisis that we’re facing and the new government spending that we’re facing, clearly you’re going to have to scale back some of your plans and your programs. What will you say tonight that you will be willing to cut in light of…?’ It’s such a bogus question, especially to ask of a socialist. ‘What are you going to cut? What program?’
‘Well, we may have to wait awhile to complement this…’ It’s a stupid, inside the Beltway question that’s designed to be a trap for McCain. A question like that is always a trap for the Republican, because the trap for the Republican is, ‘McCain says he’s going to cut X!’ You didn’t hear anything in the news the next day about Obama is going to cut Medicare, did you? McCain’s got ads running against him right now by Obama saying that he’s going to cut Medicare. It’s a flat-out lie. But that’s why these debates are of, by, and for the media. ‘What are you gonna cut?’ That’s a total setup question, a total trap. I turned it off and I said, ‘Give me Rick Warren, you know? Give me a real candidates forum out there with somebody that doesn’t ask these preprogrammed, out-of-the-playbook questions.’