CALLER: Hello, Rush, and Merry Christmas to you, sir.
RUSH: Same to you.
CALLER: Hey, I just want to get back to this TIME Magazine piece about the Man of the Year. One of them that you failed to mention — and of course you can’t mention everything — was, they were talking that they were gonna maybe consider the economy. Now, how sick is that? They want to bless the bad economy to get their messiah elected? I mean, come on. You know what I’m saying?
RUSH: Yeah, I read what TIME said about Obama and what they were considering naming the economy as the Person of the Year because it led to the creation of Obama. Look, it’s the Drive-Bys, Mark. They are so distant from the rest of us in the real world, and this episode illustrates it. I understand. It’s like Barbara Walters and her top Ten Most Fascinating People. If you’re going to do that, how do you not put Obama number one? I mean it’s historical. He’s the first black president in the country. I’m sure that’s the way TIME Magazine is looking at it, how do you not put Obama there? It’s not as though Obama won it. It’s you don’t dare not make him number one. But then to go out and say that our Person of the Year award, as it turns out, was created for people like Obama. They think now that Obama has taken them back to their roots on this. But it hasn’t. You know, their long-held criteria and definition for Man of the Year… I mean, Hitler was Man of the Year once. Stalin was Man of the Year. They hated Hitler, loved Stalin. But it was people that shake things up and have the most impact on things, and I don’t know that you could say that about Obama yet, other than the historical nature.
CALLER: Well, I have no problem about him being elected. I don’t care if he’s black, white, purple, or brown. But personally I don’t think he’s qualified, but I guess the people have spoken. I just thought it was really a sad commentary on where TIME Magazine is, that they want to consider the suffering that people are going through in this economy and to think that that’s a way and a means for Obama to get elected, I just thought that was pretty sick.
RUSH: Yeah. In their mind, whatever it takes to get Obama elected, especially a plunging economy.
CALLER: Yeah.
He came up before I even said a word to him, and he said, ‘I didn’t say the Republican Party should fire you. I didn’t say that.’
I said, ‘Mort, I don’t care. Say what you want.’ I smiled. ‘Good to see you. It doesn’t matter to me what you say.’ I said, ‘Mort, the ridiculous part of this, though, is, the Republican Party has not been listening to me for two years or six years.’
He looked at me, Mort, kind of incredulous, like, ‘Why, I never thought of that.’
You do you not realize how on a different plane, on a different world, must you be to say that I am responsible for McCain’s loss and for the ’06 midterm congressional losses? How can I be responsible for this? If I’m responsible for it, I am Man of the Year. The Democrats want to get rid of me with the Fairness Doctrine. The Republicans want to fire me from the party when I’m not even in the party. I am the architect not only of Obama’s victory, but of McCain’s defeat, and I’m not even a politician! And I don’t even live in Washington. This is power and influence. This is shake, rattle, and roll. This is shake ’em up big time.
Mort was smiling, laughing the whole time. He said, ‘I listen to you every day. I listen to you every day.’ He didn’t mean any animosity by it.
I said, ‘I know, it was Powell that read what you wrote and thought you meant something else, but it doesn’t matter, Mort. I mean, there’s a lot of noise out there. You gotta say things to cut through it. I understand that, but understand: If the Republicans had listened to me, Obama would not be president.’