RUSH: Moving on to Chris Matthews. This is hilarious. Normally, I don’t play any sound bites from Hardball. Saturday Night Live did a skit on the Republicans meeting after Obama’s press conference and so forth, and they had an argument between two Republican House leaders over who’s the smarter, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. So Matthews plays the skit. He’s obviously jealous that he wasn’t in the mix being discussed: ‘Who’s the smartest?’ They were making fun of us. I don’t care. I saw it. But Matthews gets a Republican strategerist on there, Todd Harris. You’ve gotta hear this. He did everything and anything he could to get this guy to denounce me. We have one, two… What do we got? Three of these. Here’s the first.
HARRIS: No. I — I — I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: You personally, Todd Harris?
HARRIS: No, no. I don’t think he’s —
MATTHEWS: You don’t?
HARRIS: No.
MATTHEWS: Do your confers?
HARRIS: I’m sorry?
MATTHEWS: Do your confers, your colleagues on the Republican side look up to him as a great thought person?
HARRIS: They… Yes a lot of people do. A lot of people, uhhh —
MATTHEWS: A deep thinker?
HARRIS: Yeah and sure, sure.
MATTHEWS: Okay.
HARRIS: And, and, and, and he — Look, he is the, ah, intellectual, a lightning bolt of a lot of people on — on the conservative side and — and a motivator. And he, and he directly can turn out people to the polls…
RUSH: Okay, so he’s asking Todd Harris: ‘Do you — do you — do your colleagues in the Republican Party look up to him as a great thought person?’ Matthews is just bummed out like crazy over the fact that I was being talked about as a smart guy. Here’s the next bite.
HARRIS: Powerful —
MATTHEWS: Would you live in a country —
HARRIS: (garbled)
MATTHEWS: (shouting over guest) Would you live in a country where he wrote the Constitution?
HARRIS: I — I don’t know. But —
MATTHEWS: Would you live in such a country?
HARRIS: No! I — I — I — I’m — I’m happy to live —
MATTHEWS: Would you —
HARRIS: — in this country —
MATTHEWS: (shouting) Would you be happy to live in a country —
HARRIS: But — But —
MATTHEWS: — where he wrote our rights, listed our rights? (crosstalk)
STEVE MCMAHON: Do you want a lifeline, Todd? Do you want a lifeline?
HARRIS: No. No, because —
MATTHEWS: Where he listed our rights, would you live in that — would you live in that country?
HARRIS: No, because I want to make this point.
MATTHEWS: (cackling)
MCMAHON: (laughing)
RUSH: Stop the tape! I’m up against it. Mr. Matthews, I don’t want to rewrite anything, and I want to keep your hands off of it, too. I want to keep your hands off the Constitution. I want to keep Obama’s hands off the Constitution. I want to keep every damn liberal judge he’s going to appoint’s hands off the Constitution. I do not want to rewrite it! It’s brilliant as it is. I don’t think I could improve upon the brilliance. I’d give it a shot. But you won’t worry about anything. I would only make it better, but I don’t even look at that as something I’d do. Live under my…? Do I want to oppress you, Chris? It seems to me it’s people like you trying to shut me up, and people like me. It seems to be people like you were standing idly by while the First Amendment is on the way to being trashed.
Your worried about my rights, what I would do to oppress you? I love the Constitution. I hope it survives. I have my doubts, because you are a slave to a demagogue symbol who you haven’t even taken five minutes to try to understand. You are the one doing a great disservice to the Constitution. You’re the one doing a disservice to the United States of America by openly accepting what’s happening now without one bit of curiosity or one question. The media is a disgrace. You have forfeited any notion that you once had of respect. You worry about what people like me would do if we rewrote the Constitution? Who ever said I wanted to rewrite the Constitution? I just want to preserve the damn thing, Chris. Join me.