RUSH: I see a headline like this on an AP story and I scratch my head, and I say, ‘Why don’t people recognize this before it happens when it’s so clear to reasonable, informed people it’s going to happen?’ The headline is this: ”Obama’s Barbed Words Worry Corporate World’ — Relations between President Barack Obama and US corporate leaders have grown tense in recent weeks, with business groups bristling over his sharp rebukes of lenders and multinational companies in particular. Executives and trade groups that praised Obama’s outreach during his post-election transition period say they have felt less welcome since he took office in January. More troubling, they say, are his populist-tinged, sometimes acid critiques of certain sectors, including large companies that keep some profits overseas to reduce their US tax burden. On Thursday in New Mexico, Obama chastised the credit card industry for sharply raising interest rates or fees with hard-to-find notice. He said consumers should be protected– ‘ This just infuriates me.
There’s no bigger credit card fraud than the US government. If Obama was forced, if the federal government was forced to behave like the credit card companies are being forced to behave — I’m not defending the credit card companies, don’t misunderstand now, folks. But for a guy who’s spending us into eternal oblivion debt and expanded poverty, for a guy to go out and start complaining and whining about private sector industries like the credit card companies, the automobile business, just infuriates me. But even, worse, all of these business leaders, what did they ignore? Don’t tell me they got caught up in the cult-like stuff, they hated Bush, they just were eager for change. I go back to the question, ‘Why do people not realize, why do they not understand what liberalism is? Why do they not understand what liberals do? And, further, why did they not pay attention to who Obama’s friends are and the way they talk and the actions they’ve taken? Why didn’t that matter to them?’
The third thing is — and Jim Geraghty pointed this out yesterday on his blog at National Review — it’s not entirely proper to judge Obama as a liberal. Liberalism does not explain everything that he’s doing, but what I discussed yesterday does: his quest for all-consuming power. He will get rid of anybody or anything that stands in his way of getting power, and he will embrace anybody or anything that helps him gain the power. Now, he’s a liberal at heart, socialist, whatever, statist, redistributionist, but you’re starting to see, not often, but you’re starting to see now formerly conservative columnists who, six months ago were writing pieces describing Obama as eloquent, elegant, very articulate, smart, confident, cool, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, it was wonderful. We’re not going to have any partisanship anymore. We’re going to be unified. We’re not going to be fighting with each other. It’s going to be wonderful. And now these people are writing things like, ‘The Obama administration is obscuring our language.’ The Obama administration is not what they thought it was going to be.
These people are smart. Why didn’t they see it when it was right in front of their eyes? Maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe they just didn’t want to. Everybody has hope. Everybody wants the country to be great, and nobody wants to think somebody wants to make the country worse. In his mind, making it better, but in practical result, making it worse. But it’s very, very frustrating because, you see, ladies and gentlemen, none of what’s happening is a surprise to me, that he hates business people? That he’s holding them up to ridicule, that he’s practicing class warfare? What is ACORN, for crying out loud, if it’s not a bunch of rabble-rousing frauds and cheats in the electoral process? What is Code Pink? What are all these left-wing groups? They’re in business every day. What they do is not a secret. They represent his roots. They’re where he got his training. They are the people he idolizes. I mean if you look at the last eight years alone, just the last eight years, look at the Democrat Party’s enemies list. Big Oil, Big Pharmaceutical, Walmart, Big Food, Big Automobile, virtually every major American industry is on the Democrat Party enemies list. Big Radio.
You didn’t even need Obama to come along to know where the Democratic Party is on this stuff. So, I’m sorry, I have no sympathy for people who are now shocked and surprised at what they’re getting. I have no sympathy for these corporate people who are now worried about Obama’s barbed words aimed at them. What did you expect? You have been marked men and women for eight years or longer, but you can remember the eight years. You may not remember what Democrats were saying 50 years ago, but you know what they’re saying eight years ago and last year and two years ago. I’m sorry; I have no sympathy for anybody who’s shocked and surprised here, and there are going to be more and more people every day that, ‘Ah, this is not what I thought we were getting.’ But it may be too late by the time enough.