RUSH: Last night in Pittsburgh, Bill Clinton at the ‘Nutroots’ national convention. And the blogger said, ‘Mr. President, will you call for an appeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ right now?’
CLINTON: You know, you ought to go to one of those congressional health care meetings. You’d do really well there.
AUDIENCE: (laughter)
CLINTON: You want to talk about ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ I’ll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support in the Congress, and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military, and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment, and all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting me some support in the Congress! Now, that’s the truth.
RUSH: This is amazing. This is amazing. The president of the United States, Bill Clinton, is attacking a hapless little blogger who wants to know about ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, called for a repeal of it, and Clinton said, ‘Hey, I tried to do it. I tried to do it. You guys weren’t helping me get support in Congress. Everybody lined up against me. I tried to get it done.’ Right. I’m the president. Here’s Clinton’s message. You can sum up his answer very simply. ‘I’m the president! How dare you ask me that question? I’m the president and you’re a blogger, and you’re telling me it’s my fault? No! I’m president, you’re a blogger, and it’s your fault that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ got all screwed up.’ That’s the Bill Clinton mentality. Also last night in Pittsburgh at the nutroots convention, Clinton spoke before taking questions, and here’s a portion of his remarks.
CLINTON: The Republicans are sitting around rooting for the president to fail. One of the reasons that people are so hysterical in all these health care town hall meetings is they know they have no chance to beat health care this time unless they can mortify with rigored (sic) fears some moderate and conservative Democrats.
RUSH: He’s right about that. I mean, the Blue Dog Democrats are where the success or failure lays. But, you know, here’s Clinton, ‘Republicans sitting around rooting for the president to fail!’ (laughing) This guy still can’t get me off his brain. None of them can! None of them can get me off of their minds, and we got another sound bite. I don’t have time to squeeze it in here before the break, but he begs these nutroot bloggers here not to let Republicans kill health care again.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, we’re back. Bill Clinton at the nutroots convention in Pittsburgh last night. We don’t have this on tape, but one of the things that Clinton said, he’s repeating this mantra that we spend more on health care than any other country in the world, and Obama said, ‘We spend more on health care than any other country in the world.’ Well, guess what, folks? We also spend more on public education than any other country in the world. And we spend more on food stamps than any other country in the world. We spend more on welfare than any other country in the world. We spend more on unemployment than any other country in the world. What is this mantra we spend more on health care than any other nation?
Bernie Sanders is out there talking about it; Clinton is talking about it. Bernie, you want us to cut spending? You want us to cut spending? Bernie, you want to cut health care spending? We’re spending too much? Are we spending too much on unemployment, Bernie? Are we spending too much on public education? Are we spending too much on the school lunch program? Are we spending too much on the welfare state, Bernie? These people are nuts. They’re fruitcakes. We’re spending too much on health care, we gotta have health care reform? Well, we need welfare reform, and we need food stamp reform. These people are absolutely insane. Now, here’s Clinton again, I got these two sound bites, first of two at the nutroots convention in Pittsburgh last night.
CLINTON: The Republicans are sitting around rooting for the president to fail. One of the reasons that people are so hysterical at all these health care town hall meetings is they know they have no chance to beat health care this time unless they can mortify with rigored (sic) fears some moderate and conservative Democrats.
RUSH: What is this, mortify with rigored fears? He’s thinking rigor mortis and that’s what sets in when you die. Mortify with rigored fears? He’s thinking rigor mortis. I know he’s thinking that’s what’s going to happen with the health care plan. Here’s how he wrapped it up.
CLINTON: Do you want to go through that again? Of course you don’t. I’m telling you, I don’t care how low they drive support for this with misinformation, the minute the president signs a health care reform bill approval will go up. Secondly, within a year, when all those bad things they say are going to happen don’t happen, and the good things do begin to happen, approval will explode.
RUSH: You see how the big lie works? You see how this works, folks? Clinton keeps talking about Republicans trying to kill government-run health care. Well, most of them surely oppose it but Obama is losing the independents big time on this. That’s where he’s losing. And he’s going to lose some Blue Dog Democrats. It’s not just Republicans. He can’t even keep one-third of the Democrats aligned on this. He’s got big problems all over the place. But notice it’s the Republicans. At the end of the day, Republicans don’t have the votes to stop anything. By the way, I don’t know if you’ve seen this video of Clinton, but I would caution the president to behave better at these meetings. I mean here he is out there screaming, he’s raising his voice, his arms are flailing around out there, waving around that long finger of his, he’s pointing it at people, very provocative, very threatening gesture to get that big finger pointed at you. Now, I would suggest he become a little bit more civil, even at the nutroots convention, which is, you know, an assemblage of fruitcakes. But it’s disruptive. I mean, it’s disruptive and it’s distracting. It’s not presidential. Waving your arms around out there, pointing that big, long finger at people. I think he should behave better.