RUSH: Rahm, in El Segundo, California. Hi.
CALLER: Yes, Rush, good to be with you, Dittocam watcher dittos. Just wondering how you think the Hoffman defeat is gonna affect Sarah Palin’s movement towards the Oval Office, and I’ll take your comments off the air. Thank you so much.
RUSH: You are more than welcome. I don’t know that she has intentions of moving toward the Oval Office. People are surmising this, but I don’t know that she’s going to do that. Now, she’s laying the groundwork for it. You gotta write a book. And in her case I think she actually wrote it. She’s got these people in the press in such a tizzy. There is an anti-Palin book coming out. Two people were interviewed on a CBS morning show today, the experts on Sarah Palin. One of them who wrote the book happens to work at CBS. I’ve always said that the Democrats will tell us who they really fear. The Democrats will tell us who on our side really, really threaten them, and there’s no question that Sarah Palin is that. We had a good caller earlier, guy said, you know, it’s not just the Democrats, you know, the elite Republicans, they don’t like her, either, because she’s an average person. She’s a normal person and normal people are not welcome at the highest level of electoral politics. She doesn’t have the right pedigree. She doesn’t come from the right part of the country and therefore she doesn’t hobnob with the right kind of people. We’ve got Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America today and the media couldn’t wait. This is just one example of what was happening today all over television.
REPORTER: What about the congressional race in upstate New York where as we all know Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh intervened to push the moderate Republican candidate out of the race in favor of a conservative candidate. Well, it seems to have handed victory to the Democrat.
RUSH: They’re doing anything they can to ignore Virginia and New Jersey. So the talking points are, ‘Limbaugh and Palin lost.’ Intervene. I have never been to Watertown, New York. I have never spoken to Doug Hoffman. Although, as the titular head of the Republican Party, I, of course, was behind fixing the mess, which was Dede Scozzafava. I forced her out. I single-handedly intervened, I forced Dede Scozzafava out. If I coulda got her name off the ballot I would have done that but I only had so much power. Sarah Palin is not damaged at all, to answer the guy’s question. Sarah Palin is not damaged at all by the good showing of Doug Hoffman. Not at all. She’s not damaged, folks.
I had some people over for dinner last night, and it happened, I lost my temper, I started throwing a napkin, ’cause I got questions. These are my friends, people that listen to my show, these are people that I talk to a lot, and these guys, one of them, started spouting questions to me that just reflected every criticism of her that has been in the media. The Katie Couric interview and I said, ‘Look, the –‘ well, I’m not going to tell you what I said ’cause it was waste. But I went on for five minutes, and I’m pounding the table and I’m throwing my napkin and picking it up and throwing it again, and everybody at the table is spellbound, and when I finish they all pick up their napkins and they start throwing them, and the guy says, ‘All right that’s what I wanted to hear.’ I really have a tough time juxtaposing what I have seen with my own eyes, what I heard her say, I’ve heard her speak, I’ve read what she’s written, I have seen the crowds that she draws, I know what she thinks about things, and I don’t buy any of the conventional wisdom about it, that she needs bone up on this, she needs to bone up on that.
For crying out loud, folks, don’t anybody tell me, please, that in a contest of what we got going on in this country now, led by Barack Obama, that Sarah Palin wouldn’t be a welcome change. So would any of our people. Don’t misunderstand. But, for crying out loud, I don’t understand the disconnect. I understand the liberals being afraid of her. I think that should make us be confident in her. But this inability that some people have to distance themselves from the impact of mainstream media, Democrat Party criticism, is really curious and troubling to me. I’m not saying she’s perfect. I’m not endorsing her. I’m not doing anything of the sort. But I’m going to tell you something, this woman is one hell of a strong woman. They have tried literally to crucify her. They have done everything in every venue of media, popular culture media, music, television, books, they’ve done everything to destroy her reputation, her image, her life, they’ve even brought her kids into it. ‘Well, Rush, she brought her kids into it.’ Well, every politician brings their kids into it, but most politicians’ kids end up being off-limits, and she’s still hanging in there.
She obviously has a deep belief of the principles that she holds and she considers it very important. So I don’t think the results of the Hoffman race is going to damage her, give her any kind of a problem. And I don’t know if anybody knows that she actually intends to run for president. Everybody is assuming so, because of the pattern here, the track is similar to the path that others who have done this have taken. But we’ll just have to wait and see. Regardless, I don’t think the thing with Hoffman hurt her at all. It didn’t hurt me. Can I be honest about something? For twenty-one years, whenever something like the New York race happens, ‘Hey, Limbaugh bombs out, Limbaugh blew it, Limbaugh rejected by New York-23.’ When Clinton was elected: ‘Limbaugh rejected, what’s Limbaugh gonna talk about?’ And I’m still here more popular than ever terms of ratings. We’ve never had a down business year. I know I’m not a politician running for office seeking votes, you know, getting votes is much different than getting listeners. But nevertheless, it hasn’t hurt. It arguably has helped. Same thing with Palin. The criticism of Palin, it’s so transparent anyway. I mean if you’re going to say that Palin really is harmed by what happened in New York, I tell you what, Obama five times in New Jersey, and the same people are saying, it’s not about him, wasn’t about him.