RUSH: Let’s go to MSNBC last night, Hardball with Chris Matthews, spoke with Salon.com’s news editor Steve Kornacki about the Republican Party. And Matthews said, ‘Republicans are doing very well in polls as the ‘no’ party, people unhappy with the economy, unhappy with the direction of the country right now, Republicans are benefiting in terms of poll numbers, but when you get the reality of the Republican Party, you get sticky business: Sarah Palin, extreme polarizer, people think she’s nowhere near the weight you have to be to even be thought of as presidential material. And then you have other people in the party who think she’s just dandy. It seems like there’s a difference between how popular they become because of the unpopularity of the Democrats, and yet they’re not ready for primetime. Steve, what do you think about this?’ If I were Steve Kornacki, I’d say, ‘What did you just say? What do you want me to answer?’ But Kornacki thought he got it and here is his answer.
KORNACKI: The Republicans are really in danger here I think of falling into a trap. That’s the thing you have to look at with the Republican Party. The party of Sarah Palin, the party of Rush Limbaugh, can win in 2010. But that same party can’t turn around, I believe, and win in 2012. And the trap for the Republicans is if they have a very good November, if they pick up 25, 30 House seats or more, if they pick up five or more Senate seats, they’re going to take it as vindication for their strategy for 2009-2010, and that’s going to set up for real trouble in 2012.
RUSH: Now, this guy is supposedly some brainiac at Salon.com. I don’t know how the Republicans could take victory in 2010 as a vindication of their strategy when there isn’t one. What’s happening here, Mr. Kornacki, is that independents and Democrats are running as far away and as fast as they can from Obama, and Obama’s still going to be there in 2012. Ha-ha! What this guy is trying to say, ‘You Republicans don’t think conservatism is going to win for you because that’s not what’s going to win for you.’ Yeah. Falling into the trap of winning big by going right. And then Jesse Ventura. 
Now, do you remember when he was governor? Jesse Ventura would come on this show, we were buds. Well, I mean not close friends but we were buds and I ran into Jesse Ventura out at the golf tournament, he was nice as he could be. Now Jesse Ventura is on Larry King Live last night, got some sort of television show, and Larry King said, while popping the suspenders, ‘What do you think of the American tea party, huh?’
VENTURA: This is just more of a right-wing movement to try to make it look like we’re turning socialist or something. The state of the Hawaii has had state-run health care for over 40 years and it works fantastic there. In fact, Rush Limbaugh even got treated there and said how great it was before he found out that it was state-run health care.
RUSH: It was a private hospital. How many times have I had to explain this? The libs are all out there trying to say that I went to a socialist health care system and came back praising it. I paid for every penny of it. Nobody else in Hawaii paid for it. It was a private hospital with private doctors and everything else. Oh well, just more of the same.