RUSH: Last night on Hardball on MSNBC, Matthews interviewed Huffing and Puffington Post political reporter Sam Stein. Now, wait ’til you hear this. Who is responsible for making Obama veer so far to the left? Who could be responsible for this? Question: ‘Reagan did a lot on his first year, lot of presidents, George W., they think it’s his first year, I didn’t go, but he did. They tend to get credit for them, to get reelected. This time there seems to be a disconnect. Maybe it’s because he wanted to be progressive things and not just cut taxes.’ Now, that… I don’t know how you answer that question. It’s coherent, but Sam Stein takes a stab at answering this.
STEIN: Sure, well, there’s the only things two things here. One is that, you know, the galvanizing force in the campaign, 2008, was that he was gonna bring civility to politics. Well, that’s a two-way street. You need to have the other side —
MATTHEWS (interrupting): How do you do that in a world of Rush Limbaugh and — and Glenn Beck —
STEIN: You don’t, and that’s the problem.
MATTHEWS: — setting the tone and then forcing the left to respond to that and the Congress and in the media and forcing a kind of an environment in which it’s all polarized. How do you say, ‘Well, I’ll be a reasonable center-left politician in that environment?’
RUSH: You heard right: I, El Rushbo, forced Obama to the left. Obama was elected and he was gonna bring civility. He was gonna lower the sea levels. Speaking of that, have you seen where Obama’s travel itinerary might change — he might have to come home sooner — because that volcano eruption is gonna make flying into the volcanic dust problematic? Why? The guy was gonna lower the sea levels. Why can’t he do something about the volcanic eruption? Something as insignificant as a volcanic eruption is going to change a travel itinerary of Little Barry? That’s what they’re calling him in Indonesia. So it is I, El Rushbo. Obama walks into Washington; he’s gonna be all civil and he’s gonna be polite.
We’re going to have a new era of everybody getting along with everybody. We’re gonna bring civility to politics, but, ‘It’s a two-way street, you need on the other side,’ and the other side was me, and I, of course, didn’t permit it, and therefore that forced Obama to the left.