RUSH: As you know, profanity and anger spill over in a House Democrat caucus meeting. Here’s Howard Fineman last night on Countdown talking about it. There was one guy out there, ‘F’ the president! F’ the president!’ All these people, the Democrats were saying this.
FINEMAN: It was pretty startling. There was sotto voce, apparently, you know, not too loud, an ‘F’ the president,’ there was a ‘No F-ing way.’ There was a ‘He F’d it up.’ There was a lot of anger. And, frankly, the president’s appearance before this same group of people yesterday, when he tried to explain his side of things, didn’t help. As a matter of fact, it just made things worse. They lost the election in many cases because they championed the previous position the president took. Now they’re being asked to abandon it. They’re angry. They feel ignored, which they were.
RUSH: There’s a part of me that says I ought to shut up ’cause these people do not know how good they’ve got it here. They really do think that this is a supply-side deal that’s on the table. They really do think that tax cuts for the rich are happening here and they’re not in any way, shape, manner, or form.
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RUSH: Jim Moran of Virginia. He said, ‘This is a lack of leadership on the part of Obama. I don’t know where the ‘F’ Obama is on this or anything else. They’re AWOL.’ Moran was talking about Obama’s lack of leadership at Gitmo as well as the tax deal because Gitmo’s not closed yet.
Here, let’s go to the audio sound bites and continue. Peter DeFazio, this is last night on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and they’re talking about the House Democrat caucus, the tax compromise. O’Donnell says, ‘We saw Democrat members of the House sign the letter saying they absolutely would not ever vote for a bill that didn’t have the public option in it for health care. Over a hundred signatures like that, every one of them voted for a bill that didn’t have it.’ But it does. You see, at the end it does because what will happen is that private insurance, the private health care insurance industry is being turned into essentially utilities, and then they’ll go out of business and be taken over by the government and that’s how you’re gonna get the public option. It always was that way. They’re gonna go to Canadian single payer. It’s gonna happen, it may take a few years, but it is gonna happen. It just didn’t happen with the signature of the president on this bill, and the left got ticked off. So O’Donnell says, ‘These nonbinding sentiments that come out of the House are having less of an impact when they land out here with us, can you understand why we are doubting what the power is of these things?’
DEFAZIO: I’ve been here 24 years, never has a Democratic caucus taken a position against a Democratic president like we did today and it was nearly unanimous. So far as I know, only one person out of the whole caucus voted no. Before we voted, the press outside beyond the closed doors in the hallway could hear the chants, you know from inside saying, ‘Just say no, just say no,’ before a vote on my resolution. We’ve been doing, since George Bush came to office, supply side, trickle down economics and President Obama just doubled down on that.
RUSH: Whoa. Well, this is what we’re up against. Not only are they wrong, they’re just plain stupid, just plain stupid. The last two years have been George Bush supply-side economics? The last two years have been a dream for these people: national health care, trillions and trillions of dollars of deficit spending, and they think that they’re saddled with George Bush supply-side, trickle-down economics. I knew these people were angry. I really didn’t think they were this dumb. Barney Frank last night, MSNBC, question: ‘What do you know about the nature of the seeming rancor between the White House and the House?’
FRANK: It’s fairly strong and I wish it hadn’t been there. But I have to say that I blame the president for it. It’s one thing to have a difference of opinion. And I was saying, look, I disagree with him, but let’s not demonize each other.
RUSH: Well, this continues. There’s Barney upset now that the White House is demonizing them. Has Obama said ‘F’ you to them? I mean not to stick up for Obama here. So Obama’s demonizing them in the House, you know, these Democrats are talking about their own president. This is Lloyd Doggett, Democrat, Texas, after a meeting of the Democrat caucus he went out and had a little press conference and said this.
DOGGETT: We listened carefully to what the vice president had to say about it. He was very articulate and presented it in a very reasonable way. But we’ve evaluated and said if it is take it or leave it, we’ll leave it.
RUSH: Biden articulate. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. That would be a first. Ha-ha. Biden articulate! he-he-he. Doggett got a question this morning from Chris Jansing at MessNBC, said, ‘The President’s argument is that this is the alternative to what you’re talking about is for everybody, including those people not making a lot of money in your district, waking up on January 1st with a big tax hike. Are you prepared for that to happen if that’s what it takes?’
DOGGETT: I’m prepared to work until January 1st to see that we get middle-class tax relief without a bonanza to the billionaires that won’t create a single new job.
JANSING: And if it doesn’t happen?
DOGGETT: We have plenty of time in January to address this problem without having any adverse effect. I understand the false sense of urgency that has been built here to justify this deal and all the claims that have been made.
RUSH: And Anthony Weiner, last night he showed up on CNN, The Situation Room, and the analyst, Gloria Borger, ‘If it comes back to the table and the Republicans say, ‘We’re not gonna vote for anything that doesn’t include these tax cuts for the wealthy,’ which, by the way, are $95 billion of this whole cut package, will you walk away from it?’
WEINER: It’s funny how everything is couched in, ‘Well, the Republicans won’t go along if dot, dot, dot.’ Well you know what? There are other people in Congress. We control the House, the Senate and the presidency right now. We should be driving a very hard forceful bargain and trying to rally the American people to our side.
RUSH: Well, go for it. You’re not gonna to succeed at that. You guys just had the American people throw you overboard. But he is right about one thing. Right now they do have all the power and they don’t have to do a single bit of compromising if the deadline is December 31st. This is why I’m saying, why are we dealing with them now? Wait ’til the cavalry gets there, wait ’til we run the show. Doesn’t that also make sense, especially when you look at how little we’re getting outta all this.