RUSH: Obama is making a few of his own. Yesterday, he claimed to be a ‘fiscal conservative.’ The way he says he’s a fiscal conservative is that he’s gonna eliminate 10% of government contractor payments, which is about $40 billion. But why is he out there trying to say he’s a fiscal conservative? I thought ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and all this unbridled liberalism was what people wanted. I thought people wanted bigger government! In fact Obama is all upset. Where is the sound bite? (shuffling papers) I’m all over the place today. Let’s see. Yeah. Grab 18. Here’s Obama. He’s out there and trying to make himself out to be a fiscal conservative, now. He was on the Today Show with Matt Lauer, and Matt Lauer said, ‘Look, if I’m a voter and I’m trying to decide whether I want to vote for you or McCain, don’t I have a right to know — right now, from you — which of these things are going to get hit by the budget ax before I vote for you?’
OBAMA: Although we are potentially providing $700 billion in available money to the Treasury, we don’t anticipate that all that money gets spent right away and we don’t anticipate that all that money is lost. How we’re going to structure that in — in — in budget terms, it still has to be decided. Does that mean that I can do everything that I’ve called for in this campaign right away? Probably not. I think we’re going to have to phase it in and a lot of it is going to depend on what our tax revenues look like.
RUSH: Whoa! You’re going to be shocked. If you start raising people’s taxes, you’re going to have to less revenue, sir. So the bailout could delay Obama’s spending. Now all of a sudden he’s gotta start talking about being a fiscal conservative. But the piece de resistance for Obama yesterday was that he promised to put every piece of legislation that crosses his desk up on the Internet so everybody can read it, five days before he signs it. The only problem is Clinton started that back in the nineties! Obama promised to do what’s already being done. Now do we ask ourselves, ‘Does he really not know this?’ I guess he hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to know that they do this, that the Clinton administration started this whole process of legislation going up on the Internet so everybody can look at it, whoever wants to — and he doesn’t even know that, or if he does, he’s just pandering. Who knows?
But regardless, the bloom has certainly come off of the Obama rose.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I saw something, and this is how the conventional wisdom in the media works. It was either Saturday or Sunday, days run together. I do show prep every day. It was a political story by my old buddy Jonathan Martin, who was very fair and first out of the box with my response to Obama’s Spanish-language ad that was full of lies and out of context quotes and so forth. He ran this piece that this economic collapse and financial mess was going to give Obama a boost because Democrats just naturally benefit from economic decline. And of course then McCain had been out there saying something different every day, but guess what? It hasn’t translated into big support for Obama. None of the rules are working here. None of the conventional wisdom is working. The Democrats ought to be winning this by 20 points, the Republicans ought to be having no chance whatsoever in the House and the Senate, according to the conventional wisdom. And everything’s in play. The Senate’s in play, the House is in play, the White House clearly in play, Obama in big trouble, but they have these axioms, these narratives that a souring economy, when a Republican president is in office, will naturally lead. Problem is, that they’ve been on this tack for seven years. They’ve been trying to run down the US economy for seven years. People are tired of hearing it.
The economy is actually fine. It’s just when Wall Street has these crises happen, people’s emotional reservoirs are empty. I mean, we’ve already been told we’re in a recession for all these months and years when we haven’t been in one. Michael Barone has a piece, ‘The old economic rule doesn’t work. Financial distress does not push voters to Democrats.’ It’s at Creators Syndicate. A lot of reasons here he gives. I don’t have time to read the entire piece to you, but we’ll link to it at RushLimbaugh.com. Interestingly, post-convention polls show McCain’s running at least as well as Bush in 2004, in Michigan and Ohio. Ohio was supposed to be impossible this year, folks, because of Republican corruption there. The governor, Bob Ney with Jack Abramoff, member of Congress. We’re supposed to lose Ohio by 20 points, and McCain’s up four. So recent state tax increases have failed to bolster ailing economies, Michigan and Ohio. Gallup shows Democrats with only a three percentage point edge in the generic House vote, used to be double digits. Rasmussen shows Democrats ahead only five percentage points in party affiliation. The old rule that economic distress moves voters towards Democrats doesn’t seem to be operating, and of course there are reasons why they’re not operating, many and varied reasons. One is that there are other factors. You talk about weight. Other factors weighing more on people’s minds.