RUSH: Ron, El Segundo, California. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Good to be with you, and good luck with your wedding anniversary coming up.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that. Even I remembered it.
CALLER: I was just making a point about Obama and his competence. I think he’s a very, very good politician as far as tactics. He’s a very competent tactician.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: I don’t think, as you do, that he’s as incompetent. He may be more incompetent than competent, but I think he’s more competent than you and other conservative talk show hosts give him credit for. Uh, what is your view on that? Am I making a valid point here?
RUSH: Well, we’re going to have to define “competence.” If you want to talk strictly about political tactics, in order to achieve a desired result?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I don’t know. Everywhere you look a majority of people disagree with Obama. A majority oppose health care.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: A majority oppose his Financial Regulatory Reform proposal.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: So I think it’s a big myth that the guy is competent. I think what fools everybody to think he’s competent is that he sounds like an intellectual. He has a manner of speaking that conveys or connotes intellect, high intellect or being an intellectual.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But what is smart about what he’s doing?
CALLER: Well, I think in a way he does things that he thinks will be advantageous for him. For example, the Osama bin Laden killing or taking out of. I think he knows when to show himself to be a conservative. During the campaign, he showed himself to be very moderate. He said 95% will get a tax cut. He made comments about black fathers needing to be responsible that prompted Jesse Jackson to make that comment that he thought was off microphone.
RUSH: Yeah, but, see, now there’s a record to measure all of that stuff against — and that’s where he’s going to have big problems and come up short.
CALLER: And I think it’s very ironic that the liberal media did not fear not knowing anything about Barack Obama but fear Sarah Palin knowing nothing about her either in the sense that she is competent. She will be a great president, and she will help America move forward — and that’s a very, very blatant showing of what liberals really truly want for America.
RUSH: That is well stated in a number of ways. Because one of the things — and, again, anecdotal, just the past two, three days, including in the e-mails, all this controversy that has arisen here about Palin ever since Annette called here and said: “Rush, you’re missing the boat. The reason why women don’t like Palin is she’s a “10.” She’s good looking, and they’re just jealous.” The firestorm that inspired! It’s being talked about on other broadcasts all across the country, and the e-mails I’m getting obviously are in response to that, and the comments are based on that comment. There’s maybe two e-mails in this — and no phone calls — in this whole period of time (the last two-and-a-half days) disagreeing. Only two people said: “Rush, I don’t care about any of that. I just don’t think she’s qualified.”
I’ve only had two people say, “I don’t think she’s qualified.” Now, maybe that’s because her qualifications aren’t the subject being discussed, her appearance is. But even so, the door’s been open here to tell us why you don’t like Sarah Palin and nobody has said she’s not qualified. So here we’ve got Ron saying, “She’s going to be the greatest president ever. She’s going to move the country forward and do great things,” and the media is scared to death that’s going to be the case. They didn’t know anything about Obama and they don’t care where Obama’s taking the country. They don’t care. He’s right about that. We’re sitting around, we’re watching the country disintegrate in front of our eyes and they don’t care. All they care about is, “Will he continue to get away with it?”
Issue by issue it’s, “How will this affect Obama? How will this affect this re-election?”
Uh, Mr. Matthews, are you concerned that he’s destroying the economy?
“No, I only care about his re-election.”
They don’t care. They have no interest in that. Because everything in politics is a war. The decency, the goodness, what’s right for the country is not what’s on the table. The left is circling the wagons to protect their Weiner. They’re circling their wagons to protect Obama, they’re circling the wagons to protect liberalism. The country? “Meh, we’ll deal with that later.” The media think Obama is one of them. They think Palin is not one of them, even though she went to journalism school; Obama didn’t. The media believed they and Obama are one, that they are from the same class, that they are from the same ideological stripe and so forth. So there’s a kinship there. What he’s doing to the country policy wise they couldn’t care less. In fact, their frustration is that his approval numbers are not higher given how hard he’s trying and how “smart” he is and, “Why don’t people appreciate him as much as we do?”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just once again checked the e-mail. “Rush, what about this with Obama? You often talk about the question: Is he just full of fettered, leftist ideology or is he incompetent?” This is what this caller just brought up. I think, folks, it’s interesting and fun. It’s ultimately a waste of time to choose whether or not Obama’s incompetent, unqualified, what have you, or ideological. The fact that he is full fledged liberal socialist makes him incompetent as far as I’m concerned. If you have a modicum of intelligence, especially now, you have to understand it doesn’t work. So if you have a modicum of intelligence, you understand it doesn’t work and you persist with it, then we’re not talking about, “Are you an ideologue or are you incompetent?” We’re talking about something entirely, entirely different motivation, purpose or what have you.
We’re not talking about somebody’s accidentally screwing something up here. Whatever is going on, for whatever reason, it is purposeful. But to my way of thinking, incompetent and liberalism are one in the same. Incompetence and stupidity, liberalism, are one in the same within the political realm. That’s why it was so easy for me to say, “I hope he fails.” It didn’t even require much thought. You remember, the genesis of this was the Wall Street Journal, before the immaculation, was asking people to write 400 words on their hopes and dreams for the country and Obama and blah, blah, blah; and I said, “I don’t need 400 words. I can do it in four: ‘I hope he fails.'” Kablooey! (chuckles) That was January 16th, 2009.
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