RUSH: Melissa in Fort Worth, Texas. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to get your opinion on why Herman Cain isn’t getting more attention in the media, whether it’s TV or print media. Half the time they don’t even list him as a candidate for president, and the polls that they’re, you know, reflecting, you know, various newspaper articles… I mean, when you see him at these Republican debates, I know that some of the time Fox has on that device that measures, you know, the audience response? And he seems to be getting the highest numbers. He seems to be, you know, very smart gentleman that a lot of people like. Yet he’s not getting the media attention that I think that he very well deserves. I mean, if Herman Cain didn’t go to the CNN Republican debate, I don’t even know if his name would have ever been mentioned on CNN.
RUSH: Right. I know what you mean.
CALLER: I don’t understand it. (giggles)
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And by that they mean serious in terms of the ability to win, not that he’s really serious —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — in meaning this; they just don’t think he’s got a chance.
CALLER: It’s a little bit like what you were talking about earlier, substance versus, you know, the Mitt Romneys of the world who have the perfect (garbled) hair.
RUSH: Yeah, there’s no question that that’s a component, too, absolutely.
CALLER: I mean, he’s definitely got some substance. It’s unfortunate that the Republican Party is reducing itself to looks alone and whether or not somebody can read off of a teleprompter. (giggles)
RUSH: Well, I don’t know that the Republican Party has done that. Remember, the people telling me that that’s what it’s gonna take are Republicans. They were telling me that’s what the Republicans better start doing. They better stop worrying about somebody who’s pure, true, and blue on policy and substance; they better find somebody who can lie and is good-looking, cause that’s what people want. The people are not deep, they’re shallow, and they don’t start paying attention ’til two days before the election (or three, maybe two weeks) and that’s when you go after ’em big time. You don’t waste any campaign money now. You don’t waste a whole lot of time on debates. You wait ’til people are really paying attention, and you just hit ’em with good looks and say whatever you have to say to get elected. That was the theory I heard last night, and the theory was that’s what Republicans don’t do and that’s why they lose. It’s what the Democrats do do, and they win.
CALLER: Then nobody goes to the polls to vote anyway, so (giggles) it’s very unfortunate.
RUSH: Well, not true. Presidential races, the turn out has been pretty large last three, four times around.
CALLER: I mean, relative to maybe the — you know, the previous three —
RUSH: Relative to previous presidential races, yeah, turn out has been pretty big.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: You know, I’m like you. I heard that theory, and I know there’s an element of truth to it to some people. The fact that that might describe a majority of voters, that’s not pleasant to contemplate. But your question about Herman Cain. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched golf on television, but I’ll give you a little analogy. During the Masters, Rory McIlroy was leading the tournament, and he was blowing everybody away (just as he did recently last weekend at the US Open). On Sunday, after the front nine, he had a meltdown, and they stopped covering him altogether. You couldn’t get a single shot of Rory McIlroy. They stuck with the leaders. I was watching it, and I wanted to see McIlroy. I wanted to see: How is he handling this? And the people I was watching with said, “Eh, he’s out of it, Rush. They haven’t got time to show you people who aren’t gonna win.” I said, “Well, I would like to see how he’s dealing with this.” But Rory McIlroy went from three days of start-to-finish coverage like Tiger used to get, and the minute he dropped out of the lead by two strokes, you never heard of him. It’s just the way the media is.
CALLER: So, are you telling me that the media determines who’s gonna win over a year before the election and then decides —
RUSH: No. No. No, no, no, no. I’m telling you that that’s why they’re not covering who they’re not covering now. Not that they’re right. I’m not telling you that they’re right.
CALLER: I mean, how can they win —
RUSH: Also it’s not their job —
CALLER: — if they’re not covered by the media? That’s what the unfortunate part is because I think Herman Cain has a lot to offer and he’s got a lot of substance.
RUSH: Yeah, I agree, but it’s not their job to get him coverage.
CALLER: But they’re covering people that — they’re covering candidates that — didn’t even attend some of the initial Republican debates.
RUSH: Right. They’re covering candidates that they hope will embarrass the Republicans. They’re covering candidates that they hope will make people not inclined to vote Republican.
CALLER: That’s my point, that the liberal media —
RUSH: Well, that’s because media is not fair and balanced. The media, they’re part of the Democrat political apparatus.
CALLER: They’re always very shortsighted, in my opinion.
RUSH: Well, for them, yeah, but it is what it is. So if Herman Cain is to get noticed, he’s gonna have to do something himself that gets him noticed — and here comes the old debate. You do it with substance or you do it with, you know, walking around wearing women’s underwear. Heck.
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RUSH: Folks, I don’t want to mention any names out there ’cause I frankly don’t particularly like the names I would have to mention. They’re already making fun of Herman Cain and the way he talks on television. They’re already doing that. Now, they never did that with the Bamster, as you know. It was just the exact opposite. Obama, oh, my God, look at the crease of his slacks. Oh, my God, what a smart guy. David Brooks said he was destined not just to be president, he was gonna be a great one because of the crease in his slacks. And we’re supposed to rely on that, conservative columnist for the New York Times. That’s the criteria which we are supposed to accept Obama being qualified. “Smart guy, very serious candidate, Rush, very, very serious, a man of incredible depth, you can hear it. He’s incredibly nuanced. He’s elegant in the way he speaks, very, very eloquent and elegant.”
You identify yourself as a black conservative and you may as well be admitting that you’re a whore or a prostitute, an Uncle Tom, you’ve been bought off, whatever, you aren’t real. It’s not possible for a black person to be conservative. The way the media and the left look at this country, a black person who is conservative is a black person who would agree with the whole notion of slavery and would wanna be a slave owner. That’s how bad it is that is how devoid and distanced from reality that they are. But I mean the media will not even admit that somebody like Herman Cain can exist. Look what they do to black Americans who identify themselves as conservatives.
Now, if you want to talk genuine intelligence, if you want to talk real depth of education, Shelby Steele, writer, professor, economics, stuff appears in the Wall Street Journal. Thomas Sowell, a brilliant economist, philosopher, an incredibly deep individual. Our sometimes guest host, Walter Williams, ditto. These people don’t exist. They are black conservatives. They are traitors. They don’t deserve any legitimacy at all as far as the media is concerned, as far as the left is concerned. They don’t even deserve respect. Legitimacy of any kind. And, of course, it’s the height of unfairness. That’s what it is. And that’s one of the hard, cold realities of politics. It is what it is, and you have to deal with what it is day in and day out.
Politics is the epitome, just like meritocracy in sports, it’s the epitome of there’s no such thing as fair. And a lot of people think that life is not fair and that the attempt to make it fair, thus the attempt to legislate outcomes, is destructive and devoid of any reality, because it cannot be done. Genuine fairness has been defined by these people as everybody is the same, everybody finishes the same. Everybody gets up, if they survive the abortion. They go to work. They get a job, and they all earn the same amount of money. They all live in the same kind of house. They all pollute just as little or as much as their neighbors. They all have the same kinds of cars. They all have the same kind of kids, who all go to the same kind of college.
That’s the utopia. Everybody’s the same. And to make that happen we’re gonna take away money from people who don’t conform, people who have too much, whose car is too big, whose houses are too big, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll take what they’ve got and we’ll give it to you and we’ll make everybody the same.” Flies in the face of what everybody left, right, independent, Libertarian, everybody in politics knows there is no such thing as fairness. Not only is there no fairness in politics, there really isn’t any fairness in life, when you get down to brass tacks.
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RUSH: Jerry, Little Rock, Arkansas, hi. You’re on Open Line Friday with El Rushbo. Great to have you here, sir.
CALLER: Rush, good to talk to you. Mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Longtime listener, first-time caller. I think you have left your putt a little bit short on your analysis of Herman Cain, though, and why the media is ignoring him. I agree with your first premise, hey, they don’t think he’s gonna win so let’s ignore him. But I think the overriding factor is the traditional media sees the world through this prism of liberalism and they can’t see straight and they see a black man with conservative, articulate values as a threat to Obama, and that’s why they’re ignoring him. Can you imagine Obama and Herman Cain having a debate with the topic of race in the United States or minorities in the United States, Cain would school Obama just like Netanyahu schooled him on the Palestinian issue.
RUSH: You may have a point. I hope you’re right about that.
CALLER: I think that’s exactly right. This is how these people think. I know how they think. I told your screener this. Obama went to Occidental College for two years.
RUSH: Well, yeah, I know how they think, too. And in a lot of cases they’re not really threatened by some of our nominees. In other cases they are. I hope you’re right about that with Cain. You could well be, too.
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