RUSH: Audio sound bite time, and I delayed this. I coulda done this in the first hour. We have sound bites about me. So let’s get started. Last night on the NBC Nightly News, this is a portion of a report by the correspondent Ron Mott about the South Carolina Republican primary.
MOTT: As the race moved to South Carolina this week, whispers about Romney’s business past became full-blown attacks.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Newt and Perry blew it the last two days.
MOTT: Prompting prominent conservative voices from Rush Limbaugh to several wealthy Republican donors to push back hard.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So now I am a prominent conservative. This varies from week to week, depending on what I’m saying. One week I’m irrelevant and just an entertainer. Another week I could just be making it all up and a liar. This week I’m a prominent, powerful, influential conservative. Last night on Fox, they have a show at five o’clock called The Five. You know why they call it The Five? No, it’s not five women, unless you count Beckel. No, no. It’s five people at five o’clock. They couldn’t name it after anybody because that person would have to get more money than the other four, and then they’d have ego problems.
You don’t even really know who the host of the show is. They rotate, do a pretty good job of this. The Five at five, and they can put anybody in there. They do have a regular rotation, and the rotation yesterday was Eric Bolling, a good guy from the Fox Business Network, and Beckel was in there, and I think Kimberly Guilfoyle is part of this group, Dana Perino’s part of the group, and Angela “Tarantula” is part of the group. Republican consultant, Angela “Tarantula.” And they were talking here about — well, Eric Bolling says, “Obama lost 1.7…” (interruption) what? (laughing) No, no, no, no, no, no. Bolling said, “Obama lost 1.7 million jobs on his watch. Social engineering in the American economy doesn’t seem to be working.” That prompted Beckel.
BECKEL: Since his stimulus package was put into effect he’s actually gained 1.4 million jobs. Let’s talk about what Rush said. To say that the President of the United States is a sworn enemy of capitalism is a…
BOLLING: Accurate.
BECKEL: …pretty outrageous…
BOLLING: Accurate.
BECKEL: … statement.
RUSH: No, that’s accurate. That’s Bolling saying “accurate.” But Beckel is saying it’s pretty outrageous. No, it’s true. Maybe not sworn. Now, I don’t think I’ve said Obama’s a sworn enemy. I don’t think Obama stood up and said — well, now, wait a minute. When he went to Osawatomie, Kansas, he did say America’s never worked. In describing capitalism, not by name, but he’s… in fact, he has mentioned capitalism as not working, as being unfair and so forth. Regardless, he is an enemy of it. There’s no doubt about it. Most Democrats are. I don’t know why Beckel’s so nervous about this. Most Democrats are enemies of capitalism. They don’t like it.
Last night on MSNBC, The Last Word, the host Lawrence O’Donnell spoke with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes about attacks on former Governor Romney during the Republican primary. And O’Donnell said, “Sarah Palin’s over here, Rush Limbaugh’s over here, sharp disagreements. This is even more, it seems to me, than the Obama campaign coulda hoped for. They may have hoped for a longer contest for the nomination, but they couldn’t have hoped for a better fight.” They’re talking here about Newt and Perry going after Romney this way. Oh, Obama loves this, this is fabulous.
HAYES: There is a way in which it’s feasible to conceive of this as inoculating in some ways. There is a argument I think you can make that it makes the story when these attacks come directly from the president or allied super PACs in the fall have less of a bite because people kind of know the story and they’ve made up their mind on it. The analogy here is if the Jeremiah Wright tape had surfaced in October as opposed to April, that would have been much harder for the president. That may end up benefiting the campaign in the long run.
RUSH: So this guy is saying, no, no, Mr. O’Donnell, you might not be right about this. It could well be that this coming out now gets it out of the way no matter that Obama will bring it up again. This gets it out of the way. Romney has a chance to deal with it, defend it, see how he does it. So they’re a little worried. The bottom line is they are a little worried on the Obama side this stuff is coming out, but notice that they draw an analogy to the Jeremiah Wright tapes. They are calling this the equivalent. Romney working with Bain is the same as the Jeremiah Wright tapes, and that’s not true. That is insane. What Jeremiah Wright tapes anyway? I mean, I know what he’s talking about, but there aren’t any Jeremiah Wright tapes other than the DVDs that he sells. His church sells them. There aren’t any missing tapes out there, secret tapes that people took. What is this Jeremiah Wright tapes? They’re sermons.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This afternoon on CNN’s Newsroom. It’s hosted by a guy named Don Lemon and he was discussing the Republican primary with the editor of ConservativeBlackChick.com, Crystal Wright. Snerdley, have you ever heard of Crystal Wright? It does sound like a competing lemonade, Crystal Wright, ConservativeBlackChick.com. Have you heard of that? Well, that’s who she is, Crystal Wright, W-r-i-g-h-t. And Don Lemon said to her, “Okay, Crystal, Rush Limbaugh, Rudy Giuliani, among the rivals saying to Newt and to Perry, ‘Knock it off,’ this stuff against Romney.”
WRIGHT: Well, you know, the reality is people like Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove like to think that they’re calling the shots. They kind of remind me of American Idol judges, you know, the so-called Republican establishment. And what Newt’s rise in South Carolina shows us is that the voters have not finished deciding.
RUSH: This woman might be for Newt. So now I somehow have made it into the Republican establishment with Karl Rove, but all we are is American Idol judges. We’ll come back, we’ll take a break — (interruption) oh, you’re at the website now? ConservativeBlackChick.com, is that what it is? Well, is it worth checking out? Okay, I won’t.