RUSH: John Podhoretz writing at Commentary magazine: “ObamaÂ’s Poll Troubles Suggest His 2012 Strategy Is Backfiring — The fallout from two major polls yesterday — Washington Post/ABC and New York Times/CBS — finding measurable and significant drops in support for Barack Obama nationwide during the past month has instantly changed the national conversation. Obama is in trouble, and thereÂ’s no pretending he isnÂ’t. One poll might have been viewed as an outlier, but two polls taken around the same time with the same sample size of American adults canÂ’t be dismissed as statistical noise.”

And what Podhoretz goes on to say here is that what the president’s trying to do is impossible. He’s trying to run as an outside-Washington candidate. He writes, “Obama has decided to go to the American people with this story to tell: I canÂ’t work with these lunatics. And every time he does — during and after the debt-ceiling debacle in particular — he and his supporters are surprised to find the public assigns him a considerable portion of the blame for the inability to strike deals and move forward.” It’s just like we learned yesterday from a book written by an accredited liberal.

Obama orders these dollars spent on green energy.

His aides come back and report, “There aren’t really any new jobs.”

Obama says, “How can this be? We’re investing in infrastructure!”

Now Obama’s wondering: Look, I’m out there telling everybody I can’t work with these lunatics in Congress — Boehner’s a nut, they’re all nuts — so what do you mean they think I’m part of the problem?”

“Uh, you’re president, Mr. Obama, and you are the definition of ‘Washington.'”

Podhoretz: “The president knows the public loathes Washington, and so [Obama] has decided to run against Washington. This is usually a Republican strategy and for a good reason — Republican politicians do generally hew to the belief that the federal government is too big and too intrusive and needs to be checked. Barack Obama has presided over the most rapid growth in the size and power of the federal government since the Second World War. He has empowered Washington, and everyone knows it. …

“For him to turn around and effectively tell the electorate, ‘I hate this town like you do, so reelect me because I share your values,’ is, to put it mildly, not credible,” and that’s what he’s trying to do: Present himself as an outsider in a town filled with lunatics. He’s the chief lunatic! He’s the reason for most of the problems this country has encountered the last three years. Not George W. Bush. Not any predecessor. Barack Obama has a record. He’s trying to run from that record and pretend that he hasn’t been president for three years. If you listen to his campaign, you’ll note that. You’ll scratch your head and say, “This guy sounds like he hasn’t even been in town for three years.” That’s the strategy here that Podhoretz is discussing and points out won’t work.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. The White House is so shaken by yesterday’s polls that they are now using them to beg for more money. We have people that are on their fundraising mailing lists as spies, and they are begging for more money off of those poll results yesterday. They were shocked, shaken to the core by the results in both the ABC/Washington Post and New York Times/CBS polls.