RUSH: A massive, long story at the top of the fold on the front page of the Washington Post yesterday on last summer’s very feisty debt limit battle. It is a story. It’s very long. No way would I even recommend you read the whole thing. Well, I might recommend you read the whole thing. I wouldn’t read it to you; I couldn’t. It prints out to ten pages. Front page Washington Post. And what this story points out is that Obama purposely, intentionally lied to the American people when he told us that the Republicans were not interested in raising taxes, that they wanted a cuts-only solution to the debt crisis. It turns out that John Boehner and Eric Cantor had indeed offered $808 billion in tax increases. Obama lied. He just flat-out lied to the American people about the Republicans and their position in the debt negotiations. He flat-out lied.
That’s on the front page of the Washington Post. You have to read awhile to get to that in the story. There are a couple-three other things that were momentous about it as well. So that’s yesterday, front page Washington Post. This story paints Harry Reid and Pelosi as practically irrelevant. Where everybody thinks they’re part of the problem, part of the obstacles problem, this story makes it clear that they’re just up there to do Obama’s bidding but that Obama doesn’t know how to negotiate. This story points out that Obama’s incompetent when he negotiates because he lies. He told Boehner and he told the country that the Republicans were not willing to compromise in an area, and they were all along.
Boehner said, “I don’t know what to do about this.” By the way, I had a meeting with Boehner not long before that. This was last summer sometime, and I had a meeting with Boehner here at the EIB Southern Command some months before that. I just casually asked him what it was like working with Harry Reid. And he said, “You know, it’d surprise you. If it were just Reid and me we could get a deal done.” Of course I thought he was off. “Oh, gosh. Don’t tell me he really believes this.” He did. He said, “If it was just Reid and me we’d get a deal.” He said, “Harry gets it.” I said, “Oh my. (groan)” This story says that. Or pretty close to it.
This story in the front page of the Washington Post pretty much says that Boehner and Reid could and did work together, and that Obama is the whole problem. Obama was campaigning. Obama had to give his base something. Obama, the whole debt limit thing was a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller diversion. Yeah, he wanted the debt sealing raised but he could not afford for his base, lunatic fringe base, to see him as compromising at all. This is the bunch that talks about “compromise.” This is the bunch (along with the Republican establishment, too,) heralding the beauties and the wonders of compromise.
And here was Obama making it look like he was willing to compromise. He was the stone wall, and he lied in a national address to the nation! He lied in a prime-time address to the nation. And don’t take my word for it if you don’t want to. It’s the Washington Post.
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RUSH: Now, this debt deal. I’m gonna spend a little bit more time on this. I’m not gonna get into the whole nine-page story. But don’t forget: Obama wanted to be able to run against a do-nothing Congress. There was never — and I remember telling everybody in this audience back then — a time that I thought this. Let me take a break, and I’ll come back and tell you what I believe. The Republicans held all the cards. It was Obama that needed the deal. It was Obama that wants to spend the money beyond the debt limit. They held all the cards. But they believe they gotta compromise. “The American people,” their consultants told them, “think we gotta compromise.” So they tried to compromise and Obama still stuck it to ’em, all because he had to be able to run against a do-nothing Congress. There was no way he was gonna ever agree to a deal. That was the point.
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RUSH: Now, this debt deal. Folks, it is profound what the Washington Post reported. And the fact is, I don’t think MSNBC has talked about it. The Politico has a little bit of a piece on it, but I remember Mark Halperin, TIME Magazine, got suspended from MSNBC for couple days because he said that Obama had acted like a male body part. On this debt deal. He said, yeah, “Obama acted like a d—.” Male body part. Halperin’s point was that Obama didn’t want any grand bargain. It was all just posturing. Halperin has been vindicated now. Obama was acting that way.
And this is what I said. It was June 30th, after playing the clip from MSNBC, Halperin’s remark. I said, “Now, after they stopped giggling on the Scarborough show, Halperin made a good point. Obama does not want a deal. He really doesn’t want a deal. He wants the chaos. He wants all this to continue and that’s what generates happiness for him.” He cannot permit a deal with Congress when he’s setting up a campaign this year to run against a do-nothing Congress. There was never any way he was gonna deal. And what happened was Boehner said, “Okay, I’ll give you some tax increases,” and Obama panicked. “Oh, my God! Okay,” then he went out and lied to the country. That’s all he knew to do.
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RUSH: Now, folks, I want to add another interesting ingredient to this debt deal. Now that I’m not so compressed for time, let’s start at the beginning. Washington Post, huge front-page story. It’s by Peter Wallsten and two other Drive-By reporters. This Wallsten guy apparently has a very solid reputation. That might be at risk now since I’ve praised him, but that’s the breaks of the game. It can happen to Drive-By journalists. If I praise them they lose favor with all of their friends. But so be it. Wallsten and two others write this huge piece on the front page of the Washington Post.
Which, if you slog through it (and you don’t have to because I did), you learn that Obama intentionally lied to the American people in a prime-time address announcing the failure of the negotiations to expand the debt limit last summer. What this story points out that is that the Obama lie was telling the American people that the Republicans were demanding cuts to the budget only as a means of expanding the debt limit. “We’ll give you the debt limit increase, but you have to have some budget cuts.” Obama lied to the American people and said that was the intractable Republican position. When, in fact, Boehner and Eric Cantor had offered tax increases in the $800 billion range.
Now, to take you back nine months ago, I thought it was Obama who needed the deal. I thought the Republicans held all the cards. I thought that Boehner and the boys could hold out and demand anything. It’s Obama whose job is spending money. It’s Obama who needs the debt limit increased so he can continue to buy votes, expand government, whatever his plan is. What Boehner and the boys decided to do was essentially call his bluff. He was setting up to run against a do-nothing Congress. They said, “Okay, here you go.” Obama rejected it and then addressed the nation and lied. He told the American people that the Republicans were intractable, inflexible.
It was their way or the highway. They wouldn’t give an inch. When in fact they had given Obama — this is the key — everything he wanted. And that’s what he couldn’t afford. The trick that they played on Obama was giving him what he wanted. They forced Obama to reject that, then go do a national address — a prime-time address to the nation — and lie about it. Mark Halperin goes on MSNBC and calls Obama a male body part and gets suspended for a couple days for this, but ends up being vindicated. This story also, if you slog through it, illustrates that Obama is incompetent as a negotiator. What this story says is that he’s profoundly arrogant and afraid at the same time.
And also the story says that he doesn’t know nearly what he thinks he knows. He’s… I’ll use the word “ignorant.” Arrogant and ignorant. Arrogant condescension is the way Obama’s portrayed in this story in dealing with the Republicans. Also it points out that Reid and Pelosi were nonfactors. They took the heat but they had to follow Obama’s lead. So not only is he incompetent, he’s dishonest. Once he got what he asked for he moved the goalposts and did it in a prime-time address to the nation. But the story didn’t end there. From the New York Times, this is a story in July, July 23rd.
“Debt Ceiling Costs Collapse as Boehner Walks Out.” Then in August is when the country debt ceiling had its credit rating downgraded, August of 2011. We lost our AAA credit rating because the debt ceiling fell through, and we now know (thanks to the Washington Post) that it fell through because Obama refused to accept it. It had everything in it he wanted and that was the problem. His bluff was called. I think toward the end of the negotiations, Boehner and the Republicans just decided, “Okay, let’s see what happens,” because it was proving impossible to negotiate with him. Every day that they negotiated, Boehner and Cantor would hear things that had not been agreed to.
They would listen to Obama recount things that had not been discussed, basically making it up every day as a negotiating tactic to keep them off balance. Nobody would know this to this day. We’d only have speculation. Well, Boehner and the guys know it but had they made a big deal out of it, they would have just been accused of being crybabies and whiners. So, I don’t know the purpose of the story. I don’t know why the Washington Post ran this thing yesterday, and I don’t know why they spent so much time on it.
I don’t know why the Washington Post basically lets anybody who reads this story know that Obama was the single problem here; that he’s incompetent, arrogant and he lied to the nation in a prime-time address. I don’t know why they’re running this story. But, folks, I’m just gonna tell you here that there’s abject panic in the White House. And again, things can turn on a dime in the business of politics. Republicans could screw up tomorrow (that’s quite easy) and Obama would be back on a wave that nobody could stop him.
But as of right now, the polling data continues to just be devastating, including this piece at TheHill.com today which I shared with you in the previous half hour of the program.
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RUSH: Okay, that’s why. That’s why. I’m sitting here trying to figure out why the Washington Post would run such a story. Folks, it’s profound. I’m overusing that word. It’s remarkable because of its length. It’s a front-page story on Sunday, the most read issue of the week. Front page, top of the fold, right in the center of the page. Well, it turns out that the New York Times is going to do a story on the same subject. Now, I don’t know why. I don’t know why all of a sudden the debt deal from last summer has become such a matter of great interest. Bob Woodward is going to write a book on these debt negotiations. I don’t know why this has become such a big deal.
You know, we could hope. It was really a debacle. It’s a disaster. There’s a debt limit for a reason. Limit! The way Obama’s playing along (hell, all of Washington plays along) is the limit exists to be broken, the limit exists to be exceeded. Why even have a debt limit? But with this, this was… I don’t know how often presidents have intentionally lied, like this, in prime-time addresses to the American people. This was brazen. Because, again, Boehner and Cantor had given Obama everything he wanted, and he panicked. He rejected it because he didn’t want a deal. He wanted the Republicans as the ongoing enemy, the Republicans as the obstacles to good government, the Republicans as obstacles to welfare checks going out.
Remember Social Security checks? Remember all that? Obama said the government was going to shut down. The Republicans were shutting it down. That’s what he wanted was everybody thinking the Republicans gonna shut down the government. They gave him everything he wanted. So you’ve got the New York Times coming out with a story and Woodward writing a book about it. But Obama didn’t just lie. He referred to the Republicans as “hostage-takers.” Joe Biden, I think (my memory, I’m blessed with a good one) even said the Republicans were acting like “terrorists” during all of this. But it was Obama that called the congressional negotiators “hostage-takers” in the Bush tax cut debate December 2010 in the lame duck session.
That’s what he called them “hostage-takers.” But Biden did call them “terrorists” last August during the debt ceiling negotiations. Biden said the Republicans were “acting like terrorists” when they gave Obama everything he wanted. The New York Times story is gonna be in their magazine. They’re waiting eight months to do this? I’m gonna find a reason. I’m gonna find out what the answer to this question is. I’m fascinated. Why now? They could forget this. Nobody would ever go back to this. Maybe that’s it. Maybe somebody’s planning on it.