RUSH: Rich in White Plains, New York. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I just watched Martha MacCallum interviewing Mitt Romney on the Fox News Channel, and she was hammering him on his bad poll numbers with women.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait just a second.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Martha? Martha’s on from 9 to 11 in the morning, and you’re just watching her?
CALLER: Well, I saw her. I didn’t just —
RUSH: How long ago? Are you sure it was Martha that did that?
CALLER: I’m almost positive. Maybe she was filling in. I know, that is unusual, isn’t it?
RUSH: Well, because Megyn Kelly is on right now. Martha is on from 9 to 11. Unless they made Martha work for her lunch today and they kept her on after 11, I don’t know.
CALLER: Maybe I was watching a clip from earlier today.
RUSH: Well, that’s entirely possible. Okay, so Martha was haranguing Romney on the “war on women”?
CALLER: Oh, yeah, like it was the end of the world. She was like, “Oh, my God, what are you gonna do? What do you have to say?” And he couldn’t bring himself to say that this is a fabricated issue that started with him, you know, back in the ABC debate four months ago. All he did in response was to quote women’s jobless numbers under the Obama administration and —
RUSH: Well, that’s not a bad thing to do. But you’ve gotta do it in a credible way when you try to pull that off. That should be the focus. Whenever this phony war on women comes up, that has to be the focus. The war on women is Obama’s. Wait a minute, I might have this. Wait just a second. Yep, we have it. Grab audio sound bite number 17. Hang on there, Rich. It was this morning, so you saw a clip. This is Martha MacCallum interviewing Romney. She said, “We’ve already heard where they’re gonna head with you, that you’re out of touch, a rich guy. Folks like Warren Buffett want to do the right thing and you should also want to do the right thing, pay a little bit more, pay your fair share.”
ROMNEY: He’s really trying to divert from the failure of his record, which is that he has not created jobs; he’s lost 800,000 jobs during his presidency. And, by the way, do you know what percentage of those jobs lost were lost by women? Over 92% of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women. His policies have been really a war on women. So he wants to divert from that and see if we can’t find someone to attack, some scapegoat.
RUSH: There’s nothing wrong with that, Rich. All she was doing, her question, basically, “We’ve already heard what they’re going to head with you, that you’re out of touch.” She was basically asking, “Are you prepared for what they’re gonna say?” She was not attacking him. She was saying, “Here’s what’s coming. Are you ready for it?”
CALLER: Well, you know, Rush, I think the point I’m trying to make is what Republican candidate is gonna have the guts to point out the Drive-By Media is comprised 90% liberal and that —
RUSH: None of ’em. None of ’em. Wait a second. It isn’t gonna happen because the one thing you don’t do when you run for office is complain about anything, especially the media. He’s not gonna do this. He’s not gonna point out how this is unfair. He could say that this is a media creation, this is a Democrat creation, this phony war. He can’t complain about the media. He did actually pretty well there, Rich. What did you not hear that you wanted to hear?
CALLER: That was a legitimate response —
RUSH: Yeah, but what did you not hear that you wanted to hear?
CALLER: What you said earlier in the program and what I just said, and it’s a creation of the media —
RUSH: See, this is the problem. Everybody wants me to run for office. Rich, I understand your frustration. And it’s true, everybody in this audience, it’s true of our guests today, they all wish that Romney was me. Everybody wishes that Romney could be me, or that Santorum could. I wish I could transfer myself to ’em, but I share your frustration. I really do. But he did okay there. Don’t doubt me.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go back to our last caller. I know what he meant. When he said to me that he wishes — like Martha MacCallum at Fox basically throws Romney a softball, “Okay, here’s what they’re gonna say about the war on women and your role, how you gonna deal with it?” You want, because it’s effective — that’s why I do it, because it’s effective — what you want Romney to say or any Republican to say is that it’s fake, that it’s phony, that is driven by the White House. You don’t want them to accept the premise. And Romney appeared to accept the premise that there is a war on women and then got defensive and pointed out the real war on women is Obama’s jobs record for women, lost jobs. All of that’s true. He did okay on that aspect of it, and I understand that a lot of people are frustrated, but not just with Romney.
I think with Republican candidates across the board there seems to be a reluctance to actually criticize Obama and in a truthful way. I mean this “war on women,” you all know it’s contrived. It’s totally made up. And I’m gonna tell you, I’m just like you are. Don’t think I’m not. I sit out here and I watch this crap, and my blood boils. There is so much phoniness. There is so much, I don’t even know how to describe it. Lies. The news media narrative every day is one lie, one false premise after another, and then we see the attorney general praising Al Sharpton, holding him up as some paragon of virtue. And you’re living by the rules and you’re trying to do everything the best you can. You’re trying to get your kids educated and keep them on the straight and narrow and away from all of the really, really problematic temptations they face every day. And you watch perversion be rewarded. You watch lying win.
You see a literal false concept created, like this war on women, which is on its surface absurd. Republicans hate women — it’s patently absurd. It is worthy of derision and laughter. It doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. It’s beneath the dignity of everybody. Republicans are women. Republicans have children. Republicans include women who want jobs. It’s ridiculous to say that there’s a war on women, and you want Romney to say this because you hear me so effectively say it. And you want the issue done away with. You want the issue tossed. You want it effectively buried, and you want it hung around Obama’s neck and the whole Democrat Party’s neck as an albatross. You want them to sink.
I hear with you. I know exactly how you feel because I feel the same way. I’m just as frustrated by all this as you are. Every bit of it. You think I don’t get frustrated? You know what I’m faced with here today? I’m not complaining. I’m just illustrating here. I’m doing show prep late last night, and show prep this morning. I get here and I find out that once again they’re invoking Reagan and tax rates and tax cuts. And I’m asking myself, after being on the air for 23 years, do I really have to tell everybody again that Reagan reduced tax rates from 70 to 28%? That Reagan did not support tax increases for the rich? Do I have to? And the answer is yes, because those people keep spreading the lie, and they have the media, and they’re doing it in schools at all levels. And, yeah, I have to keep countering the lies ’cause that’s all they have, and that’s all they use and that’s all they employ. And they do have to be countered.
The frustrating thing is, why does the lie work? Where are the American people? At some point when are the American people not gonna need to be told that Reagan cut tax rates from 70 to 28%? When are they finally gonna figure it out? And the point is there are new Americans born every day and new Americans assuming adulthood and new Americans going to school every day, and therefore there are new Americans being subjecting to all this BS each and every day, in school, at all grades, at all levels. So I understand your frustration. I understand feeling at your wits’ end. One thing I have that most of you don’t, is I’ve got an outlet here. I’ve got this microphone. I can get it off my chest and I can try to set straight millions of people every day. Then the show ends, and get ready for the next day.
You don’t have the microphone. You’re shouting at the radio. You’re shouting in the air, and therefore what you want is political candidates who will do it. And when you don’t hear them doing it, rather than accepting the premise, then you get frustrated and you call me, and you ask me why, and I have to tell you, ’cause they’re not me. And most of them, truth be told, probably wish they were me. But they aren’t. There’s only one me, just like there’s only one you. I’m still totally on the same page with you about all this. Not just the “war on women,” but virtually every aspect of the Obama campaign.
You know what I wonder about? I sit here, I play the sound bites of Eric Holder at the National Action Network convention, which, by the way, last I heard, I stand to be corrected on this if I’m wrong, last I heard was they owed $1.9 million in back unpaid employment taxes and so forth. And yet there’s the attorney general, the number one law enforcement official, honoring Reverend Sharpton. I see that, listen to that, hear that, and say, “What has happened to the country?” And I ask myself, “How many people watching or hearing about this don’t understand what an absolute perversion it is?”
That’s what scares me. I know it scares you, too. We’re sitting here, we’re wondering where’s the country on all this? Because left to the devices of the mainstream media, the pictures we get, stories we get, images we get every day on TV is that you and I are about 10% of the country and we are weird, extreme wackos, and all this other stuff that is a daily perversion of the traditions and institutions that define this country, that’s what’s normal now, and it’s scary.
It’s very scary and worrisome and troublesome. Then the midterm elections in 2010 come along, and we find out that the vast majority of people that decided to vote don’t accept any of this stuff that’s passed off as “the way things are” each and every day. Given a chance, in 2010, it was a landslide defeat for Obama and the Democrat Party. So then the next fear that creeps in is: “Well, was that just a one-time thing, or is it hopefully gonna happen again this election in November?” Which begets other questions. Well, what happened to the Tea Party? Is it still out there? We don’t hear about it much anymore.
The Tea Party didn’t have a candidate. We still have what people think is a RINO, the establishment candidate. There’s all kinds of disappointment that the 2010 midterms did not produce a nominee that carried forth the message there. If all this aptly describes you, I’ll just share with you my humble opinion about this. I still think that the vast majority of people in this country are just as repulsed as you are over the same things you’re repulsed about. I think the vast majority is. I think when November comes around… I, frankly, for six months have not thought it’s gonna matter who the Republican nominee is.
And we can go back to the archives of this program and find me saying that. It’s not something I’m constructing today just for the sake of it. I’ve always thought this election is going to be about Obama. I have always thought that. We have not become a subservient, slavish, serf-born (s-e-r-f), socialist democracy. We have not become that. It is made to look as though we have each and every day, but we haven’t. And I think all this, like Obama meeting with millionaires who think they’re not paying their fair share? Trust me. The vast majority of the American people are laughing at that just as you are, or they are as appalled by it as you are.
The message from this microphone has been the same for 23 years:
You aren’t alone.
You are not by yourself out there.
I know you ask, “How to explain 2008?” That’s not hard. It took them eight years to gin up genuine hatred for George W. Bush and Republicans. It took ’em eight years, day in and day out. It was relentless. It finally worked, and then there was a confluence of events (not the least of which was named “McCain”). Something as silly as the American people were tired of a president who sounds like a dumb cowboy, versus this erudite… How did Schumer describe him or Biden describe him? Yeah, he’s a “clean, articulate guy.” He hadn’t done diddly-squat. But, boy, he sounded smart!
They had convinced the population that the whole world hated us, that we were at risk because the world hated us and so forth. So they can still pull it off. That’s why you get worried. I do, too. They’re still very powerful, the media and so forth. But back then, Obama was a blank slate. He was messianic. You could paint whatever canvas you wanted him to be. He fit the bill. If you wanted some smart, experienced, messianic guy — an outsider who’d never been polluted by politics — you could have him. If you wanted the first black president, a historical reach, you could have that. Whatever! But you can’t do that now.
Now there is a record of destruction.
Now there is a record of abject poverty.
And we’ve got a guy, Barack Obama, and a party who believe the problem in America is there just isn’t enough to go around. Economically, there just isn’t enough to go around. Kind of like Death of a Salesman: There just isn’t enough to go around. “So we have to collect it all ourselves and then distribute it ourselves and be fair about it. Because if we just leave it to the you’re-on-your-own crowd, the smart-rich people will get it by stealing from everybody. And that’s not fair!” And, of course, we take a look at this as an ever-expanding pie.
Not enough to go around? There’s plenty for everybody, and more can be created with the right policies and the right motivation and the right inspiration. And the proof is this country! We started small; look what we became. There’s no reason we have to stop growing. There’s no reason we have to stop expanding opportunity, the economic pie, GDP, whatever you want to call it. But they look at it: Not enough to go around! They look at a country and see finite, inept, unjust, immoral. And I totally understand how frustrating that is.
I just want you to know.
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