RUSH: I’m telling you, there’s been a shift. There has been a shift in strategy from Obama-Biden. You heard this. We played the bite. (I’m not gonna play it again, you heard it. If you didn’t hear it, I’m telling you about it and that’s as good as hearing it.) Obama talked about what a decent family man Paul Ryan is. His crowd started booing and Obama said (impression) “Uh, no! N-n-no, no, no. Nope, nope he’s a decent guy. He’s a decent family man.” Now Biden this afternoon in Durham, North Carolina, at a campaign event…
BIDEN: I called and congratulated Congressman Ryan, who’s a good guy. He’s a decent guy. I called to congratulate him. We both talked about [how] these are stark, stark choices. The differences couldn’t be more clearly laid out through the selection you’re gonna hear, and the American people are gonna make a choice. It comes down to a fundamental[ly] different set of values. It’s what we value. It’s not…
AUDIENCE: (grumbling)
BIDEN: These are good guys, by the way.
AUDIENCE: (angry muttering)
BIDEN: No, no, I really mean it. I think they’re decent men.
AUDIENCE: (muttering louder)
BIDEN: But they have a different value set than we have.
RUSH: Now, wait a second here. So both Obama and Biden are going out of their way to talk about what “decent” men Romney and Ryan are? We’re not even a week removed from Obama accusing Romney of killing a guy’s wife! That was just last week. By the way, did you hear Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz claim that she didn’t know the political affiliation of the people that run the PAC behind that ad? (paraphrased exchange)
“Debbie, it’s Bill Burton. It’s John Podesta. It’s Democrats.”
“Oh, I didn’t know! I don’t know that it’s Democrats that run that,” and then she suddenly realized that she did remember that they were Democrats.
Now, what do you think is going on here?
Ryan and Romney are “decent guys.” “These are really good guys, by the way, decent guys.” They both used that term. And Biden really laid it on here. “These are good guys, by the way. I mean, they’re decent men.” Well, some might theorize that there’s some polling data that they have that suggested accusing Romney of murder didn’t go well with people. But now, with these guys both so prominently talking about what decent guys Romney and Ryan are — really, they’re good guys — they have just undercut every Democrat who plans to go on TV and say the opposite.
They’ve just undercut their side. By the way, if you think that that ad with the steelworker accusing Romney of killing his wife is the only ad of that type they’ve got in the pipeline, you have another thing coming. I’ll betcha they’ve got a whole series of ads like that ready to roll, already cut, already produced. Are those ads now neutered? Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Look, I don’t pretend to be able to explain this, other than to say — knowing how unfair and unbalanced the media is — that the next time one of these “Romney Killed My Wife!” ads runs, the media can say, “No, no, no.
“Romney and Biden both said they’re decent guys.” Now that they’ve said it on the record, this can always be cited as an example of Obama and Biden running a top-drawer, above-the-fray, “really decent” campaign, not a negative campaign. While the negative campaign’s being waged elsewhere, Biden and Obama have inoculated themselves from that. That’s one thing. I’ll leave it up to you to come up with others.
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RUSH: We just heard both Obama and Biden talk about decent guys, really, really good guys that Romney and Ryan are, really, really decent guys. But this morning on CBS, David Axelrod was there, and they were talking about Ryan, and the political director at CBS, John Dickerson, said to Axelrod, “David, you said that Paul Ryan is a certified right wing ideologue. Somebody he worked strongly with is Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. So how can he work so closely with Wyden and be a right-wing ideologue?”
AXELROD: He’s a leader of the Tea Party, intellectual leader of the Tea Party group. He was one of the leaders in taking our country to the brink of default last summer because he wouldn’t accept one extra dollar of taxes on the wealthy. And then when you go to social issues, he’s someone who believes we should make abortion illegal even in cases of rape and incest. He’s very, very much out of the right wing of the Republican Party. He’s a genial fellow, but his views are quite harsh.
RUSH: How can you be a genial fellow and be that mean? How can you be a genial fellow but want to force women into back alleys? How can you be such a genial fellow and want to cut taxes for the rich and raise taxes on the middle class and the poor? How can you be a genial fellow and be this extreme, this kind of a right-wing extremist, a Tea Party type? How can you be so genial and be so mean at the same time? Then Axelrod tells CBS in this next bite that they’re lying, everybody’s lying about Obama’s Medicare cuts.
AXELROD: You’re repeating what is a misstatement by the Republicans. I would call it a lie, the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and Grandma should say, “What big lies you have.” We took that money, and we extended the length of Medicare by eight years. Make no mistake about it, these Republicans don’t believe in Medicare. They want to turn it into a voucher program and slowly all the burden is gonna shift to seniors themselves, and that is not an answer to entitlement reform.
RUSH: It is no lie. Obama cuts Medicare by $700 billion. Not only that, they threw it back and they double counted it in order to keep it under this mythical $1 billion price tag, which we lost that a long time ago.
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RUSH: So Obama and Biden today talking about Ryan, and now even Romney, (paraphrasing) “Decent guys, just really, really good guys. Really decent family guys.” This is a classic Alinsky. You go out there, you let the rabble, you let your community organizers, your Robert Gibbses and Paul Begalas go out there and say the dirty stuff while you take the high road. So you say, “Decent guys, really, really decent guys, fine family men.” And then your surrogates go out on television and your PAC runs ads and attacks ’em as genuine reprobates. And you get to say, “Look, as far as I’m concerned, they’re decent guys. I don’t control the PAC, as you well know. These people on TV, they speak for themselves.” So they get to inoculate themselves. It’s classic Alinsky.
Okay, so let’s review. CBS 60 Minutes edits out, does not include Paul Ryan saying, “My mom is a Medicare senior in Florida. Our point is, we need to preserve their benefits, because government made promises to them that they’ve organized their retirements around, and in order to make sure we can do that, you have to reform it for those of us who are younger, and we think these reforms are good reforms. They’ve got bipartisan origins. They started from the Clinton commission in the late nineties.” Then you go to “Three Things Every Voter Needs to Know About Paul RyanÂ’s Medicare Reform Plan — in 100 Words — Number one: No one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way.” And, by the way, this is not new. Ryan has said this from the get-go. Not news to me. Paul Ryan was never gonna cut Medicare for existing retirees or force them into some new plan. The first thing he ever said when he first announced this, the first point he made was, “We don’t change anything for current recipients.”
Let’s go to the Washington Examiner: “Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that Paul RyanÂ’s Medicare reform would hurt his father who survived lung cancer.” Uh-oh. Uh-oh. We got another death here. This one is gonna be on Ryan. Gibbs’ dad. “‘YouÂ’re going to hand out vouchers to seniors . . . youÂ’re going to hand one to my father who is 83, who is a lung cancer survivor and has far different medical needs than his former White House staffing son does at 41.’ Gibbs told MSNBCÂ’s Chuck Todd. Todd corrected Gibbs — ‘Republicans would say, “your fatherÂ’s not going to get that, because they wouldnÂ’t do anything [to his Medicare]”‘ — but the former White House aide chose to suggest that Ryan is lying about his intentions for Medicare. ‘I wouldnÂ’t trust Republicans on Medicare as far as I could throw them,’ Gibbs said.”
He’s a decent man. He’s a decent guy, says Obama. He’s such a decent guy, fine family man. Here’s Gibbs, “I wouldn’t trust Ryan. He’s lying about that.” This is how it works. Number one, three things every voter needs to know, no one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way. Gibbs: “My dad’s 83. He’s gonna get kicked out of the program.” And F. Chuck says, “No, no, no, Republicans would say that your dad…” “They’re lying, they’re just lying about it. Republicans, I wouldn’t trust ’em on Medicare as far as I could throw them.”
Hey, Robert, are you gonna sit around and let your dad die? The point is, I don’t even want to ask that question because it’s not going to happen. Ryan’s mom is on Medicare, a senior in Florida. There are no Medicaid changes, much less cuts. They are not going to change anything for current retirees, for current recipients. The same day that Obama and Biden, “Oh, decent guys, decent men, really good family men,” here’s Robert Gibbs: “I wouldn’t trust Republicans on Medicare as far as I could throw ’em. Ryan’s lying about his intentions for Medicare.” He’s gonna kick his own mother off of it, huh? Classic Alinsky 101. Classic.
Folks, I’m gonna tell you something else about this, another reason why I was excited, and I felt like a lone wolf when I read so many people. See, I welcome this. We now have a chance. These guys, Gibbs is the latest example, but it’s gonna keep going. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, all these people, are gonna keep lying about this. We’ve got the architect of the plan who’s now the nominee, who is going to have all kinds of national media coverage putting the lie to what the Democrats are saying about this. Substance, ideas, truth. And even if he weren’t the architect of it, he has the ability to explain it because it’s in his heart. He doesn’t need a teleprompter to do any public appearance anywhere. It’s in his heart. It’s not on his teleprompter. I’m talking about Ryan. That’s why I say, bring this on. I am not afraid of any aspect of this.
Now, admittedly, I probably am not the best guy to listen to on being afraid of the media. I’ve got a microphone. If I choose to, I can refute what they say about me. I also know that they haven’t, in the big picture, they haven’t harmed me. And so I’m not afraid of ’em. I don’t care what they say about me. I’m very much in a small club in that regard, too. Most people care deeply what the media says about ’em because most people don’t have the opportunity to refute, fight back, or whatever, or don’t care, as I do. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t have as much patience with people who are afraid of the media. My naive attitude is, how do we lose, we have the truth on our side. And now we got the guy who wrote this whole plan with his mother on the plan, and it isn’t changing and he’s the VP, he’s on the ticket.
So an opportunity to expose a major lie being told by Obama and his whole campaign is now ours. This is a hanging curveball waiting to be knocked out of the park, as far as I’m concerned, not something to be afraid of. But, again, that’s just me.