RUSH: Couple of sound bites. First, Mike Murphy. He is a Republican consultant. He was on Meet the Press yesterday, and among other things, he said this.
MURPHY: The biggest problem that Romney had was the Republican primary. That’s what’s driving the Republican brand right now to a disaster, and we’ve got to get, kind of, a party view of America that’s not right out of Rush Limbaugh’s dream journal.
RUSH: You gotta get a view of the Republican Party that is not right out of my dream journal. What, folks, did I or any of you have to do with the Republican primary? Did not Murphy get the candidate he wanted? All these consultants, do you realize they get rich no matter who wins or loses? Little-known secret. They get rich no matter who wins or loses. But the Republican primary, as far as he’s concerned there were too many conservatives in it saying too many stupid things.
We need to get rid of conservatism, is what is he’s saying. We need to get rid of all these people shouting stupid conservative stuff, and that’s where it happened at the primary, and that’s where Romney lost the election because of all the conservatives branding the party. Romney was not able to recover from that. Steve Schmidt. He’s back. He can’t let go of me. This is University of Delaware panel discussion last Wednesday.
SCHMIDT: We would have been much better off running against the real President Obama as opposed to the sinister pretend President Obama. And the total lack of credibility with some of this stuff, I think is just absolutely repellent to the middle of the electorate. And then when you look at the demographics, who is Rush Limbaugh talking to? He is talking to a demographic that’s white, 65 plus, and rural. It’s not what the country looks like anymore. So you have these talk radio hosts making millions and millions and millions of dollars a year driving a message of complete and total ludicrous nonsense into the electorate, a lot of it poisonous.
RUSH: Okay, so you people are all white, 65 and over, and you live in the sticks. And you are screwing up the Republican Party, because you are believing what I say. This is their explanation for having lost. Steve Schmidt was the architect of McCain’s defeat, he was McCain’s guy. Steve Schmidt ran the McCain campaign. Yeah. I don’t know where Schmidt has a victory to hang his hat on. He may. I don’t know. It was all predictable, folks, this was going to happen. Told you right here.
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RUSH: By the way, if you’re wondering who Mike Murphy is, Mike Murphy ran Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor of California. She lost. He spent a hundred million dollars, speaking of millions and millions of dollars. Steve Schmidt, in addition to running the losing campaign of John McCain, Steve Schmidt managed the losing campaign for Kentucky Attorney General Will T. Scott. Schmidt also ran California state Senator Tim Leslie’s unsuccessful race for lieutenant governor of California. Steve Schmidt was the communications director for California State Treasurer Matt Fong’s unsuccessful campaign to unseat Barbara Boxer, and in 1999 he was the communications director for Lamar Alexander’s unsuccessful presidential run.
I don’t know if there are any victories in there. This is just what I have found. We know Schmidt knows how to lose and we know that Murphy knows how to lose. And so it’s quite natural to blame somebody else. Obama got away with it. Obama blamed Bush and he got away with it, people bought it. So now these guys want to blame me. Should I change my name? I’m so disgraced now, should I change my name to Lance Armstrong or Petraeus? Which is more applicable today? And, by the way, folks, let me tell you something. From the get-go, I warned everybody, January 16, 2009, before Obama was immaculated, this when I hope he failed, I warned everybody that what we were in store for was an attack on free market capitalism. That Obama was out to destroy the very engine that had generated overwhelming prosperity and greatness, superpower status for this country.
This is what alarmed me about the guy. He was to attack every tradition and institution that make this country great, and he did so. And he did it on purpose. And now let’s look back. Did he not succeed? I think he did. At 8% unemployment people are thinking, “I can’t make it in this economy.” At 8% unemployment people are saying, “I don’t have time for hard work. I need to eat. I need food. I need unemployment benefits.” Obama’s policies undermined private sector jobs. Obama has discredited the private sector. Obama has made the private sector an enemy to people and the government their friend. It’s what he set out to do, and look. And much to my great distress, look at how successful he’s been at it. So successful that now the Republican Party wants in on the game. And that’s why they’re so upset over this Santa Claus stuff.
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RUSH: I don’t know, folks, how long has it been that I’ve been telling you, these Republican consultants’ claim to fame — and they don’t have any — they go to every Republican candidate and they say, “I’m the guy that can get you the independents. I’m the guy who can run your campaign and get you the moderates so that you will win.” And they do not win. They lose.
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RUSH: One correction. Mike Murphy ran the Schwarzenegger campaign that Arnold won, not the one that he lost. The bottom line is that Schwarzenegger was a disaster as governor of California. I hate to say that.
I don’t like saying it at all, but these Republican consultants, all of whom now are trying to blame me for what’s happened, I haven’t run one campaign, and they know it. They think they have the strategy, they have the blueprint, they know how to win, though none of them ever do. But then I come along, and I get the public so riled up that I end up getting people to vote in ways against the strategists have convinced their candidates they can make happen. So it’s my fault.
Remember the theory of elections. Forty percent vote Democrat, 40% vote Republican, 20% in the middle. And all these consultants for years, decades, they portray themselves to Republican candidates as “I’m the guy who can get you the moderate vote. I’m the guy who can get you the independent vote. I’m the guy who can make you win the election. I’m the guy that can overcome this conservative problem the party has.” They end up with these squishy candidates. They end up with these candidates that have no chance of winning, and even if they would win, they would be disasters because they’re Democrat-lite, and then after they lose and lose and lose, what do they do? Blame a guy on the radio.
I’ll never forget, just to remind you here, before Obama was even inaugurated, I was so criticized when I said Obama’s policies to undermine the private sector were on purpose, when I said I hope he fails, ’cause I knew what he was gonna do. He did exactly what I knew he was gonna do, and I didn’t want him to succeed at that. I didn’t want him to succeed in destroying capitalism and all of these great traditions and institutions that have defined this country’s greatness, that have made us a superpower. But look at what’s happened. You look back on it, it was on purpose. It’s obvious. You know, playing Santa Claus doesn’t sell when you got 4% unemployment, but when you have eight or 9% unemployment, it does.
So you wreck the economy, you jack up unemployment, you do it on purpose, and you hold out the government as the answer, the savior, as the immediate savior. Forget working hard. There aren’t any jobs. And even if you could find a job, it’s not gonna pay enough. This country is not the same way it was, is Obama’s message, let me handle it for you. We’ll extend your unemployment benefits. I mean, go back and look at the number of times Obama uses the word “benefits” in speeches that he makes all four years and telling people how to get theirs.
See, I don’t think there’s any question about it. The question is, have we lost the country? And we got this Thomas B. Edsall piece in the New York Times yesterday in which he basically says that we have. Just summarizing this, in a nutshell, Edsall says that all the Democrat pollsters say that I’m right. He cites Pew, Greenberg, Carville, Public Religion Research Institute as polls, but the money quote is at the end. He says the upcoming fiscal cliff deal will show whether our side has lost the country or not.
“In effect, the 21st century version of class conflict sets the stage for an exceptionally bitter face-off between the left and the right in Congress. The national government is facing the prospect of forced austerity, weighing such zero-sum choices as raising capital gains taxes or cutting food stamps, slashing defense spending or restricting unemployment benefits, establishing a 15 cents-a-gallon gasoline tax or pushing citizens off the Medicaid rolls, pushing central bank policy favorable to the financial services industry or curtailing Medicare eligibility. In broader terms, the political confrontation –“
and we’ll see it play out in the fiscal cliff deal –“pits taxpayers, who now form the core of the center-right coalition, against tax consumers who form the core of the center-left. According to the Tax Policy Center, 46.4 percent of all tax filers had no federal income tax liability in 2011.”
And other polling data shows that more Americans approve of socialism than they do capitalism. Three different polls. So he’s agreeing with me. “Is Rush Limbaugh’s Country Gone?” Yeah. The difference is he’s happy about it, and I’m not. That’s the difference. But he agrees that the country is gone.
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