RUSH: TheHill.com: ” Obama Waging an ‘Endless Campaign’.” Where have we heard this? I love this. I must tell you, I love this. I elucidated, enunciated what turns out to be a profound theory on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it’s being picked up now. This is actually just more support for the theory. And what they’re saying is, Obama doesn’t want to govern. He only wants to campaign because governing would make him responsible for what is happening. He doesn’t want to compromise. That would put his name on something.
So he doesn’t want to govern. He only wants to campaign. As he campaigns, he’s always opposing these mythical, mysterious people, powerful forces who are actually the ones doing all this stuff to the country. They’re the ones causing unemployment. They’re the ones causing the housing crisis. They are the ones, whoever they are. But Obama’s fighting ’em. He’s been fighting ’em for four years and they’ve been around a lot longer than Obama. It goes back to Reagan, as we will learn here in a moment.
He’s not trying to accomplish anything. Therefore there will be no compromise. This is all in the story. “President Obama will never again be an election candidate but, for now at least, he has the look,” and sound, “of a man on the campaign trail. Thursday brought the latest example, with a rally-style event in Decatur, Ga., intended to build support for the administrationÂ’s proposals on pre-K education.” But there won’t ever be any governing. If Obama ever settles in to where he’s perceived to be governing, that means he’s in charge, that means he’s responsible, that means he’s accountable. That’s what he’s avoided.
That’s what we all missed for four years. That’s why you can have polling data that show 55, 60% of the people oppose Obama’s agenda and still support him. They don’t associate his agenda with the problems in the country. They don’t believe, they don’t understand, they don’t think that Obama’s policies have had any of the negative impact on the country. Somebody else did that, other presidents did that. They view Obama as trying to fix it.
So this led to a discussion of the theory on Fox News yesterday. Megyn Kelly had a couple of guests. The first is the Talk Radio News Service president, Tony Sayegh. And she said to him, “Rush believes that people don’t associate Obama’s policies with what’s happened in the country. They associate the spending and the debt to the lack of jobs, so they think he’s out there working to fix it as opposed to the one who’s created it.”
SAYEGH: He does have support, whether Republicans like to admit it or not, on an emotional level with the voters. And if you look at the election, Megyn, what I suggest is that President Obama did something extremely effective. He ran it like a jury trial. He knew he was on trial. He found someone else to blame, George W. Bush. He created reasonable doubt that it was his fault, and we saw in the exit polling that people really did not associate the failure of the first four years with this president. So he’s trying to continue down that road because he knows that he has, as the president, a very strong bully pulpit, and he’s excellent at being able to talk directly to voters.
RUSH: Right. But not govern. He positions himself as the guy fighting all of these powerful forces that are causing you to not have a job, causing your home value to plummet, the gas price to skyrocket, you name it. The debt, the deficit, whatever it is, he’s just trying to fix it. And everybody supports him. A majority support him trying to fix it, and they want everybody to work together in the process. So the next guest is somebody named Tara Dowdell. Tara Dowdell’s a Democrat strategerist. Megyn Kelly said to her, “At what point do they look at the guy at the top and say, ‘Okay, now I’m gonna hold you accountable.'”
DOWDELL: I go back further than George W. Bush. I think our economy has been in decline for 30 years. We’ve had a huge gap between people who have money in the United States and people who don’t. That’s been going on far beyond George Bush. But I think that people recognize that dynamic, but at the same time, of course they want the president to be out there fighting. But where I disagree with Tony is, what’s wrong with taking your message and pushing your agenda to the people? If we’re saying government is the about people, then why not ask the people to get involved and get engaged in our democracy?
RUSH: Now, you hear this, and you end up scratching your head. Here’s a woman — by the way, she fits the theory to the T. All of this mess that we’re in, this goes back to Reagan. This goes back to Reaganomics. That’s when the rich got everything. That’s when those tax rates were really reduced. The rich got all the goodies and that’s what Obama’s fighting. And he can’t fix what’s been going wrong for over 30 years in four. I mean, it goes way back further than Bush. We got a huge gap between people that have money in this country and people who don’t.
All Obama’s doing is trying to fix it. Everything Obama’s done has been to try to change the differences, the inequalities in economic outcome. It’s a fair thing. It’s a very noble thing Obama’s trying to do. Until Reagan, everything was hunky-dory. The Republicans were in the minority, Watergate had happened, the Democrats are running the show for the most part. I tell you, as far as the Democrat Party, the American left, and a lot of Republican establishment people, the Reagan eight years did turn this country upside down in a whole bunch of ways, and a lot of them have not gotten over it.
Obama’s written about Reagan and how much he admired him but despised his policies. Reagan was admired by Obama for becoming a transformational president, changing the ideological trajectory of the country. And he wants to do the same thing. You run into a lot of pitfalls trying to compare Obama to Reagan in any way you want, it’s not a really fair thing to do to Reagan. But the point is that what Reagan did policy-wise upset the insiders, the ruling class like we don’t understand even now. But that is why the entire Obama presidency is not seen as Obama in charge of anything. Whatever policies Obama has enacted have nothing to do with the current state of the economy or the country. It’s an amazing feat, folks.
Look, I don’t want to be too redundant. We’ve talked about it all week, but this couldn’t happen without a slavishly compliant, activist media, and it couldn’t happen without a Republican Party willing to bend over, grab the ankles and just basically cave on everything. And I think the racial component, first African-American president, gives him a lot of cover as well. But don’t doubt me on this. His is a perpetual campaign. He’s never seen as governing. That is the key. Therefore his policies are not at all responsible for what is happening. He’s seen totally as somebody fighting all of this, and particularly among the low-information voters and strategists like this woman you just heard, low-information, who vote for him.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I do want to go back and cover something here, and we’ve talked about it all week. But based on the reaction that I’m getting from Snerdley, who’s 25 feet away from me, I don’t think I did it. Now, admittedly, he’s been screening calls while I’ve been doing the program. But I don’t know that Snerdley fully comprehends, and he’s right here.
So if he doesn’t fully comprehend what I’ve been trying to say, you may not, and it is profoundly important. I want to go back to Tuesday the 12th of February. There was a story in the New York Times and the headline was all it took. I have been trying to understand something for four-plus years, just like you have. Actually, I’ve been trying to understand it longer than that. I’ve been trying to understand it since the Clinton years.
I have been trying to understand how it is that Democrats in the White House are never tied to the performance of the country’s economy or anything else, how it is they are never linked to it. Yet every Republican is. Whatever happened economically during George Bush’s eight years, he and he alone was responsible for it. Barack Obama has had nothing to do with whatever has gone wrong in this economy since 2009, as far as voters are concerned.
I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why. In the process of tearing my hair out, I’ve been trying to figure out ways to connect with those people who we’ve now named low-information voters, to try to open their eyes in some way and have them understand what they don’t understand now, or have them see what they don’t see now. Persuasion, that is a huge task. There are not very many people that can do it on a mass basis, and even fewer on an individual basis.
It’s a very hard thing to really talk somebody out of what they think they know, things that have become almost core beliefs. But I must tell you: Just like you, I have sat here since the Clinton years and I have been have alternately, shocked, stunned, depressed, angry, you name it, over how Democrats are never ever linked to the effect their policies have on people. I’ve wondered, how in the world have they made people believe that they’re not responsible when they hold all the power?
When it is their policies that are causing jobs to be lost, their policies causing taxes to go up, their policies resulting in the loss of liberty and freedom, their policies that are responsible for gas prices going up and housing values plummeting, how is it that they have never been held accountable? Obama is the king of this. When I saw this headline in the New York Times… There were two things, but the dominant one was this headline in the New York Times.
We had had polling data from Gallup the day before, on Monday, and the Gallup poll shows that on every issue except for one, which was national defense, a majority of people disagree with Obama’s policies. It’s not even close. Fifty-two percent here, 57% there, 64% there disagree with Obama’s policy. Yet he was reelected, and yet people do not hold him accountable for what’s happening. They disagree! They’re informed enough to know what his policies are, and they’re informed enough to know that they’re not good.
But they don’t connect those policies to him, in terms of how the country’s functioning. So this headline in the New York Times: “Polls Show Dissatisfaction with Country’s Direction But Support for Obama’s Agenda.” Now, I can’t tell you what it was, but that headline shone the light on 20 years of frustration, and I finally got it. It finally made sense. The only way it can make sense to you is if you, as I did, totally abandon yourself from the requirement that common sense be part of any education.
How in the world can poll after poll show massive disagreement with Obama’s policies, and poll after poll show dissatisfaction with the direction the country is going, but poll after poll find support for Obama’s agenda? You know, the first reaction you have is, “This country has got to be populated by a bunch of genuine, absolute morons.” That’s the first reaction you have. But then you have to throw that out because there has to be something more than that, and I finally cracked it.
He is not associated with his policies. Or better stated, his agenda, his policies that people disagree with are not associated — there’s no causal relationship — with Obama’s policies and what’s happening in the country. So you say, “Well, why is that? How does that happen? How does anybody get away with that?” And then the second light went off, and it was this: He’s never, ever seen as governing! He’s always campaigning against the very things he’s causing.
He’s out there promising to create jobs, while destroying the market, but people don’t see him destroying the market. We gotta face it. What they hear is, “Obama’s working hard to create jobs.” He had the jobs summit. He says we’re not going to do anything that’s gonna add a dime to the deficit, yet the deficit keeps going up. What I had to come to grips with is, a majority of people who vote think somebody else is doing all this.
Now, how does that happen?
How does Obama make that happen?
It goes back again to the fact that he is not seen as in charge of this. It’s not so much that he’s an outsider, but the constant campaign mode allows him to constantly be seen as running against everything that’s happening. If he ever assumed the role of governing — and that includes if he ever, say, compromised and made an agreement with the Republicans — that would end the idea that he is not attached to what happens.
That’s why there will never be any compromise with the Republicans. That’s why there will not be any bipartisanship. No matter what happens on any issue, legislatively or otherwise, when it’s all done, Obama is gonna run around the country after whatever was signed and start campaigning against the dastardly, mean stuff that was just done to him. With a slavish, supportive, compliant, involved media, he’s able to create this illusion and to continue to present it and sell it. So Megyn Kelly did story on this yesterday.
She had a couple people in, and I want to replay the sound bite from one of her guests, a Democrat strategerist by the name of Tara Dowdell. Megyn Kelly said (paraphrasing), “At what point do the voters of this country finally look at Obama and say, ‘You know what? It is your fault.'” Or, “You know what, Mr. President, you are running the country, you are accountable.” ‘Cause we’re five years into his presidency, and he’s not accountable to anything, folks, as far as the people of this country are concerned. She’s asking this Democrat strategist, when’s that gonna happen? When is he gonna be held accountable?
DOWDELL: I go back further than George W. Bush. I think our economy has been in decline for 30 years. We’ve had a huge gap between people who have money in the United States and people who don’t. That’s been going on far beyond George Bush. But I think that people recognize that dynamic, but at the same time, of course they want the president to be out there fighting. But where I disagree with Tony is, what’s wrong with taking your message and pushing your agenda to the people? If we’re saying government is the about people, then why not ask the people to get involved and get engaged in our democracy?
RUSH: Now, that answer is an entire disconnect from reality just as Obama’s presidency is a disconnect from reality. Obama’s presidency has no relationship to reality whatsoever. But this woman has really made my point. The way Obama looks at this country is, it was unjustly founded, it was immorally founded, it was a racist country, it favored the few privileged that happened to be white, and those people set up a system, the founding fathers, to make sure that they got to keep most of what was produced. The precious few got most of it, and then everybody else just got the crumbs. So this country’s been a 200-plus-year mistake, and he’s out trying to fix it now. And that’s what his perpetual presidency, which is a campaign, is all about. Trying to right those injustices, trying to correct all these wrongs that have been going on for 200 years. But the focus point in the modern era is the Reagan years.
That’s when everything went south. That’s when it got worse than ever, ’cause that’s when Reagan really let it be known that all he cared about was the rich people. This is what history revisionists have written. Of course none of this is true. That doesn’t matter for this discussion. The history revisionists have seen to it that Reagan was the exact opposite of what he was. For example, it was Ronald Reagan, when he took office, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. By the time he left office it was 28%. Revenues to the Treasury doubled. Ronald Reagan did more to elevate lower, middle-income people than anything that had been done prior. But what is written about him is just the exact opposite. And this woman, this Democrat strategist, I don’t think knows the truth.
I think she’s been educated, informed, whatever, she’s living the lie, and now she’s out talking about the lie. But to her it isn’t one. She really believes Ronald Reagan’s the focus of modern evil, and before him, the Founding Fathers were. This country’s been unjust and immoral from the beginning, capitalism has never been the fair way to do it, and so Obama is seen as the first president to really come along and seriously to try to fix all this. And that’s why he’s apologizing for the country, and that’s why he’s running around at every step he can, pointing out the problems, the injustices. And he’s seen as fixing it. At the same time he’s made himself out to be Santa Claus.
By the way, did you see Boehner? When did we say that Obama was like Santa Claus? It was the day after the election. “You can’t beat Santa Claus.” The Speaker of the House figured this out yesterday. John Boehner actually said that Obama’s trying to make himself ought to be Santa Claus. So at some point it all clicks for people. Eventually they will get it. But polls show dissatisfaction with the country’s direction, support for Obama’s agenda. The only way to understand this — and it defies common sense, you have to set that aside. The only way to understand it is people do not hold him accountable. He will never be seen as governing. Now, you may think, “Rush, that’s not possible. He’s president.” Look at what he does. He’s constantly campaigning. He’s constantly running against something. He’s constantly warning people of the danger and the evil that’s lurking out there unless he does something, unless we come together to do something.
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