RUSH: To the phones. Columbus, Ohio. Al, you’re up. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you here, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Ah, good afternoon, sir. It’s a real pleasure to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I wanted to make a quick point on Woodward here. I think you’re missing part of the whole side of this. The low-information crowd doesn’t know who Bob Woodward is, and I think the White House doesn’t fear the media. They definitely don’t fear Woodward anymore. The low-information crowd get their news from Maddow or Olbermann or Bill Maher with a snarky comment and a smile at the camera. But Woodward doesn’t have that. He’s too classy to do that anyway. So the people that matter here aren’t getting that.
RUSH: Well, who does know who Woodward is?
CALLER: The AARP crowd.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: The ones who grew up with Nixon.
RUSH: The AARP crowd happens to donate a lot of money, and they are huge Democrats. They’re huge leftists, and it does matter to the regime what they do and what they think.
CALLER: Yeah, but they don’t fear Woodward anymore.
RUSH: Oh, I don’t think they fear Woodward. I don’t think they fear anybody! I don’t think this administration is afraid of anybody. I think they did threaten Woodward, and even if it wasn’t a threat, he thinks it is. So that has to be the way we interpret this. He thinks he was threatened.
CALLER: I agree, but —
RUSH: But the most fascinating thing to me about the story is not Woodward. It is how the rest of the media is siding with Obama when Woodward is their guru. Woodward is the reason 99% of them got into the business.
CALLER: Yeah, but they’re trying to marginalize him. Even in the Plouffe piece, they made him out to be kind of old. You know, that’s how he’s mentioned in it. Tthey’re gonna try to make him out to be the crazy old grandpa or uncle who occasionally says the inappropriate comment.
RUSH: That’s right. That’s right. He’s too old. He’s like Mike Schmidt from the Phillies. He couldn’t face live Major League pitching today. He couldn’t ever be anybody’s hero again. He’s too old. This is Plouffe’s tweet about Woodward.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: I don’t know where you and I disagree. Where do you think I’m off base?
CALLER: No, I mean… I… It’s not that you’re off base. I just don’t think you brought up that side of it. I mean, you’re talking about the voters, but they’re not the ones that are looking at Bob Woodward going, “Oh, gee, who is this guy?” They’re not gonna research it to figure out who he is. They don’t care!
RUSH: So, what does that mean?
CALLER: What’s it mean?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Like I said, if it came from one of their heroes that’s out in the media now, they may be more concerned. If one of their liberal talking headpieces (sic) actually attacked the White House a little bit like Woodward did or at least questioned them —
RUSH: Okay. So what you’re saying is, if the White House threatened Bill Maher, then the low-information voters would know about it and might care?
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: But since they threatened Woodward, the low-information voter is saying, “Who is this dinosaur?”
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: They don’t care, Woodward could be threatened all day long; they don’t care.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: That’s your point?
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: And that the regime knows this?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: So then what follows from there? Are we discussing it too much? Are we spending too much time on it? What’s your point?
CALLER: Well (chuckles), my point is I wish Bob Woodward would grow a set and go after this group. But, you know, it’s just not gonna happen.
RUSH: I’m sure Bob Woodward thinks he just did! By referring to this as “madness,” he did. He just compared Obama to Nixon — and low-information bunch doesn’t know who he is, either.
CALLER: That’s true.
RUSH: Although they probably know who Nixon is. I mean, they’ve been taught that Nixon’s the worst president ever.
CALLER: Yeah, but they don’t know what brought him down. Like I said, Bob Woodward’s a dinosaur to them folks. So…
RUSH: Well, look, you raise a good point. I don’t disagree with you, but I want to remind people, there is nobody in the media focusing on low-information voters, in an analytical way, than me. In fact, I’ll tell you what, Frank Luntz did another focus group, and I think this was for CBS. It’s at the bottom of the sound bite roster. I’m gonna take a commercial break here, and I’m gonna come back and play it, because it’s depressing as hell. Even Luntz admits he doesn’t know how much longer he can do this, because it’s depressing talking to these people.
We’re making headway here. We’re finding ways to get ourselves — myself. I mean, there’s no “our” here, let’s admit this, just phony humility. Finding ways to get myself inserted into low-information news cycles. Just the other day I maneuvered myself into being mentioned on Extra, talking about Moochelle hijacking the Epidemic Awards. So we know what we’re doing here. We know exactly who the low-information crowd is and what they do know and don’t know. Not only that, we’re engaged in a daily outreach to them, ’cause we do not insult them here, unless being honest about them is insulting, but that’s not our point.
As for Woodward, again, folks, the regime will take care of him at the death panel stage of his life. They’re not gonna do anything public here, because the low-information voters do not think that Obama does stuff like that. They’re never gonna look at him as the head of the family, so to speak. So there’s not gonna be a dead horse head in Woodward’s bed tomorrow morning.
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RUSH: By the way, folks, to prove the point that I just made, Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel, who is the editor of The Nation, is tweeting all over the place that the smartest interns at her shop don’t know who Woodward is. Exact point that I’ve been making here about the low-information voters. They’re clueless. They’re sitting out there wondering, “What’s all this hubbub about?” They don’t know who Woodward is, and they don’t care. And as far as Obama threatening him, big deal. Remember, these people want Obama to act like a dictator.
How many appearances has Obama had where he’s had to tell people, “Sorry, I can’t just wave a magic wand,” or, “I just can’t sign. I’m not a dictator.” The people voting for this guy don’t understand going through Congress. Who the hell do those guys have to say about anything, why can’t Obama just legalize pot? Gay marriage, why can’t he just say it’s legal? That’s what they think presidents do.
Now, I don’t have time to get into this focus group sound bite with Luntz. It was CBS This Morning.
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RUSH: No, I haven’t forgotten the Frank Luntz stuff. I actually don’t want to listen to it, and it is depressing. But we’re gonna do it. We might as well get a start here. Frank Luntz had a focus group, and he played excerpts of it on CBS This Morning today. You’re gonna low-information voters disguised as voters, independents, moderates, whoever. They still view Obama as the guy trying to fix a broken system. It’s all the Republicans’ fault. It’s the Republicans fault. It’s the Republicans who are the crooks.
So it’s working. Luntz tells his focus group, “Give me a word to describe Congress.”
MAN 1: Liars.
MAN 2: Snakes.
WOMAN 1: Corrupt.
WOMAN 2: Narcissistic.
WOMAN 3: Corrupt.
MAN 3: Yeah, corrupt.
MAN 4: Hypocrites.
MAN 5: Quagmire.
MAN 6: Scatter-brained.
MAN 7: Shysters.
RUSH: Frank Luntz focus group, one word to describe Congress. That means give me a word to describe the Republicans. That’s what that means. Next sound bite. Luntz says, “Well, what do you want from ’em? You said you want resolution. What do you want?”
MAN 1: I’d cut congressional salaries.
MAN 2: Yes.
MAN 1: Cutting out the fat.
LUNTZ: Define “fat.”
MAN 1: It’s a surplus of crap. Pardon my language.
MAN 2: As a middle-class American, I feel I have my hands tied behind my back, living paycheck to paycheck, day by day, unable to stimulate the economy.
WOMAN 1: I don’t know what I would give up because I think I’m giving up everything already. I can’t spend like I used to. What more can I give up?
MAN 3: Health care and education and welfare, whatever you can cut. What about all these expensive wars that we’re still paying for? Why are we so spread out in the world?
LUNTZ: You all make me depressed.
RUSH: Why is Luntz depressed? Take a stab, Mr. Snerdley. Why does Luntz say at the end, “You all make me depressed.” Why is he depressed? You don’t know? He’s listening to the people who elect the president, and he’s listening to bunch of people who haven’t the slightest idea why things are going wrong. They know things are going wrong. They haven’t the slightest idea why. Wars? We’re too spread out with all these wars? That’s Obama language from 2008. Okay, so then Luntz says, “This is your chance. If you could speak to every member of the House, the Senate, the president, what would you tell ’em right now in two sentences or less how they should act, how they should behave, for the rest of this year?”
MAN 1: They need to start making a huge reform in our government or else there might be a revolution on the way.
LUNTZ: That’s pretty strong.
MAN 2: They’re gonna pay. They’re gonna pay as well as we are.
WOMAN 1: We live in our household on a budget. So should you.
MAN 3: Stop the political posturing, and everybody has to give up something on each side.
WOMAN 2: I think they need to take a walk in individuals’ lives and see what’s really going on in life and not physically just hearing it and thinking they can fix it on paper.
WOMAN 3: What happened to the land of opportunity? Everybody here feels like that’s not America anymore.
WOMAN 4: Get us back to living the American dream. Get us back there.
RUSH: By the way, you need to know, none of these people hold Obama responsible for any of this. This is all aimed at Congress. None of them. Luntz claims he goes out and finds these cross-sections of the population that represent a majority of the way people think in the country. That’s what he claims he puts together here. So here’s Luntz, Charlie Rose says at the end of this, “Okay, so if a member of Congress was listening to this, Frank, what would you say that they should say or do?”
LUNTZ: They had better stop with the excuses and start with the action. And there’s such frustration, such anger. Charlie, it’s getting harder and harder to do these focus groups because if you really listen to them, it is that painful. Congress has to find a way to negotiate with the president, and, quite frankly, the White House has to find a way to give with Congress.
RUSH: Okay, now, the bottom line here — and I don’t really know, ’cause I didn’t see this, all I’ve got is the sound bites, I don’t know what Luntz actually put together here. I don’t know the makeup of this group. But it is clear from whoever they are that they assign all these problems to a distant, unfeeling, inattentive Congress. And you shouldn’t be surprised. That’s the Obama strategy, folks. This is why there’s never gonna be an agreement to anything.
Obama doesn’t want to be included in the people who are on these sound bites blaming the government. He’s always going to be seen as the guy trying to fix it. And he can’t do that if he comes to any kind of a compromise with the Republicans. Because anything they would compromise on isn’t gonna fix anything. There isn’t any area of compromise anyway. There is no overlapping commonality in what Obama wants and what the Republicans want. But the point here is that this is just evidence of how Obama is pulling this off.
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RUSH: The Frank Luntz focus group was 22 people that voted for Obama and 22 people that voted for Romney. As such, it was supposedly a bipartisan focus group. Twenty-two voted for Obama, 22 voted for Romney. Now, folks, you might get mad at me for playing this, ’cause I can imagine your reaction, “Okay, well, now what? What do we do?” My purpose here, I’m still in the process of informing people what’s going on. We all know the answer to this. The answer to this is conservatism. The answer to this is a conservative leader who can articulate it, who believes it, doesn’t need notes. And there are potentials.
There’s Rubio. There’s Ted Cruz. But right now, I’m playing these sound bites as a means of illustrating to you that the theories I have about this administration and how they’re working are accurate. Not because I want attaboys and praise. I want you to be informed. I want people to know what’s going on. I want you to know how you’re being misled, lied to, spun, particularly on all of this bipartisanship. I want more than anything for people to understand, because once we all understand, we all have the role here or the responsibility of changing this and reversing this with the American people, with our fellow citizens. The more you know, the more equipped you’re gonna be to deal with people in your neighborhood, wherever you run into people.
I think it’s important for people to understand why it is, that after four years in office, the president of the United States is still not considered responsible for anything that’s happening, when his policies are exactly why what’s happening is happening. I want you to know why he is escaping blame. I want you to know how he’s doing it. The Luntz focus group, to me, is an excellent validation of what I have been telling you. So you can hear it in people’s own words, not just from my mouth, so that you can know how Obama’s actually pulling this off and what that means for the future as well.
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RUSH: Hey, let me give you an example, folks. And remember, these low-information people in this Luntz focus group, here’s what we’re up against. You and I know what we need to fix this. We need to defeat liberalism. This is not a matter of getting along with them. It’s not a matter of coming to agreement with them. It’s not a matter of bipartisanship. There isn’t any commonality. Now, these people in the Luntz focus group, I don’t know how representative they are of the people of the country. We only have what Luntz says about that. You got 22 Obama voters, 22 Romney voters. But are they typical? Who knows.
But of this group, at any rate, they don’t understand the concept of beating liberalism. They’re not ideological. These people are out living their lives. They can’t live anymore paycheck to paycheck. The economy is crumbling all around ’em, and they don’t blame Obama. They don’t blame liberalism, and if we’re gonna make any headway, that’s going to have to change. The reason these people’s lives are crumbling is not because Congress and the White House aren’t getting along. It’s because liberalism is winning. It’s because Obama is successful. But he’s not seen that way. Obama’s seen as fighting all of this. These people think Obama’s trying to fix it and Congress is standing in his way. And until these people can be made to look at things through prisms of ideology, until these people understand that it is liberalism that’s responsible for their plight, we’re not gonna make any headway.
And, sadly, the Republican Party doesn’t think that way. The Republican Party doesn’t want to think ideologically. They want to try to position the Republican Party as better than the Democrat Party. They don’t want to go to liberal versus conservative. And, frankly, until that happens, we don’t have a chance at turning this around. But that’s what’s going to have to happen. These people and this focus group, to the extent that they represent average Americans, meaning just a cross section, until they understand why they’re unhappy, until they understand why they’re miserable, it’s easy, they’ve been told it’s Congress’ fault. You know the hideous aspects of that. That means okay, they’re conditioned to sit around and wait for government to make a change in something so that their lives improve, when it’s up to them.
And if you don’t like it that way, then let’s put it this way. They have more power over their lives than they know. But nobody tells them that. Nobody tells them how good they could be. Nobody tells them that they have independent potential from the government. Nobody tells them that the source of prosperity is not the government. And until that changes…
All I’m trying to do here is illustrate what we’re up against. Everybody thought we were gonna win this last election, and we didn’t. And it’s just barely March, it’s not even March ’til tomorrow. You know, I come here every day with my theories. I get evidence to back it up ’cause I want you to be informed, educated, and understand, and that’s why I’m doing all of this. We, of course, know what the solution is. It’s not Obama. Obama, like every other liberal, is going to have to be defeated.
Here’s another bit of evidence to prove what I mean. This is AP news just now: “The White House is threatening a presidential veto of a Senate Republican measure that would give President Barack Obama more authority and flexibility to find $85 billion in spending cuts this year.”
He already has the majority control over how the sequester spending cuts are spent. The Senate Republicans just passed a bill giving him total authority, and he’s gonna veto it because he doesn’t want it. He wants it all blamed on the Republicans. He doesn’t want anybody to think he’s got the authority to choose the spending cuts, and that’s why he’s mad at Woodward, and that’s why they threatened Woodward.