RUSH: I sit here and I think it would be the easiest thing in the world today to be a Republican. I think this is one of the easiest things to oppose. This would be one of the easiest presidents to identify. But there doesn’t seem to be any desire on the part of any Republican anywhere to do it. Instead, they’re sitting around wringing their hands over why they lost the election, and they’re all focusing on the wrong things. And they’re all prisoners to the daily media narrative.

This is a fascinating piece here about Twitter. The Pew Research Center did a year-long study. They wanted to find out who’s there. They wanted to find out who’s using Twitter, who’s really spending time there. Who are these people? And the reason they did is because more and more, if you pay attention to normal, everyday Drive-By Media stuff, you see them report what they see said by somebody on Twitter. They report trends on Twitter, and it is done to create an impression of where the country is, because Twitter is thought to be made up of just average Americans tweeting their thoughts, anonymously, yeah, but still we’re getting an idea of where the country is.

So the Pew people were curious about it because Twitter is used by national reporters to gauge immediate public opinion of news events like the sequester, like Obama’s election, like the state of the economy. And it turns out, according to Pew, that a majority of the people who tweet are young Democrats who are there executing a political strategy. A majority of the people who tweet are young Democrats having been given marching orders from somewhere, and this gives Twitter the appearance of being unbalanced. It gives the impression that the makeup of the country and that the country’s national attitude is identical to that of the Democrat Party and of Obama.

Reaction on Twitter is much more negative than what public polls find out. Take the reception to Obama’s reelection, as an example. The Pew people said that polling found 52% of the public was happy and 45% unhappy with Obama’s reelection. On Twitter, nearly 88% were happy. So the universe that is Twitter has been corrupted, so to speak. It is an outfit that has been taken over by young political activists who are there to create an impression of public opinion that doesn’t really exist. The short version of this would be to say that the Democrats’ astroturf army has taken over Twitter. They’ve taken over Facebook. They’ve taken over the social media and they’re doing this to create the illusion that the vast majority of the country is them. That the vast majority of the country agrees with them, and it’s not the case.

But it doesn’t matter if you don’t know this, if you’re not aware of this. You’re Republican, for example, you’re exposed to this, and you think, “My gosh, I mean, nobody agrees with me. My gosh, I’m in the tiniest minority. My God, I gotta find some way to make these people like me, so I better not criticize Obama, and I better not criticize any of Obama’s policies and I better moderate in my view on illegal immigration.” It’s all being done to manipulate public opinion, which, give ’em credit, they’ve succeeded. They are successfully manipulating public opinion. They are eliminating all opposition to Obama, and the thing is the Obama team telegraphed that this is what they were gonna do all the way back in the 2007, 2008 campaign.

Twitter, for example. It’s huge in Washington. Reporters are all over it. They’re constantly tweeting. Even the sports media tweets left and right. They have created the impression, if you think Twitter is America, that therefore America is totally comfortable with all of this that’s happening in Washington. On Twitter, the public and the country are totally satisfied with everything that’s going on. And to the extent that they’re not, they don’t blame Obama for it. They don’t blame his policies at all.

Nah. It’s those mean, extremist Republicans!

But then Pew found something. They found that Washington’s actually a rarity. In the nation’s capital itself, most people don’t use Twitter. Just 13% of adults say they ever use Twitter or read Twitter. But that’s not the point. Nationwide, the illusion has been created that Twitter is simply a microcosm of America, and it’s been exposed here by the Pew people that it isn’t. This is probably the case with much of social media, which is how their activists attempt to succeed.

You see, it boils down to an unarguable truth: The left, or the Democrat Party, cannot survive in the arena of ideas. Their ideas are still opposed by a majority of people in the country. The way they succeed is through intimidation. They scare people into not opposing them. They scare people and corrupt things into making people believe that a majority of people do agree with them. But they never debate ideas. All they do is set out to destroy the character and the reputations of people who oppose them.

In my case, none of these people who rip me or criticize me ever say I’m wrong about anything. They just characterize me as some mean-spirited, extremist you-know-what. It’s the same with everybody else that they oppose. They never ever want to get into a debate on ideas. They just have to mischaracterize. Look what they did to Romney. “Romney doesn’t mind when guy’s wife dies with cancer! Romney doesn’t like his dog.

“He puts his dog on the roof of his car! Romney is a mean-spirited guy. He got all of his money in the Caymans. He doesn’t care about the war,” and it worked because Romney never responded to it because Romney said, like everybody else, “Nobody’s gonna believe this.” But they did, and they believe it because it never ends. These people are pummeled with it day in and day out, and that’s why the perpetual Obama campaign.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: As I said yesterday, folks: In all seriousness… I’m not trying to be funny. You know, over the years, I’ve seen all the criticism: I lie just to advance my cause. I lie. I get things wrong on purpose to cover up embarrassing things on what is supposedly my side. Now, what am I doing here? I’m doing a radio show, and I have several reasons for doing this program. I’ve got the business reasons, I’ve got the programming, and I’ve got the country as a reason. I just want there to be… I’ve always believed in the idea… Maybe it’s Pollyannaish anymore.

But I’ve always believed that the most effective way to have a functioning, thriving, great country is to have as many educated, informed, confident, happy citizens pursuing excellence as possible. So all I have ever sought to do is inform people. It doesn’t benefit me to lie to people. It does not benefit me to fill people’s heads with a bunch of things which aren’t true. They’re eventually going to find out, and then where am I? If it’s ever thought that I am purposely lying just to advance something…?

What good is the cause if it can only be propped up by lies? It isn’t any good. That’s the problem with liberalism and socialism. It has to be propped up by lies. It has to be propped up with optics and false images and perceptions. I’m not into that. I want all this to be genuine. I may make mistakes, I may get something wrong, but it’s never on purpose, and I certainly don’t lie to anybody about anything. It doesn’t as you need my purpose here at all.

It would be very harmful, in fact. I’m not here to use you for anything. I look at the opportunity to do the show every day as just that: An opportunity to affect the kind of things I think are good. What’s wrong with an informed, educated bunch of people? A growing group of people who are informed, educated, and want to learn more — happy, content, eager to spread their own happiness and contentment to other people? That, to me, is the objective here. See, it doesn’t help me at all to have anything here built on untruths.

But it’s not that way with the left.

For example, this Twitter business. My source for this is Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner. But there’s a quote here from the Pew Research Center, which actually did exhaustive work for a year to find out who’s on it, who’s using it. Pew, by the way, is no conservative bunch, as you well know. “Twitter users are not representative of the public.” That’s not me saying it. It’s not Paul Bedard saying it. It’s not the Washington Examiner. That is from the Pew report.

“Twitter users are not representative of the public. Most notably, Twitter users are considerably younger than the general public and more likely to be Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party.” It’s simply Obama’s action army which has overpopulated the thing, and in the process they’ve corrupted it. It’s those people that are into presenting false impressions, optics, to make you think one thing is true when it isn’t. It is they who are lying to you and trying to fool you about things, and they succeed.

They have, of course, the willing accomplices in the mainstream media spreading it around, and that’s the point. The media quotes Twitter. The media quotes all kinds of tweets, because the media is treating Twitter as simply a microcosm of America. Now we know that it isn’t. So just keep that in mind the next time you’re watching the news or reading something and some reporter tells you what he just saw on Twitter or a trend that’s on Twitter.

Understand that there’s a good chance it’s totally manufactured for your consumption.