RUSH: Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, ladies and gentlemen. We are gonna have a ball today. My gosh, what a minefield of rich material just waiting to be exposed, analyzed, and reported. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
(playing of election wave theme song)
We had a request from a caller earlier in the week to find a musical theme that fits with what happened, and this is the one that came to mind. The Beach Boys, Catch a Wave on top of the world. But, ladies and gentlemen, you know what happened.
(continued playing of song)
You know most of it by now already.
(continued playing of song)
So what we’re gonna do here is cut to the chase.
(continued playing of song)
We’ll get to the details in a moment.
(continued playing of song)
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Apparently, we can add another Senate race to the column: Alaska. From the Alaska Dispatch: “Republican US Senate candidate Dan Sullivan appeared to grab an insurmountable lead over incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Begich early Wednesday, with all of Alaska’s precincts reporting.” Every one of them, all 441. Sullivan led by five 49 to 45 percent. “The margin remained essentially the same from the first returns early in the evening,” but Begich won’t concede. All the votes are in. He’s down by four, but he won’t concede. But it looks like Alaska makes it plus eight.
Now, as I said during the vocal portrayal there by the Beach Boys, you know what happened by now, you know most of the details. You don’t know what I think about it, and we’re gonna get to that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The next thing I want to do is go back in time and revisit some things that were said leading up to the election yesterday, starting with me, all the way back on February 13th of this year, almost a year ago; 10, 11 months ago.
RUSH ARCHIVE: I think if the election in November were today, it would be a wave election that would make 2010 look small. I think that the American people — the polling data is all there. There isn’t any majority of people, other than subsets of Democrats, who support anything Obama’s doing. In national poll after national poll, a majority of Americans oppose everything Obama’s doing. A Fox News poll came out yesterday, and a huge number of people do not like Obama ignoring the Constitution. A huge percentage are very opposed to this lawless behavior of his. There’s another factor that is gonna lead to a wave election, I mean, massive Democrat defeats, massive Democrat losses in November.
RUSH: The losses were so massive that the polls got many of them wrong. The polls missed so much, it’s incredible what happened yesterday. This election yesterday is even bigger and has more impact than even is being admitted to. The full scope of this defeat, the full meaning of this defeat has not set in with most people because they’re in a state of denial, particularly the Democrats and their buddies in the media. They’re trying to tell themselves it was an anti-incumbent election. That it was not a rejection of Obama. It wasn’t a rejection of Democrat policies. It was just, you know, a confluence of events and timing and, you know, it was just people wanted a change.
It was a repudiation of the Democrat Party, again. It was another repudiation of Barack Obama. It was a repudiation of his policies and the direction he’s taking the country. This was a rejection of Democrat incumbents. The Republicans have more members of the House of Representatives than they’ve had since 1946. Every member of the Arkansas delegation is a Republican in the House of Representatives. Everywhere Bill Clinton went and campaigned, the candidates lost. Ditto, Hillary Clinton.
Even Obama’s Mini-Me, the Democrat running for governor in Maryland — Maryland! — got beat. Ed Gillespie came out of nowhere. And, by the way, Ed Gillespie ran on an agenda. Ed Gillespie, running for the Senate in Virginia, did not run a campaign standing mute. He did not run a campaign being just the other guy, like the national Republican strategy was. Ed Gillespie ran a campaign of specific agenda oriented items, and look what happened to him. There might be a recount there. That surprised everybody. None of the experts, none of the wizards of smart called that.
All last night, no matter where you turned, on cable news or broadcast news, you found a resistance to the notion that this was a wave election. You found resistance to the notion that this was a huge and dominant, not just Republican win, because that it was, but this was a smack down of the Democrat Party. Folks, you have to keep something in perspective. You have to keep something in mind. The Republicans were invisible, nationally, in this campaign. There was no national Republican agenda. The Republicans did not try to nationalize House races.
Everything was local. So you had campaigns for the Senate and for the House featuring issues, primarily Obamacare, and spending and debt, and amnesty, but you didn’t have a Republican agenda that was widely understood and widely known. This was a total, full fledged rejection of the Democrat Party, a huge smack down. And that is why I say, the only logical analysis of this is the American people who voted want this stopped. They no longer approve, they no longer want, they no longer buy into, they no longer support what the Democrat Party and the president are attempting to accomplish.
They want it stopped. They want a serious effort to stop this made. And that effort had better be made, and it had better be one that can be seen. Otherwise this election’s going to end up being a one-off. Because if the voters think it’s safe to go back to the Democrats, they’ll do it. History is replete with instances of that. That’s why it’s important for the Republicans to be honest with themselves. They were not elected ’cause of who they are.
They were not elected ’cause they’re conservatives. They were not elected ’cause they’re liberals. They were not the elected because they’re moderates. They were not reelected because the independents love them. They weren’t elected for anything other than they’re the other guys, which is what they wanted. That’s how they set themselves up. They are the other guys. They are the agents of the opposition. The Republican Party was where you go if you want this stopped. They had better understand this is not about working together. It’s not about compromise. It’s not about governing. It’s not about fixing a broken system. It is about stopping Barack Obama.
They wanted Harry Reid stopped; he’s been stopped. They wanted Schumer stopped, he’s been stopped. He’s in the minority. Dick Durbin, ditto. A Republican governor in Illinois. All over the board, no matter where you go, across the fruited plain, there is not a single pollster or expert who came anywhere near calling what this was. They were freaking out all over TV last night at what was happening.
Early on in the evening it was all developing very slowly. We were stuck at plus three for hours, and even the talking heads on Fox started warning people, “Look, this plus four could become plus three if the Republicans lose Nebraska, which they could.” I’m watching, “What do you mean if the Republicans lose Nebraska?” My point is that the — how do I want to say this? — the brakes were on all night. “Don’t believe what you’re seeing ’cause it hasn’t happened yet. Republican victory after Republican victory but, but, but that plus five could become plus four, don’t get too excited.”
It started slow. It wasn’t ’til about midnight that it began to sink in for everybody. No matter where you watched. Here is a montage of Drive-By talking heads. It took a while, but by the end of the night they all fell in line with what had happened.
KIRSTEN POWERS: I would characterize it as a wave election.
JAKE TAPPER: It’s hard to escape any other conclusion. This really does seem like a wave.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: The Republican tidal wave.
CHUCK TODD: A wave election. You have an historic number in the House.
BRET BAIER: It seems like a wave to me.
MARK HALPERIN: There wouldn’t be a wave, I’m not sure if they know what a wave would look like.
AL HUNT: This is a wave.
KIM ALFANO: Everybody did really well, so let’s call it wave.
ANITA DUNN: When everybody does really well it means that a wave has kind of swept ’em in.
ANDERSON COOPER: Do you see this wave?
GLORIA BORGER: I do. Is it a tidal wave or just a wave-wave?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: This is, I would call a wave.
JOE TRIPPI: It doesn’t get much wavier than this.
TOM KEENE: I was really thunderstruck by how the punditry missed the size of this Republican wave.
BECKY QUICK: This was what you would absolutely call a wave.
PETER ALEXANDER: Make no mistake, this wasn’t just a Republican wave. It was more like a political typhoon.
RUSH: Right. And the pollsters missed it in many cases, and that’s an important element in this. Polling data can be a brake or a stop on media bias. But that’s for another discussion.
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