RUSH: This is fascinating to me. This is Maria Bartiromo. She just moved from CNBC over to Fox Business Channel, and she, too, is perplexed by Obama’s seeming ignorance about economics. This is a woman who ought not be confused at all. She is the primo financial journalist in America, correct? (interruption)
I mean, by many popular characterizations. (interruption) Oh, you’re laughing that there’s Don Lemon? I know, I saw it, and I’m tempted. I’m tempted to give parents like a 10-minute heads-up here. (interruption) Oh, is that what he’s doing? He’s explaining it away? He’s trying to justify and apologize and…? (interruption) I’m almost obligated to do it now because here I’m talking about it; it’s an unfair tease. So I’ll think about it.
In the meantime, back to Maria Bartiromo. She is, many people would say, the primo economics reporter, anchor, in America. Some night say Lou Dobbs. Some might say Stuart Varney, but she’s “the Money Honey.” So you would think that she would have no questions, but she’s perplexed. We have a couple of audio sound bites. This morning on Fox & Friends, they were talking about the defeat of the Keystone pipeline in the Senate.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck said, “The key question, Maria Bartiromo, is in fact if it will effect gasoline prices.”
BARTIROMO: The good news here is that this takes the president out of the awkward position of vetoing this, okay, so that’s the good news. The other day when the president spoke about this he missed the fact that this is a global market. He said it’s Canadian oil coming into our lands, being exported to other countries, and he said it would not impact gasoline prices. I think that’s really misleading. I do believe that if this passes, it will move gas prices lower.
RUSH: No kidding. But did you notice the first comment she made here? “Well, the good news here is that it takes the president out of the awkward position of vetoing it. That’s the good news.” And he would have. He would have vetoed. But to her that’s embarrassing that the president would have to veto. Why is it embarrassing? You know exactly why he would veto it.
So she’s (imitating Bartiromo), “You know, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He missed the fact that this is a global market. He said it’s Canadian oil, it wouldn’t lower gas –” Maria, these are the same people who said, in response to a policy of “drill, baby, drill,” that that wouldn’t create more oil. Remember, Maria, how they made fun of — and you may have been one of them, I don’t know. But when a lot of people, me included, were running around saying the way out of our energy jam, “drill, baby, drill,” made fun of, mocked.
Well, now we got fracking, and now we have shale oil and shale gas. We got more reserves than Saudi Arabia, so much so that the Saudis had to lower the price of oil to $75 a barrel. The Saudis are lowering the price on their own to damage their competitors. “Drill, baby, drill” has created more oil. It’s lowered the price. We were all made fun of for that. Even though it’s as axiomatic as saying bringing more Keystone oil through the pipeline to America would lower gas prices. Yes, it would. It’s supply and demand.
But she’s not sure Obama understands that. But there’s one more sound bite here. It kind of gets to the nub of it. Steve Doocy said, “I think it’s curious that you think the president of the United States doesn’t understand the simple economic policy of how the world spot market works with oil.”
BARTIROMO: I was very surprised at those comments because it either indicates he doesn’t understand the global market or that he’s just against it.
DOOCY: He’s being political.
BARTIROMO: One is more scary than the other.
RUSH: She is genuinely concerned that Obama doesn’t understand economics. To her that’s a legitimate possibility, that he doesn’t understand economics. Has she watched this guy for six years? He understands economics. He knows exactly what he’s doing with his economic policy. This is the problem here. You have people in positions of power and authority inside the Beltway and the media, and they just assume that everybody like them is just as smart as they are and just as oriented the same way they are. It’s how a Mitch McConnell will express shock that Obama is not moving to the center after this election defeat.
It’s the same as Maria Bartiromo here expressing shock that Obama doesn’t understand, or a journalist expressing shock that Obama is not doing more to reduce the debt. It’s right in front of your face that he’s trying to increase the debt. It’s right in front of your face that he’s trying to raise the price of energy. It’s right in front of your face that he doesn’t like oil. It’s right in front of your face, I mean, everybody, it’s right in front of all of our faces that Obama believes in this stupid, idiotic green energy newfangled stuff, and he believes that oil is a poison.
It’s right there in front of your face, and yet people simply somehow can’t accept it and believe it. And that’s how people like Obama get away with it. They’re assumed to be so smart, maybe they know more than we do, when in fact if you don’t understand Obama’s ideology, and if you don’t apply his radical leftist ideology to everything he does or says, then you are going to forever be confused about what he’s doing.
The answer to Obama is learning and understanding liberalism and progressivism, and once you have that, then Obama is no longer a mystery, and you can see him as the threat he really is to free markets, to the founding of the country. That’s what he’s opposed to. And he’s making it abundantly clear.
But the fact that some people want to continue to not see it or not admit it is, as I say, quite telling. Because admitting it or seeing it, man, that’s serious stuff. That’s a call to action of a different kind. That requires more than just journalism and commentary, see, and a lot of people don’t want to go beyond journalism and commentary. “Take action because of this? Hell, no. What are you talking about? No, this is just an intellectual exercise for us, Mr. Limbaugh. We’ll call it the way it is, but when it comes to shaping and bending outcomes, no, that’s not for us.”
Everybody’s that way, and so Obama’s got a free road. He is single-handedly in charge of the outcome, ’cause nobody else wants to get their hands dirty in fighting it.