RUSH: Now, the Rush Limbaugh primary. This is Mark Halperin. Mark Halperin, John Heilemann, they are authors, they’re journalists. And we like them here. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand. Halperin has been everywhere — ABC, well, I don’t think he’s been at CBS or NBC, but he’s been at ABC, been around for a long time. He’s an analyst, he’s journalist, he’s a good liberal, does it all.
He’s got a new gig. He and Heilemann follow candidates around during a campaign, and they learn all kinds of exciting stuff. They learn really inside stuff during the campaign, and they don’t use it. They wait until after the election and they put all of that that they learned in a book. It comes out months after the campaign, months after it might actually be useful to the voting public. It’s a new technique. Well, I don’t know how new, but it’s becoming more popularized.
And these books that these guys have written have become somewhat popular, so Bloomberg gave ’em a TV show, and the name of the TV show is called With All Due Respect. Cookie will go anywhere she can to find video since I have this ban on MSNBC. So this is one place we get it. CNN is another place we get it. It’s not that we’re showing favoritism to Heilemann and Halperin. It’s just that our choices are limited. CBS, NBC, CBS, but I mean the nightly news, there’s not much. I mean, the stuff that’s happening there is old news whenever it does happen. So if we’re gonna have audio of liberalism, it’s gonna happen on CNN or this place, maybe C-SPAN sometimes.
Last night on Bloomberg TV With All Due Respect, Mark Halperin spoke with his co-host Heilemann about the 2016 presidential race, the primary elections. And this is the conversation starter from Halperin to Heilemann.
HALPERIN: There are a lot of primaries for those who want to run in 2016. There is the New Hampshire primary, the Steve King primary, the Rush Limbaugh primary, the BuzzFeed primary. So, John, of all the Republicans who are gonna run in 2016, which one or ones have a chance to win the pop culture TV primary?
RUSH: That’s another primary. So you got the Rush Limbaugh primary, you got the New Hampshire primary, Steve King primary is Iowa, and then there is the pop culture TV primary, and here’s what Heilemann said in response.
HEILEMANN: One of the things that we’ve noted in the past is that past presidents — Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton — could all do Monday Night Football, could all do Saturday Night Live, could all do Oprah. There’s not a single Republican in that league. I don’t see anyone who can play at the level of our last three presidents in the pop culture realm.
RUSH: Okay, now, put Bush in there? Bush in the pop culture victory column? They called Bush the dumbest guy in office. He was a cowboy, he was a hick, he was a hayseed. Bush, Oprah? Bush could do Saturday Night Live? Bush could do Oprah? We know Clinton and Obama — but this is interesting to me because this is — (interruption) that’s right, but that was before the 2000 election, right? Yeah, okay, that’s right. He did Oprah. Okay, take it back. But he didn’t do Oprah again. (interruption) Well, but the overall point is the pop culture primary, as these guys are calling it, and it’s relevant. It’s what we’re all up against here. It’s what Andrew Breitbart was trying to do when he started Breitbart.com, was capture some of the pop culture for conservatism. Obama, Clinton could all do Monday Night Football. What? Anyway, I get their point. I’m not sure I follow the examples. Halperin then said he agreed.
HALPERIN: I agree. The fact is, none of ’em have a young, hip, New Media sensibility sense of humor, at least not that I have seen. You look at the three young senators, Cruz, Rubio, and Rand Paul, they are not laugh riots. You might think, well, who cares about that primary? That primary matters not just for reaching young voters, but it sends a signal to the public, if you’ve got a sense of humor. The other person we didn’t mention who can win that primary, Hillary Clinton. She’s already proven she can do it.
RUSH: This is just too much. There’s the automatic inclusion, liberals are just automatically included in the pop culture. Hillary Clinton is one of the biggest dryballs to ever come down the pike. Hillary Clinton is as far away from funny and humorous as anybody I can imagine. Hillary Clinton is Nurse Ratched. What in the world is funny about Nurse Ratched? I mean, even that Arkansas broad beam laugh that she has. Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha. There’s nothing funny about the woman. There’s nothing hip, except her hips. There’s nothing cool. She gets automatically included in that simply ’cause she’s a liberal Democrat.
I don’t know why she didn’t track better against Obama, if she’s the youth veto, the humor vote, the comedy vote. So there’s the comedy primary. There’s the humor primary. There’s the pop culture primary. And isn’t it interesting, there’s not a single Republican that these guys can think of that could make people laugh, but, boy, Hillary Clinton, what a laugh riot she is.