Edwards: Kerry Will Make People Like Christopher Reeve Walk Again

rushlimbaugh.com ^ | October 12, 2004 | Rush Limbaugh

[crushelits]

It's panic time out there in the Kerry campaign.

There's no other way to explain-- well, there may be other ways to explain it, but panic time is clearly the overriding thing. The fact that they are willing to say and do anything to be unconscionable to win this election, those are also factors. By the way, the phone number, 800-282-2882 and the Dittocam is on. Let's just cut to the chase here. Yesterday we had the news that Christopher Reeve had passed away. Yesterday on this program I cautioned you to keep a sharp eye for the Kerry campaign to politicize this visa-à-vis the stem cell, embryonic stem cell research issue. It's gone beyond even what I, in all of my decency, could possibly imagine. I'm a decent guy. I cannot imagine, I cannot even conceive, not even making a joke about this subject, I couldn't conceive as far as John Edwards went yesterday in Iowa on the campaign trail.

EDWARDS: Christopher Reeve just passed away, and America just lost a great champion for this cause, somebody who was a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through a tragedy. Well, if we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again. RUSH: When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again. This is unconscionable. Isn't this amazing? This is the party that loves to scare people to death about everything, from global warming to coffee to Mount St. Helens erupting to terrorism or what have you and now all of a sudden they come out and they attempt here -- I know the message is supposed to be soothing and it's supposed to be kind and optimistic -- this is the ultimate play on fear. It's fearmongering of the worst kind because there is no such evidence whatsoever that embryonic stem cells have a thing to do with regenerating the spinal cord, zilch, zero, nada. There is no research whatsoever on this. Scientists will tell you this. There is no research that indicates stem cells have any possibility right now where Alzheimer's is concerned, and that doesn't stop Ron Reagan from going out and trying to scare people as well. This is the kind of fear that offers people false hope. This is the ultimate cruelty. And what must it say about what Edwards thinks of his audience, what must it say about how stupid and dumb he must think they are to sit there and actually pledge, "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." The implication is that George Bush has kept Christopher Reeve in his wheelchair, George Bush doesn't care, George Bush chose a little cell over Christopher Reeve. George Bush is the reason that those with spinal cord injuries are in wheelchairs, George Bush is the reason because he doesn't care, he'd rather enrich his big oil buddies. And boy, what a contradiction we have on that, too, that was going to be what I was going to lead with but I've had to shelve that and move it to secondary status because of this. This comment was made yesterday by Edwards. Last night on Special Report with Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer was asked about this. Charles Krauthammer is in a wheelchair. Charles Krauthammer is a paraplegic. He is outraged by Edwards' comments and this is what he said.

EDWARDS: Christopher Reeve just passed away, and America just lost a great champion for this cause, somebody who was a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through a tragedy. Well, if we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.

RUSH: When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again. This is unconscionable. Isn't this amazing? This is the party that loves to scare people to death about everything, from global warming to coffee to Mount St. Helens erupting to terrorism or what have you and now all of a sudden they come out and they attempt here -- I know the message is supposed to be soothing and it's supposed to be kind and optimistic -- this is the ultimate play on fear. It's fearmongering of the worst kind because there is no such evidence whatsoever that embryonic stem cells have a thing to do with regenerating the spinal cord, zilch, zero, nada. There is no research whatsoever on this. Scientists will tell you this. There is no research that indicates stem cells have any possibility right now where Alzheimer's is concerned, and that doesn't stop Ron Reagan from going out and trying to scare people as well.
This is the kind of fear that offers people false hope. This is the ultimate cruelty. And what must it say about what Edwards thinks of his audience, what must it say about how stupid and dumb he must think they are to sit there and actually pledge, "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." The implication is that George Bush has kept Christopher Reeve in his wheelchair, George Bush doesn't care, George Bush chose a little cell over Christopher Reeve. George Bush is the reason that those with spinal cord injuries are in wheelchairs, George Bush is the reason because he doesn't care, he'd rather enrich his big oil buddies. And boy, what a contradiction we have on that, too, that was going to be what I was going to lead with but I've had to shelve that and move it to secondary status because of this. This comment was made yesterday by Edwards. Last night on Special Report with Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer was asked about this. Charles Krauthammer is in a wheelchair. Charles Krauthammer is a paraplegic. He is outraged by Edwards' comments and this is what he said.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, no one really knows, one of the great mysteries in medicine is why the spinal cord does not regenerate, and no one has any idea of the answers, no one is in any way sure that we're going to learn the answer from stem cell research. We might, but I've heard a lot of hype over the last 30 years about the keys to the kingdom here in this issue and all of that have proved false. For Edwards to make the claim he did is the worst demagoguery I've heard in Washington in a quarter century. To imply that Christopher Reeve was kept in the wheelchair because of the policies of the Bush administration on stem cells is ridiculous and insulting. RUSH: That's exactly right and that's exactly what Edwards was trying to say, that George Bush stands in the way of embryonic stem cell research and that's why Christopher Reeve is not walking but when John Kerry is president we're going to go full bore into stem cell research and people like Chris Reeve will walk. You're in a wheelchair, you're going to walk when John Kerry is president. You're going to get up out of that chair and you're going to walk when John Kerry is president. You'd be walking today if George Bush wasn't president

I happen to know a little bit about this. I know the Buoniconti family, Nick Buoniconti and his son, Marc. Marc suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a football game at The Citadel when he was a freshman, and they have a fund-raiser every year, and they've got the Miami center down in Miami that has been working on this for years, and they are making progress. It's as though, if you listen to Edwards, there's no research at all going on with this, zilch, zero, nada. There are people, as Krauthammer points out, that have been working on this for decades. They haven't got very far yet because the spinal cord does not regenerate. There's no indication stem cells are going to cause that to happen, nobody knows. It certainly isn't going to happen if John Kerry is president for however many years he's president. By the way, this also is an insult to everybody else like the Buonicontis, who are out there trying to do what they can to improve the lives of people who are in wheelchairs.

Now we have the Democratic vice presidential candidate coming out and saying you'd be out of your wheelchair today, not just Christopher Reeve, but all of you in wheelchairs wouldn't need them. We'd be able to sue wheelchair manufacturers, you wouldn't need them if John Kerry were president, you won't need them if John Kerry is president. This is the ultimate cruelty, it is obviously born of panic and it is a sign to me of the utter inexperience of John Edwards as a national figure. This man has no business being on this ticket. Saying things like this is just utterly without class. This is the kind of thing that would happen in a dogcatcher election. You didn't have this kind of absurd claim made in the Afghan elections. This is absolutely beyond the pale. And it does indicate a severe panic in the Democrat camp. But it didn't stop with John Edwards. On the floor of the Senate yesterday, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin took to the floor and stood next to a huge photo of Christopher Reeve and used his death as a reason to vote against Bush. Here is Tom Harkin saying that George Bush chose a tiny cell over Christopher Reeve. Here's the bite.

HARKIN: I have here a pin and a blank piece of paper. There. I hold this up and I ask if anyone can see what I put on that piece of paper. What I've just put on that piece of paper is a dot, a little dot. That is the size of the embryos that we're taking the stem cells from, a dot that you can barely see on a piece of paper. People say, well, that's life. Of course it's life. Every cell has life. All my skin cells have life. My hair cells have life. We all -- sperm has life. Eggs have life. But they say we can't destroy these for stem cell research. They equate that somehow with this human being right here. They equate this little dot that you can barely see with someone like Chris Reeve.

RUSH: The bottom line here is that George Bush chose a little dot on a piece of paper over Christopher Reeve. We just as soon make that little dot on a piece of paper an embryonic stem cell have more precedence over Christopher Reeve. No such thing has happened and is true. There's only one president who has funded stem cell research, embryonic stem cell research and that's George W. Bush. They were already in existence and he made available 70 some odd lines of these things and research is ongoing. The implication from the Kerry campaign is that Bush is doing nothing, doesn't care to do anything, for whatever reason. I don't know why Bush is standing in the way of this. There's obviously some big corporation that stands to make gazillions if they come up with a cure for paralysis, and Bush is supposedly close friends with big business. What in the world is Bush doing by not supporting this? Why is he choosing a little embryonic stem cell over profit for his big corporation? These people are so inconsistent, so shameless, so pathetic, so filled with panic, so filled with hatred and rage, they have lost all sense of decency, not just reason, but decency. And Dick Durbin got in on the act as well. Here's Durbin saying this about Christopher Reeve on the floor of the Senate yesterday.

DURBIN: Why is it important that we not just eulogize this brave man and the nine years of his life where he showed such courage? Because the issue that he was fighting for is an issue we will all get to vote for on November 2nd. Christopher Reeve and many like him understand that embryonic stem cell research gives them hope. Why is this important in this election? Because this administration, the Bush administration, has taken the position that the federal government must close the door to embryonic stem cell research and only limit it to just a handful of these stem cell lines that were existing on August 2001 when President Bush announced that he had in his own mind reached a compromise on this issue.

RUSH: And there you have it. So you see the ground being staked out. Anything to get us off of terrorism, and anything to get us off of Iraq, anything to tug at people's heart strings, anything, whatever it takes, lying, misinformation, mischaracterization, the Democrats are totally capable of all of it and even more.

I got an e-mail from a friend of mine in North Carolina. Dear Rush: It is not panic on the part of Democrats and Edwards to say what Edwards said. Well, they might be panicked but that's not the reason Edwards said what he said, Edwards said it because he's used to playing on stupid people's emotions to get what he wants, and it usually works. Usually they just fork over money to him in barrels. It's the height of immaturity that he would try it on the campaign trail.

So basically what she's saying is, we're both right, he's inexperienced. The guy thinks he's talking to a jury when he's on the campaign trail and he treats everybody as a jury. And this is the kind of stuff he says to juries in order to get them to soften up and start crying and fork over big dollars to him. John Kerry will make people like Christopher Reeve walk again. Mr. Snerdley pointed out, it's even a new low for the Democrats. They used to wait till the body got cold before they moved in for the kill and exploited people like this. The exploitation of Christopher Reeve was predicted, too. We all predicted it. We know these people like the back of our hands, like every square inch of my glorious naked body.

[weegee]

Tennessee Democrats Compare Republicans To Special Olympics Children

Email to me about Special Olympics Email I sent

Infirmity matters not to DemocRats.

[Mayhem]

What? Now he's gonna make dead folks walk? It must be the second coming...

[rineaux]

and lawyers will will tell the truth.

[MHT]

Elmer--Elmer Gantry? That you?

[Fintan]

 

[dubyain04jebin08and12]

This makes Gore "inventing" the internet look like nothing. I love it -- keep pounding on this one!!

[boothead]

Oh goodness, Jesus Edwards.

[God Bless The World]

i can't take Rush seriously anymore unfortunately. but that's an interesting article.

[prophetic]

What? Now he's gonna make dead folks walk? It must be the second coming...

You aint see nutting & you forget your history - you forget that in every election in recent history the DEAD not only walks, but they are able to get to the polling stations and Vote Democrats!!

Need I also remind you of the Wellstone 'Funeral'? After a few minutes these Democrat leaders managed to put the "FUN" back into funeral, and it quickly descended into a Democrat Bush-Bashing Hatefest like nothing ever seen in recent history!

[LuigiBasco]

"i can't take Rush seriously anymore unfortunately. but that's an interesting article.

Turn the stupid dial and listen to something else!

[No Surrender No Retreat]

Kerry's next 8mm film, "Vodoo King Skerry Raises Demo Zombies From The Dead." You too can see JFK, LBJ, MLK, and Billy Carter be conjured from the dead by Vodoo King Skerry. Kerry couldn't even take care of his Navy comrades in Viet Nam (16weeks TDY) Mama T needs to B''atch slap kerry the bitch/edwards(boy wonderful). Bush/Cheney 2004