Posted on 03/21/2006 6:07:51 PM PST by pissant
RUSH: The president had a fabulous press conference today. We've got audio sound bites. In fact, just to tease you, grab sound bite number one. Bob Schieffer, well-known member of the drive-by media, anchors the little-seen, very little-watched Face the Nation on CBS on Sunday mornings, even Bob Schieffer had to say this.
SCHIEFFER: I must say, this is about as close to the George Bush that one sees off camera as I have ever seen. I mean, if we named presidents the way we do historical figures like Richard the Lionhearted or Ivan the Terrible, certainly today what you saw was George Bush the Passionate. This was George Bush sort of unleashed, more so I think than since those days after 9/11, when he spoke with such passion. You may agree with him, you may disagree with him, but today the president made sure everyone understood that he feels very strongly about the course he's taken.
RUSH: Yeah, this is an interesting take. Schieffer admits that he knows the off-camera Bush, but that doesn't somehow seem to influence what Schieffer's daily take on President Bush as a man, as a human being. But he alleges here that he knows what the off-camera Bush is. I've met the president. I've known him since, well, '92 is when I met the president when he was in the White House with his father. This is before he ran for governor. I told you ever since we've been talking about Bush during his candidacy in 2000, this is a guy that I know, and he finally today -- and this is not the only occasion -- but he was out there today as people who know him are, and he was on fire today. And the other thing I would say about Schieffer's analysis is I have never known anybody to think that Bush had doubts about what he was doing. I know the media has been trying to create that. The media has been trying to shake Bush up, they've been trying to rattle him, they've been trying to convince him it's a lost cause, he ought to pull out of there, he ought to admit mistakes.
Today he comes out firing and just the opposite, "Very committed to what I'm doing." The fact that that is a surprise to them after all of this is somewhat curious to me. I also want you to hear this. Well, let me set this up. There is an absolutely ridiculous column in the Washington Post today. It's ridiculous but it's very illuminating, very eye opening. In fact, I want you to grab audio sound bite number nine. I want to show you just how timely this program is, just how on the cutting edge this program is. It was just last week that I pointed out the problem the media has with Bush is his manliness, that they're afraid of his manliness, and this is exactly what I said on March 16th.
RUSH ARCHIVE: You know, at least part of the reason that the left and the media want Bush to be driven by polls and do things their way, it's very simple. The left, members of the media, are not manly, and they're uncomfortable with Bush's manliness because manly men lead. They're confident in their own beliefs. They take risks to assert those beliefs, like I did, sticking with my position on the port deal. Unmanly men wait for the safety of consensus, which is what a poll supposedly produces, gives you cover, in case you screw up. Unmanly men are afraid of screwing up. Manly men aren't.
RUSH: All right. This is what I said on March the 16th. There is a column today in the Washington Post, I guess it's a column, or a book review. It's by Ruth Marcus. It's entitled: Man Overboard. Here's how she starts. "I have a new theory about what's behind everything that's wrong with the Bush administration: manliness." I mean, folks, even I sometimes am impressed with my own prescience. I mean, you would think that I've gotten used to being right so often, even in advance, and that even I would just take it for granted as what it is. But even I sometimes allow myself to be impressed by me, and it was just March 16th -- what is this, the 21st? -- five days ago, and, lo and behold, here comes this column. "I have a new theory about what's behind everything that's wrong with the Bush administration: manliness." It's actually about a book.
"'Manliness' is the unapologetic title of a new book by Harvey C. Mansfield, a conservative professor of government at Harvard University, which makes him a species as rare as a dissenting voice in the Bush White House. Mansfield's thesis is that manliness, which he sums up as 'confidence in the face of risk,' is a misunderstood and unappreciated attribute. Manliness, he writes, 'seeks and welcomes drama and prefers times of war, conflict, and risk.' It entails assertiveness, even stubbornness, and craves power and action. It explains why men, naturally inclined to assert that 'our policy, our party, our regime is superior,' dominate in the political sphere." Well, who's not dominating in the political sphere these days? Liberals! "Though manliness is 'the quality mostly of one sex,' Mansfield allows that women can be manly, too, though the sole example he can seem to come up with, and deploys time and again, is Margaret Thatcher. 'Is it possible to teach women manliness and thus to become more assertive?' he wonders, but not really. 'Or is that like teaching a cat to bark?'
"'The problem of manliness is not that it does not exist,' Mansfield concludes. 'It does exist, but it is unemployed.' Well, um, excuse me, but I think -- it's just my opinion, now, maybe you disagree, and I'm sure we could work it out -- Mansfield has it exactly backward. Manliness does exist. The problem is that it's overemployed -- nowhere more than in this administration. Think about it this way: Is a trait exemplified by reluctance to ask directions -- 'for it is out of manliness that men do not like to ask for directions when lost,' Mansfield writes -- really what you want in a government deciding whether to take a country to war?"
I'll tell you what, this is so classic. This is so eye opening and so illuminating. We have a feminist female, Ruth Marcus, who is writing of her disdain for strong men, and now going to an age-old stereotype cliché. Men never ask directions, and is that what you want deciding the country into war? "The undisputed manliness of the Bush White House stands in contrast to its predecessors and wannabes. If Republicans are the Daddy Party and Democrats the Mommy Party, the Clinton White House often operated like Mansfield's vision of an estrogen-fueled kaffeeklatsch: indecisive and undisciplined." This is specious.
Let me just sum this up for you and ask Ms. Marcus a question. What do you want us to become? You mean that we would do well to become more like a bunch of shrill, gutless, pandering socialist liberal Democrats like, "I served in Vietnam" John Kerry, or Jimmy Carter successfully fighting off the killer rabbit, or Bill Clinton, who had to read the polls to find out how to get dressed when he went on vacation, is that what you're saying? Tell that to the Marines. Tell the Marines that you want them to be more like John Kerry and Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The problem is, sweetheart, if I may say that to Ms. Marcus, the country can't afford wimps right now, not when the wacko Muslim fanatics are trying to wipe us off the earth. This is nothing more than the Oprahization of the country. This is just tripe, it is absolute tripe. The problem is manliness -- want to hear some more? Here's the conclusion.
"Mansfield writes that he wants to 'convince skeptical readers -- above all, educated women' -- that 'irrational manliness deserves to be endorsed by reason.' Sorry, professor: You lose. What this country could use is a little less manliness -- and a little more of what you would describe as womanly qualities: restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus, maybe even a touch of self-doubt." All of those are excellent ways to get us killed, sweetheart. Consensus is cowardice. Consensus is the absence of leadership. Consensus is nothing more than safe haven. You go by the polls. The polls tell you what the people want. You do that whether it's the right thing or the wrong thing to do, you do it and you have cover, "I was only doing what the consensus wanted me to do." Now, I was right on the money. What's got them so upset in a feminized DC culture, feminized liberal culture, is manliness. That's what's got 'em bugged. You can hear it in Bob Schieffer's little review of Bush's press conference today. (doing impression) "He was really -- I mean, he didn't come off -- he was really confident." Like they expect him to waver, they expect him to have self-doubt, they expect him to lie awake at night alone in the bedroom doing introspection, asking himself if what he's doing is the right thing.
They want this inner turmoil because this apparently is responsibility, it's growth. What Ruth Marcus is describing here as her primary desire is the new castrati. She wants a bunch of guys who are part of the new castrati whose modus operandi appears to be whatever somebody else, particularly women, want them to be and then go out and do it. These are people who have lost the ability to stand up for themselves. It is more wonderful and it's more understanding and thoughtful to find out what everybody else wants and form a consensus and we all get together. The new castrati is exactly what Ruth Marcus and a bunch, apparently, of the drive-by media inside the Beltway seek in a leader.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Jenny in Malden, Massachusetts. I'm glad you waited. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Yes, Rush. I just -- when you used the word "manly," it brought to me, as a resident of Massachusetts, who I consider manly. I don't think when you rush to war and you don't give the right attention to it, it's wrong.
RUSH: Okay, we didn't rush to war. Have you -- well, it's pointless -- but go ahead. I'll just listen.
CALLER: Well, as I say, I'm from Massachusetts.
RUSH: That explains a lot. I understand. That's no excuse.
CALLER: -- near the Kennedy library, and I have been there so often, and the Cuban missile crisis room is my spot.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: And I've read exactly how John F. Kennedy handled that crisis, and I think he was manly.
RUSH: You don't want to hear the truth of that.
CALLER: Well, he --
RUSH: You don't want to hear the truth --
CALLER: No, because he did a blockade--
RUSH: Kennedy nearly blew that, and we ended up giving up a lot of bases in Turkey for this.
CALLER: We got rid of missiles in order for Khrushchev to get rid of missiles in Cuba, and that -- if we had gone to Cuba, was it General LeMay wanted to bomb Cuba?
RUSH: I love General LeMay, a genuine, great war hawk.
CALLER: Well, he wouldn't listen --
RUSH: He was a man, Jennifer, or Jenny, he was a real man.
CALLER: Because he wanted to start a war that could have spread to Europe? Russia could have started something because Khrushchev was involved, and we had missiles over there we took away to stop it all. And that's how I feel. I feel this president makes up his mind and sticks to it, but he doesn't make the best decisions. And I don't call that manly.
RUSH: Well, he's leading. Manly means he's not going to form consensus. As Margaret Thatcher said, "consensus is the absence of leadership." Diplomacy is what you do after you kick the enemy's ass and tell them what their lives are going to be like afterwards. That's where diplomacy comes into play. Richard Holbrooke is never going to win a war for anybody or solve a serious problem, nor is any other diplomat. They're just going to continue the problem and have an ongoing dialogue. I'm talking about with genuine enemies, like Al-Qaeda. We can have embassies in Al-Qaeda country, we can be talking to them left and right, and it wouldn't matter a hill of beans.
The fact that you think this is not manly because the president is wrong, you have a partisan difference with him, which I understand. But that's not what the point of the piece is about or the book about which Ruth Marcus's piece was written about. She's actually making the case that manliness presents a problem, not because it leads people to do something wrong, but because it's manly. It is wrong in and of itself. A man shouldn't be a man, a man needs to be like the new castrati. "They really have no opinion. They seek the counsel of others. They ask pollsters to tell them what to wear when they go on vacation and then when things don't go right they can always say, 'Well, I just did what the consensus said.'" And it's a stopgap, and it's a shield to provide cover for making a mistake. Consensus is the absence of leadership.
But, remember, this business about manliness has nothing to do with right or wrong here. It has to do with characteristics and character and traits. I just find it interesting that we have Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post who blatantly and unabashedly in a very manly way, by the way, suggests that manliness is a huge, huge problem for this administration. I'll tell you why it scares them, Jenny. It scares them because they can't influence Bush. They want everybody to have doubts. They want everybody to be introspective. They want everybody to be constantly questioning themselves, admitting when they are wrong because that's how they define a man. Somebody's constantly apologizing. Somebody's constantly begging for forgiveness. Somebody's constantly asking us to overlook the errors and the promise that those errors will be fixed and so forth. It's silly and it's a direct result of the feminization of much of the Washington political culture.
END TRANSCRIPT
The Left is just utterly DESPERATE! ROTFLMAO!
Gotta be the LINE OF THE DAY!
And Rush is very good at pointing it out. It goes right over the tops of most other talk show host's heads.
It's destined to be a classic.
I heard this and was laughing all the way through the call. The woman had exactly the same voice as helen thomas, and at first I thought the queen hag herself had called Rush. Unfortunately, Rush didn't point out that kennedy knew exactly what the Russians were up to because we could read their codes.
LOL! There is a big difference between "political speech bravado" and the real manliness. I seriously doubt Limbaugh could discern the difference.
But Helen IS manly.....actually more beastly.
The Prez was good, and I think Rush's spiel today was centered around that Press conference.
bttt
Rush may not be manly in the physical sense, but he's been a stud when it comes to helping change the political landscape in this country. And he recognizes REAL men when he sees them....GWB and our soldiers.
It only took 8 posts to attract a Rush-hater.
LOL! Political shills see what they are paid to see. Get a grip.
So you think Rush has done little for the conservative cause, I take it?
This was the title of a Rush thread last week and I've gotta say, it's right in so many ways.
I would love to have that as a bumper sticker on my car, and I have never put any bumper stickers on any of my cars.
Beastly is the correct word!
LOL
If you find that one, send one to me!
And I thought Grandpa Munster had died awhile back.
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