RUSH: Don't Doubt the Limbaugh Effect

www.rushlimbaugh.com ^ | March 5, 2008 | Rush Limbaugh

[Yosemitest]

Don't Doubt the Limbaugh Effect
March 5, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Last night on DNCTV's Decision '08, political analyst Norah O'Donnell reported this about the exit poll data.



O'DONNELL: There are some Republicans who are choosing to vote in the Democratic primary.
First, let's look at the party identification mix in Ohio. Look at the Republican crossovers down here. That's really interesting: 10% this year. That's five times as many in the last election.
Also in Texas there is again that bigger Republican crossover in this primary than in the last election.
Remember, Rush Limbaugh has called for Republicans to cross over and vote for Clinton, essentially to "bloody up" Obama. Those were the words he used. So he may have planted that idea in a sense, quote, unquote, giving permission to Republicans to cross party lines. But that is a significant number that has decided to vote today.

RUSH: But CNN had a little bit different take on their Election Center last night. Soledad O'Brien and their political analyst Bill Schneider had this exchange about the effect in Texas.

O'BRIEN: ...Rush Limbaugh, who was urging in Texas who can vote in the Democratic primary, to go out and vote for Hillary Clinton so we wanted to see if that was going to have some kind of effect on this race.

SCHNEIDER: Mmm-hmm?

O'BRIEN: What did you find?

SCHNEIDER: Nooooot much. (laughter) Only 9% of the Texas Democratic primary voters were self-described Republicans and they voted for Barack Obama, 53... 46%, almost half, voted for Hillary Clinton so maybe that was some influence from Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: But not much.
So PMSNBC and CNN disagree with their numbers. Then on PBS last night, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Amy Walter of the Hotline took a neutral position. She's not sure about the Limbaugh Effect.

WALTER: Rush Limbaugh got into it, saying,
"Hey, go out there and vote for Hillary Clinton, Republicans, so we can keep the Democrats fighting and keep this going on for some time."
So we don't know. So much of that early voting when we've seen those numbers, are coming from Republican counties turning out and picking up Democratic ballots!

RUSH: Hmm. Hmmmm. Sounds like the conclusion here is rather unmistakable.
Moving on now to Chris Matthews, Election '08, PMSNBC; here is an apoplectic Chris Matthews describing to a T why we needed Hillary to win in this primary to continue.

MATTHEWS: You have to wonder if you, uh, are a Democrat tonight and you want to win the general election if any of this tonight is good news. Is it useful for the party to face seven weeks in Pennsylvania, six media markets, $30 million spent in both directions blasting each other out of the saddle --

VOICE: Mmm-hmm!

MATTHEWS: -- in a state you absolutely, positively have to carry?
It's not good news to spend seven weeks in Pennsylvania blasting each other, if you're Democrats. This country's in a rut on the war in Iraq and pending wars elsewhere in the Middle East, the economy! Everything! We're in a rut! We can't fix anything, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security! We can't fix our health care system! Nothing's done since '65 when we did the civil rights bill.
People want something done. Will that something get done if we have an election that bogs down in Pennsylvania with seven weeks of Democrats killing each other?

RUSH: Aside from the gibberish about nothing getting done in this country, does that not make my point (laughs) of what we are trying to accomplish here? This is the last thing the Democrats wanted to see, and they're going to have to see it,
and it's not just Pennsylvania. Forget Pennsylvania, forget April 22nd. You are talking June the 7th, Puerto Rico and beyond!
Now this business about "nothing having gotten" done since the Civil Rights Act.
Here's the problem. Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, the health care system:

All of those things got done, and they are a disaster, and who got them done?
Who is preventing their reform?
Who's preventing these programs from being reformed?
The very people Matthews is concerned about being bogged down in the campaign for six weeks going into Pennsylvania.
That's what this stuff is all about!
These things are going to break the bank, and there are ways to fix them.
He left out the public school system and a number of other things which have gone wrong.
On CNN's Election Center, Carl Bernstein said this about Hillary Clinton going negative.
BERNSTEIN: Her only shot is to go so negative on Obama that something sticks and makes these superdelegates say,
"We don't want 'em,"
and as one Clinton strategist said to me today,
"We gotta mess him up."

RUSH: I rest my case!
Carl Bernstein, of Woodward and Bernstein fame, talking to a Clinton strategerist.

"We gotta mess him up."
Exactly right, because our side is not going to. They gotta do it -- and, of course, they're the only ones that can do it.
Folks, you don't realize... (sigh)
I don't even have the guts to say it. You don't realize what a brilliant thing this has been. (interruption)
Of course it's been as respectful as hell, Mr. Snerdley! (laughing) Of course it's been respectful.
Has it been respectful? It's a good thing it's not Monday, because if I'd have had this much laughter on Monday I'd have been in coughing spasms, I'd be in a hospital.

Pete in Woodbridge, Virginia. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Just fine, Rush. How you doing?

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: There's at least eight or nine different reasons for voting for Hillary, and you've enumerated some of them for almost two hours. First of all, fear is Hillary's most effective message against Obama, and that's also McCain's message. So as long as she's running her 3 a.m. ad, she's helping to make McCain's point about the importance of experience and national security experience.

RUSH: That's right. This is actually a great ad for McCain.

CALLER: Oh, absolutely.
In addition, the Democrats should be thanking you.
This screening process really helps them to ensure that they aren't going to have a Gary Hart or a Michael Dukakis running against McCain in the fall.
As far as on our side, it extends the time, as you said earlier, for Hillary to get the press to scrutinize him.

RUSH: Well, not only that, but there's another thing that's possible. I don't know how likely it is. But Senator McCain...
I heard Karl Rove last night. Karl Rove was doing analysis on Fox, and he had a good point. He said,

"Well, one of the problems with prolonging the Democrat battle is that it's going to be on page one, and McCain will now move to page two, page three, page four."
Actually, McCain's going to move to Section B, Page One. He's got to raise some money. He's got some fundraising challenges ahead of him.
But it's also going to give McCain a chance to campaign. He can start campaigning now, he can start traveling all over the country, making speeches and establish who he's going to be and how he's going to be it; what he's going to do and so forth, while these guys are tearing themselves up.
There's an opportunity here for McCain to solidify who he is while these are still in their knock-down, drag-out. It is an opportunity, and it's a way also for him to keep himself a little bit more front and center in the media rather than Section B, because compared to what's going to be going on on the Democrat side, there's not a whole lot that is going to be happening with McCain.
I didn't get a chance to listen to this because it was on when the program was on, but the president publicly, professionally, officially endorsed McCain today. They had lunch in the Oval Office or somewhere in there, and then they came out and had a little joint press conference in the Rose Garden. Now, it looked to me -- and I could be dead wrong about this, because I didn't have a chance to watch or listen to it -- it looked to me like most of the questions were asked of the president.
"Mr. President, are you going to campaign for Senator McCain?"

"I'm going to do whatever I can. If he wants me to campaign against him, if it will help him, that's what I'm going to do."

"Well, where are you going to campaign for him? Where are you not going to campaign for him?"

McCain was standing there, you know, asking the reporters for the next question, and the questions always went to President Bush.
President Bush can help him with fundraising, and I'm sure that was on the table today when they had their luncheon. But this is an opportunity here for McCain to actually solidify who he is because he's not going to have to run any contests against Huckabee anymore. He's not going to have to go out and get votes and get delegates in any of these remaining states
-- and then on the other side of this, everybody is talking about the momentum that Hillary has.
The momentum to where?
You've got Wyoming, the Wyoming caucus this Saturday. I think Obama expects to lose that.
You have got Mississippi next Tuesday. Obama's probably going to win that going away.
But, yeah, Hillary may have some momentum, but to where? The next big state is not for six weeks! Whatever momentum she has is not going to sustain her that long. So she's going to have to try to keep the momentum alive by doing exactly what Carl Bernstein said, and that is, they gotta mess Obama up. That's Carl Bernstein's word.
My word is they gotta bloody him up -- politically, of course. Don't misunderstand.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Do you want to hear the babes on The View discuss this? Do you want to hear what they have to say? I literally marvel, I really do, at the obtuseness, the dim-wittedness, the no "there" there-ism of some of these women.
Who do we have here? We've got Elisabeth Hasselbeck, we've got Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd, discussing Hillary's chances in the primary voting. This is yesterday, this is Tuesday morning. And Hasselbeck says,

"Look, on a political strategic level, I say stick in it because I think she'd be easier to beat when McCain goes against her."



BEHAR: That's what Rush Limbaugh is saying.

GOLDBERG: Is that why he's encouraging people to vote for her? Because he's saying that voting for Hillary will unsettle the Democratic Party, and that can only help Republicans.

SHEPHERD: Yeah, he said,

"I want Hillary to stay in this. This is too good a soap opera. Clinton is more willing than the Republican National Convention and John McCain's campaign to criticize Barack Obama. We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically."

HASSELBECK: You know, I don't agree with him, just so you know, like I'm not --

BEHAR: The thing about Limbaugh, I don't totally trust anything Limbaugh says, because -- I worked with him, right?

GOLDBERG: Did you?

BEHAR: Yes. I know him. And after -- when I was at the radio station with him, Clinton won. And he was so happy, because he could now be funnier on his radio show. It has nothing to do with real patriotism or whatever he's talking about. It's about his show.

HASSELBECK: So he feels as though he'd have more ammo against Clinton--

BEHAR: Yeah, he has more fun with Hillary. That's all he cares about.

RUSH: You know, Joy Behar saw me every day, and, folks, I do know about you, we were miserable.
I don't want to go through that again.
I do not want to live through the misery.
I mean, to say that we wanted Clinton to win because it was more fun, that I was happy when Clinton won?
And then this poor old Elisabeth Hasselbeck is the conservative on this program and is going out of her way -- it's pathetic. This program has the potential to be doing more damage to women than Oprah is doing. Good Lord, it's insulting. There have to be executives at ABC that understand the literal ignorance that's being broadcast on their network signals each and every day. I guess they know their audience.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• FOX: Can Hillary Clinton Come Back? Karl Rove Handicaps Her Chances

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[The_Republican]

Maybe he misunderstood why they hired him.

I don’t believe ESPN suits thought we want this guy to drag ‘race’ in discussion and piss off people and that would be good for us.

I think they thought they were getting Dennis-Miller-Lite. Some interesting comments, some unique perspective. Maybe someone like Skip Bayliss on ESPN’s First Take. Guy who people like to disagree with, but still interesting.

[PghBaldy]

Libs should not be the arbiter of manners or taste.

[The_Republican]

Can’t disagree with that.

[GOP_Thug_Mom]

I was waiting Tuesday evening, here in Texas, for my Republican precinct convention. When talking with the first two people who showed up after me, I learned that one had a daughter and son-in-law decide to “do what Rush had said”, and they went and voted for Hillary. Then, the other man said he knew a couple of guys at his work who were doing the same thing. I was more concerned with the effect it would have in two years on the number of delegates we’d have to Republican conventions. :)

[huckfillary]

I love Rush, but he is as often wrong as he is right. His heart is in the right place. Yes, he has a big head. But I would never want a world without him. I rarely get to listen to him because I’m at work when’s he’s on. But as soon as he’s posted his program to the internet, I tune in. He is what he is. Like all of us, he has his faults and his virtues. But he loves our country, our Constitution, and our conservative, free market values. He articulates everything we believe in, with passion. I can’t complain.
God Bless him.

[Defiant]

You need to add the word “lacky” or “hack” to the end of your moniker.

[The_Republican]

But then you would be out of a job. LOL!

[getitright]

Hey- thanks for that. Nice to see reasonable intelligent influence on a thread that is getting nasty.

Rush is 80% on the mark. Of course 80% of his air time is fluff. I hate the songs and parodies and crap because I get to tune in for maybe 1 hour per week total. And it is very easy to cherry pick clips to make him look like a fool.

But imagine the world without him. Now that Buckley, Reagan and Gingrich are gone, who is leading this charge?

Honestly, who?

[getitright]

Name one person. ONE. Honestly now. Who does more for conservatism?

Hannity?
Will?

Okay, George Will. But how large is his influence?

Coulter? Ingraham? Miller? Bush? Who?

[The_Republican]

Newt Gingrich
Bill Kristol
Brit Hume

[Conservative Vermont Vet]

For the sake of his own ego, he needs to hear from the sheeple, Oh Rush, you are so almighty and so powerufl. You make the world go round.

Perhaps some more painkillers can take his pain of being ignored away.

Spoken like a true Democrat, Republican

Ever hear the old English Proverb: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

[The_Republican]

If you understood the Proverb, you would have stayed out of this. ROFL!

[getitright]

I know Gingrich has been demonized off the map, but imagine, IMAGINE! and I mean just picture it: = - = - A debate between Gingrich and Hillary/Barack.

Populist pandering blatant stroking fluff getting pulverized at every turn by sharp harsh unyeilding REASON.

Damn, a guy can dream, can’t he?

[getitright]

Sorry Vet, you’re the one looking foolish here.
Sorry.

[D-fendr]

Two outa three.

[Yosemitest]

McCain is UNACCEPTABLE!!!

He will only destroy the conservative movement!

Remember 1994!

We don't need a RINO in office ... to win.

[muawiyah]

You know very well that when the primaries finally come your way you’re going to jump ship and vote AGAINST Hillary, right!

[Yosemitest]

Silly Republican wannabe!!!

Don't you know they hired Rush, just to FIRE him?

[highball]

He is a great entertainer.

But he’s no great political guru, able to lead millions. He’s proven that enough in past elections.

[Yosemitest]

And reference the Judical Nominee Red-Herring ...I recommend this blog.

McCain, Judicial Nominations, Sleeves, and Warts
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 by Beldar at 07:43 AM

I don't much care about Wall Street Journal political reporter John Fund's report yesterday that's roiling the blogosphere and cable news talking head shows. Fund reported that Sen. John McCain

"has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because
'he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.'"

Since Sen. McCain led a gang of other Republican renegade senators in deserting their party's sitting president and colluding with the opposition party to throw some of that president's pending judicial nominations down the toilet — jettisoning along with their confirmation chances the chance for a constitutional showdown that could have ended senatorial filibustering of judicial nominees — there is nothing that Sen. McCain can do, and certainly nothing he can say or write as a campaign promise, to restore his credibility with me on the subject of judicial appointments.


Oh, yes, he did vote to confirm Roberts and Alito. But could we possibly set a lower bar than that for someone who's supposed to be a leader of his party and a contender for the opportunity to fill as many as three SCOTUS seats in the next term?

There are a lot of good things that can be said about Sen. McCain by good conservatives — but not on this issue. By taking the "constitutional option" (a/k/a "nuclear option" in Dem-speak) off the table, McCain and his fellow "maverick" GOP cronies doomed not only a handful of worthy circuit and district court nominees to non-confirmation, they ensured that the White House would thereafter dare not make any more controversial nominations to those vitally important lower courts. For "controversial nominations," read "demonstratedly and predictably conservative nominations just like Roberts and Alito would have been, but for the higher profile of SCOTUS nominations."

The only way that the Dems could justify stonewalling Dubya's circuit and district court nominations was that the stonewalling happens mostly out of sight, and rarely if ever makes a blip on the general public's radar screens. They couldn't get away with denying a floor vote to a SCOTUS nominee. But John McCain led the deal that let the Dems guarantee that they could continue to exercise an effective veto on circuit and district court nominations for the remainder of George W. Bush's term, regardless of the outcome of the 2006 elections. The unquestionable result of the Gang of 14's "compromise," as brokered by John McCain, will be two-fold:

There will be more judicial vacancies at the end of the Bush-43 term than there ought to be;
and such district and circuit judges as have been nominated and confirmed by January 2009 will be mostly bland ones whom McCain's Democratic allies permitted to go through because the Dems couldn't dredge up or even manufacture remotely plausible objections.
Some of them will nevertheless turn out to be very fine judges despite their lack of histories around which the Dems could weave their objections. But if your goal is conservative judges, giving the Dems a near-secret and unaccountable veto, which ie exactly what McCain did, is a very, very bad idea.

No sir, the day John McCain led the Gang of 14, he forfeited all of my trust — irrevocably — on judicial selection issues. No ma'am, I don't care what words he mouths now on that subject.

In fact, I'm slightly more inclined to believe Rudy Giuliani's promises about appointing conservative judges than McCain's. Sure, it's contrary to Giuliani's own stance on many social issues; and I'm far from entirely comfortable about Giuliani's campaign promises on this and other subjects. But at least Giuliani hasn't already betrayed this particular trust, and then equivocated about that betrayal. already shown himself to have no backbone, and to be a willing collaborator with the Dems, specifically when it comes to appointing judges at the circuit and district court levels. To the limited extent that I care at all what McCain says now, the mere fact that McCain continues to defend the Gang of 14 deal out-shouts anything else he says. And saying now that he "fought for" the abandoned nominees is just a palpable lie. The way to fight for them was to continue at least threatening to use the "constitutional option." There was no other way to fight for them. There was no other way to even get their nominations to the floor for a vote! To even pretend that those abandoned nominees had a chance once the Gang of 14 struck its deal is comparable to the Brits and French saying in September 1939,

"Well, we did still root for the Czechoslovaks after we forced them to give Hitler the Sudetenland last year. Gosh, we really thought they still had a good chance, but we just ran out of time. How could we know he'd go on to gobble up the rest of their country, and Poland too?"

Stepping back and looking at the big picture:

Collaborating with the Dems to defeat the Bush Administration's most conservative circuit and district court judicial nominees isn't remotely the same as collaborating with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese while American POWs (including McCain) were imprisoned. John McCain is not John Kerry, and the Dems are only misguided political enemies of the GOP and conservatism, not profound and literally mortal enemies of western civilization. And I'm sure that in his own mind, McCain has thoroughly rationalized what he did, just like he's rationalized (and now is soft-pedaling) his prior stands on campaign finance reform and immigration.
I'm not one of those self-destructive conservative idiots who is going to sit out the 2008 election if McCain turns out to be the GOP nominee. Indeed, if he is nominated — which I still think is unlikely, but I no longer can rule out as a possibility — I'll support him, and defend him, and promote him, and vote for him against whoever the Dems nominate. I will accentuate the positive, for him or any other GOP nominee.

But just don't insult my intelligence by pretending that John McCain is a reliable conservative on the subject of judicial nominations. From the point of view of any knowledgeable conservative, this is one of the huge warts on this particular candidate. And he doesn't have to "wear" that particular lack of conservatism "on his sleeve," because it's a wart that's as plain as his nose. You can secure my enthusiastic agreement that the Democratic alternatives are uglier, that they're practically "all-wart." But quit trying to pull my leg about McCain and this particular subject, okay?

Maybe if McCain is making a SCOTUS nomination, he really will pick another Roberts or Alito. What concerns me, though, is that at best, he'll gladly let the Dems pressure him into packing the circuit and district courts with Kennedys, O'Connors, and occasional Souters. I have no doubt that John McCain would be willing to take on the Dems on matters of national security, even if it means a bloody, long-term dispute. But I also have no doubt that if pressed (and he will be), he would make his picks, and then cut quiet deals left and right, to avoid such fights over judicial nominees below the SCOTUS level. Since he's already abandoned conservative principles and cut a deal with the Dems on nominees to those courts even when the GOP controlled the Senate, why would he possibly stand up to them as president, especially if they continue to control the Senate?

In short, I'll never, ever, NEVER ... vote FOR McCain.
Can you spell NEVER???