RUSH: Let’s listen to a couple things from Obama, and then we’ll get to your phone calls. We have a couple of sound bites from his speech last night in which he very strategically waited until 11 o’clock for the local news to start.
OBAMA: They said our sights were set too high! (cheers) They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But, on this January night, at this defining moment in history (cheers) you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do. (cheers) You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days! (cheers) You have done what America can do in this New Year!
RUSH: Who says he’s not down for the struggle? I’ll tell you what, he and Huckabee both last night had really uplifting, inspirational speeches. They really did. I guarantee you: the Clintons — after that faux acceptance speech of hers where she went out there and actually tried to make it sound like she won — if you watched it, it was sort of laughable — I guarantee you, when they got up to the hotel room, there had to be ashtrays and lamps being tossed all over that room. In the meantime, the Drive-Bys are now asking, ‘What is Hillary going to do to Obama in New Hampshire? What’s going to happen?’ Try this headline from The Politico, Roger Simon: ‘Obama Targets Hillary in New Hampshire.’ They’re not sitting around waiting to see what the Clintons throw at them. They’re going to go ahead and start their own move on offense. ‘Even before the warm glow of victory had worn off, the Barack Obama forces were already girding for a cold, hard fight in New Hampshire. ‘Oh, yeah, we assume Hillary will go negative on us and run negative ads against us, but if we win New Hampshire and South Carolina, it will be hard for her to stop us from getting the nomination,’ said an Obama advisor.’
The advisor said, ‘Edwards didn’t get a bump out of coming in second in Iowa four years ago, and he’s not going to get a bump coming out this time.’ He’s right about that. Obama pretty much owns this. The Breck Girl doesn’t have any money. He’s out of resources. A second-place finish two years in a row is not cool, not good. I guarantee you, the Clintons are saying, ‘What do we do now?’ because the traditional Clinton, Inc., stuff here is going to be very risky for them to try. They’ve already done it. Look what they’ve tried. Bob Kerrey out there trying to say this guy is a Muslim in disguise, going to madrasahs, and then they send Howard Wolfson out there to say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is a schemer! This guy has been plotting since kindergarten to be president. He’s been lying about his ambition.’ I have no doubt they’re going to try to run negative ads, but it’s going to have to be on policy. It’s going to have to be on experience or something like that, and Mrs. Clinton can’t claim to have any herself! She’s up there saying, ‘I’ve been fighting for 35 years!’ She used the line again last night. ‘I’ve been fighting for 35 years for America’s children and America’s women.’ How about the ‘bimbos’ that Clinton got involved with, Mrs. Clinton? Did you fight for them, or did you try to destroy them? Name the woman, name the child in the last 35 years that Mrs. Clinton has helped who has come forward and said, ‘My life has been changed because of Mrs. Clinton.’ Now that I bring this up, there will probably be a couple in New Hampshire. They’ll find a couple people that are 25 or 30, and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, when I was eight years old, Mrs. Clinton of the Children’s Defense Fund saved me from a predatory father.’ Here’s cut two from Obama.
OBAMA: (cheers) The same message we had when we were up and when we were down, the one that concerns this country — brick by brick, block by block, calloused hand by calloused hand — that together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things —
RUSH: See?
OBAMA: — because we are not a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States of America, and in this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again! (cheers) Thank you, Iowa.
RUSH: Oh, yeah! Wasn’t that cool? Wasn’t that amazing? Wasn’t that uplifting? Wasn’t that just…totally wrong? What was that an appeal for? ‘Red state America, blue states, we’re the United States.’ Yes, that means, the codeword there is: bipartisanship. We have to stop the partisan rancor. We need to put the country back together. We need to unify. In fact, David Boren, who used to be a senator, Democrat from Oklahoma, who I think is now the president of Oklahoma University, is putting together a seminar somewhere down there. It’s either this weekend or sometime. I don’t know when it’s coming up, but it’s very soon, about ‘ending this divisive bipartisanship that is happening in this country that’s tearing this country apart,’ and guess who his guests are? They’re all a bunch of libs: Jim Leach from Iowa; people like David Gergen, all these people that are just a bunch of disaffected liberals who are upset they don’t have a monopoly anymore.
Folks, when you hear anybody — and this gets back to basic conservatism 101 — when you hear anybody, I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Democrat start talking about ‘ending bipartisan,’ red flags ought to go up left and right. Partisanship is ideal. Partisanship is crucial. Partisanship is based in ideals and principles, and people who hold those principles dear and are loyal to them will not compromise them. Partisanship founded the country; partisanship propels the country. What we do not need is an end to partisanship. If we finally come up with this notion of bipartisanship across the board and the country’s unified, one of two things is actually going to have happened. One side is going to have lost. So the question is, ‘Who wins?’ The question is victory, not bipartisanship. I would love the bipartisanship of liberalism as a 20% body of thought in this country. I could live with that kind of bipartisanship. The idea is to defeat them! Liberalism poses threats and dangers to this country, and your economic security, and your economic future. Liberals are to be defeated, not to be gotten along with. It’s the nature of American politics.