CALLER: Hi, Rush. It is an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Listen, the reason I’m calling is that I heard Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats speaking yesterday, and they were introducing their plan to save the gas and things like that, and their plan was like to take the oil out of the strategic oil reserve.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, my question is this. How would that help us in ten years?
RUSH: It won’t help us, period, because as the president said yesterday, it doesn’t get to the fundamental problem.
CALLER: That’s what I was thinking. Just taking oil out is no plan for the future. It’s not going to help us in ten years. It seems to me if the Democrats were serious about this gas problem, they would try to compromise with the president.
RUSH: Let me tell you something. Vickie, the Democrats have exactly what they want. They have been touting all this BS about conservation. They have been hoping for higher prices for a long time, to try to affect people’s behavior. They don’t like the way people behave with affordable gasoline, they don’t like it. They want to control people’s behavior as much as possible. The dirty little secret is they like you being unhappy with the gas price, they like you being on edge, they like you being ready to blow your top every time you pull in there to the gas station to fill up. They want you mad. They want you blaming it on Bush. They want you blaming it on the Republicans. They want you suffering. They want you in the frame of mind that you’re in. That’s why Pelosi’s out calling the drilling a distraction, it’s a hoax, it ain’t going to happen for ten years. It’s not even ten years. You know, that’s another myth about this. Where did this get started, takes ten years, that’s another one of these Drive-By Media figures like there were three million homeless when there never were, probably get this done in four or five years in certain places. But that’s not the point. They don’t want to drill for anything. They don’t want a bigger supply. As it turns out they’re going to get one anyway because people are using less. Here was Pelosi yesterday, she had a press conference in Washington, a portion here of what she said.
PELOSI: It’s the economy, Mr. President. It’s the economy. It’s about jobs and people not having them. It’s about their standard of living and purchasing power, their income going down because of the increase in the price of gasoline and groceries and health care and education, as others have mentioned. This economy needs the president’s attention, and he doesn’t need to have any diversionary tactics about drilling offshore, what did he say the other day, if we could only drill offshore, the economy would be better. That is a poor excuse from a president of the United States.
RUSH: She’s not irrelevant because she’s speaker of the House, but frankly it’s embarrassing to me to have somebody this willing to sound this naive. I don’t know how naive she is. I don’t even know how stupid she is. I don’t know her personally. But she’s willing to sound dumb, if she isn’t dumb. She’s willing to sound ignorant, if she’s not ignorant. She’s willing to sound obtuse, if she’s not. I think this woman is so partisan politically that it clouds her perception and view of reality at all costs. I think this woman is 100% total politics, and the political prism through which she looks through everything is destroying President Bush and Republicans. Which is fine, by the way, if that’s what you say, that’s politics as it is; but these people hide behind the notion that what they really want to do is help you, what they really want to do is elevate you. They’re standing in the way every opportunity they get. They’re the ones that like you suffering. I know that sounds brazen, and I know it sounds a little harsh, but they do.
Folks, it isn’t me saying this. They’ve said it themselves over the years. Back in, I guess, the early 2000s, when Dick Gephardt was still around, he was all excited the stock market was plunging. He said that every ten point drop or every hundred point drop in the stock market, we pick up another seat in the House. They were looking happily at the misery that some Americans were experiencing. She sits there and calls it a hoax or she calls it a distraction. Barbara Boxer’s out there contradicting her, saying we want to drill, too. Here’s Mitch McConnell. He was on Fox & Friends today, and he got a quick question, ‘How long can they afford to sit and not approve drilling and not reverse the ban, the Democrats?’ This is what he said. Well, we don’t have time to play it now, number 14. I was going to squeeze this in, but we’re not going to get there before the break. So when we come back I’ll play Boxer and that follows Pelosi and McConnell answering these two ’cause it’s a pretty good answer.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, here’s Barbara Boxer, ladies and gentlemen, last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, and he said to her, ‘Senator Boxer, do we need to start drilling in places we haven’t wanted to drill before?’
BOXER: I maintain that when you have two oilmen in the White House for eight long years and you see gas prices go up 300%, to turn around to blame the Democrats in Congress just…doesn’t…wash. The oil companies have gotten everything they want. It’s time to say, ‘Use it or lose it.’ Of course there are places we can drill, but I want you to know something. There are a lot of jobs that also come out of a beautiful, pristine coast, in certain areas of our country. In my own state, for example. In Washington state. In… Off the shores of New Jersey, for example, and many other places. North Carolina. I could go on. The fact is that is a $70 billion coastal economy, two million jobs. So of course we want to drill.
RUSH: Oh! Of course you want to drill! How did I miss that? Of course Pelosi wants to drill, and ‘two oilmen in the White House for eight long years as the gas price go up 300%’? We didn’t see gas prices go up for six long years, Senator Boxer, we saw gas prices skyrocket when your bud, Pelosi, took over the House of Representatives. I mean, them’s the facts, ma’am. Here’s Mitch McConnell. He was on Fox & Friends this morning. The question: ‘Senator, Nancy Pelosi was talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve yesterday, releasing ten percent would barely affect the price of gas. The approval rate you mentioned of Congress 18%, so how long can they afford to sit and not approve drilling and not reverse that ban?’
MCCONNELL: That silly proposal to open up 10% of the SPRO, strategic reserve, that’s about three and a half days’ worth of oil. (laughing) They also said we ought to prohibit American exports of oil. You know how much oil we export every year? It all goes to Puerto Rico, by the way, an American territory, and it’s about a half a day’s use of oil in the country. (laughs) I mean, this is absurd. Nobody’s going to believe that any of these proposals they’re talking about are real.
RUSH: Okay. McConnell’s right. Why did they make them, then? Why does Pelosi say get 10% of the strategic reserve? And why does Pelosi say we need to stop exporting oil? Is it because they’re stupid? No. It’s because they know (or they think) that most of their voters are stupid. So they will say what they think most of their voters will believe. So Pelosi says, ‘Well, release from the strategic reserve. Why, there’s no reason for the government to hoard that oil,’ and she has visions in her head of stupid, idiotic Democrats and liberals out there cheering, going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and you throw in the, you know, ‘eight years of two oilmen in the White House.’ They’re counting on the stupidity of their own voters. Look, these are liberals, folks. They look condescendingly and arrogantly at people.
So it’s not that they’re necessarily stupid, although the jury is still out on Pelosi — well, and Boxer, too. But it’s they know that their voters are stupid. And they think more than just their voters are stupid. Stop exporting oil from America? (laughing) What they realize is that their dolt voters will hear that and go, ‘What? We’re exporting oil while we’ve got gas prices this high,’ and that will make ’em even madder. ‘Cause they know they’re not going to follow up and listen to Mitch McConnell hours later with the truth. So this is how they operate, and this is precisely because they want you mad. They want you upset;, they want you suffering. They want you so ticked off that you can’t wait to go into a voting booth in November and just literally scratch out every Republican name you see. That’s what their objective.