RUSH: I watched the debate last night, as everybody did, and I’m thinking, ‘This is cool. McCain finally on message. McCain finally on offense.’ I thought Obama looked like he was stumbling around. I thought Obama looked off his game. I thought Obama was totally on defense. I did not see somebody cool. I did not see a mountain. I did not see somebody elegant. I didn’t see any of that. I saw somebody who was lying through his teeth time after time after time. I saw somebody who seemed irritated when McCain was speaking. I saw somebody who almost was close to blowing his cool in terms of facial expressions, and I saw the director cut away from Obama at those times so as to assist Obama in having his facial expressions not broadcast as much as possible. I’m getting e-mails all night long from people, I mean in the thousands, who are jazzed, finally somebody is taking it to Obama, somebody is standing up for the middle class, somebody is standing up for the right economics, somebody trying to do the right things for the first time in a long time. And then, after the debate, people that are e-mailing me, a lot of them turned on the Fox News Channel, and they were dispirited and depressed. They felt that Obama had found a new ally in some of the commentators on the Fox All-Star Panel.
Now, they view the Fox News Channel as their network. They tuned in for post-debate analysis expecting the Fox All-Stars to have seen what they saw, and they listened to the Fox All-Stars talking about a debate they didn’t see. The Fox All-Stars were talking about how rotten McCain was, how horrible he had done, what a rock Obama was, how cool Obama was, how elegant Obama was. I got a note from a friend who watched this in a bar with 200 people last night, and they were cheering themselves crazy during the debate last night. One of these guys happened to e-mail a friend and said, ‘What’s the reaction on Fox?’ He said, ‘The Fox guys say Obama skunked McCain, that McCain was just horrible.’ And the guys at the bar said, ‘What? What in the world did they watch?’ And I’m thinking, Fred Barnes, Bill Kristol, these are the people, folks, who told us that McCain was the best chance Republicans had way back when. I mean, as far as Kristol was concerned, going back to the year 2000 in the primaries versus George W. Bush.
So after telling us for months that McCain was the most electable Republican because of his ability to reach out to moderates, the Fox News panel all said he blew the opportunity to really take it to Obama on taxes and education and abortion, Ayers, ACORN, all that sort of stuff. Well, isn’t this what you guys were suggesting? You’ve got exactly what you wanted throughout the whole campaign. McCain was trailing, he wasn’t making any ground up, and then last night McCain finally switched gears, went on the attack, went on offense, didn’t tell one lie about Obama, and all of a sudden the biggest McCain sponsors for the past eight years, for the past year, all of a sudden are dumping on John McCain. It’s unfortunate because these people that watch this that thought it was all fabulous, you know, they want validation from what they consider to be their favorite television network, and they got the exact opposite.
There is so much to overcome in this election. We have people angry the economy is not doing well, the candidate mans up last night, he finely manned up. He went after Obama as best he could. And then our own conservative geniuses try to undermine the whole thing after the debate. I agree with a friend of mine, sent me a note today, ‘If I hear one more word about how cool Obama is and how calm and collected Obama is, I am going to scream,’ because when I hear ’em say that I keep thinking about his answers on infanticide, his answers on taxes, his answers on health care. I guess it’s very easy to be cool if he’s looking in the camera and lying. Did it not matter to the Fox All-Stars or something — in fact, most of the other media thought McCain did great. A lot of the other Drive-By Media thought McCain did super. But does it not matter that Obama’s lying through his teeth? It may not. I have a couple little ditties to share with you as the program unfolds today that are just stunning.
A Republican expert assembled a focus group, played a couple of ads for independent, moderate Reagan type Democrats, spelled out everything about Obama from Jeremiah Wright to ACORN to Bill Ayers, and all these people are, ‘Yeah, yeah, he’s got it, I know all that, I hate him, I don’t like him, I’m going to hate him when I vote for him, but I’m still voting for him,’ meaning Obama, ‘because I hate the Republicans. The Republicans have destroyed the country. We need Wall Street to not run the country anymore. We need Wal-Mart to run the country like it did during the Reagan years,’ was one of the comments, and that was from a NASCAR person, 54 years old. So here we’ve got Barack Obama, last night announcing a prescription for a depression, raising taxes, spreading the wealth around. What wealth? Would you tell me what wealth he’s going to spread around? We’re losing trillions in wealth in the stock market. Obama wants to tax it and spread it around. Well, he can spread around manure because that’s what he’s spewing. Wealth is disappearing. And the Lord Barack Obama, the Most Merciful, still wants to spread it around. There’s nothing to spread around right now. We’re in the business of trying to create new wealth, gang.