RUSH: Do you remember, folks, it wasn’t that long ago, and, quite frankly, I’ll be honest with you, I’m even now a little surprised that more dust was not raised after I said this. But I was looking at the various policy positions that we know are held by Hillary Clinton, and I went through the same thing as we know it about Jeb Bush. The top three issues the two people agree on across the board, what to do about illegal immigration and amnesty, slam-dunk agreement. Common Core, public education curriculum, slam dunk. And fully implementing Obamacare, slam dunk, those top three issues. You can’t tell the difference between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, and I suggested that may be the ideal ticket for the establishment types inside the Beltway. The ideal ticket, so that no matter who wins, they win, would be Hillary or Jeb. Hillary and Jeb, they could figure out who’s on top. Of the ticket. Themselves.
And then, lo and behold, there’s a story here by Charles Gasparino, it’s in the New York Post today, and it’s about Wall Street. And they’ve got the same exact view. Wall Street’s all excited about Hillary or Jeb and/or because they look at it that they win no matter who wins. That both candidates are right what they want on Wall Street. So add that as a fourth issue, if you will, about which you can’t find any difference between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. And, by the way, speaking of Wall Street, that makes total sense. You know how many people today still think that Big Business and money people are conservatives? Because they think Big Business and money people want government off their backs and government out of their lives and government out of their businesses and government out of their taxes and so forth. Wrongo, folks. That may have been true someday, but it’s not true anymore. Now crony capitalism or crony socialism, however you want to look at it, the Wall Street guys, I mean, they’re best friends of the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s printed three and a half trillion dollars since the financial crisis, and most of it’s gone straight to the stock market. So the people in the stock market are making out like banshees, and there’s the reason why you have a wealth gap.
If the government, the Fed, is gonna print three and a half trillion dollars and give it to one group of people, what do you think’s gonna happen? Well, it has happened. So now the Wall Street guys are saying, doesn’t matter to us, Hillary or Jeb. They don’t care about the country. They don’t care about culture. There’s no ideology in this. They look at Jeb or Hillary and they win either way. So you’re gonna have equal amounts of dollars. I predict donations from Wall Street types almost gonna be 50-50, Jeb and Hillary. Ah, one of them may collect a little bit more than the other, but the story did not surprise me at all, that that was the way that Wall Street would look at it.
This is relatively, I say relatively, new. In fact, it may be as deeply woven as it is now into our political landscape, it may be as recent as Obama, that this truism has become a myth, and that is Wall Street, Big Business people are Republican, or that they are conservative. Whoever is in the White House, they want to sidle up to. And they’re looking at Ted Cruz, not their ball of wax. Ben Carson, not interested. Scott Walker, they’re not sure, but they don’t think so. Chris Christie, they were thinking so, but Christie has bombed out. And there’s another investigation that started into Christie.
Christie is not looking good to the Wall Street gang. So they’re looking at Hillary and Jeb Bush, and they figure they win regardless. That’s some big-money donors that we’re talking about, which takes us to David Axelrod on the Today show today. The cohost Savannah Guthrie interviewing Axelrod, and she says, “Let’s talk politics. Factor your 40 years, as the book mentions. Did you think of Bush v. Clinton race in 2016 is good for the country?” This is Jeb versus Hillary. Do you think that would be good for the country? And I know you’re probably gonna vote for the Democrat, but in terms of the same two families again, is this good for the country, David?”
AXELROD: I like both of them, actually. It is easy to say that, but let’s see what the quality of the race is. Bush is already out there speaking about income inequality, which I think is a great sign and the problems of the middle class. Hillary I think will come out with some strong ideas on the same subject.
RUSH: Whoa, do you hear what I hear? Did you hear what I hear? Do you hear it the same way? Here’s David Axelrod, who got Obama elected also saying, “Hey, Jeb, Hillary, they’re pretty much aligned here. I don’t see that big a difference between them. I like both of them, actually.” So now I know why there wasn’t a whole lot of dust-up when I suggested this is because I’m not the first to start thinking about it. Now, it’s not gonna happen, don’t misunderstand. There isn’t gonna be a Jeb-Hillary ticket, but, you know, I was trying to put it that way to illustrate how similar they are. And here comes Axelrod, a few weeks after I do that, pretty much confirms that that’s the way they are seen.
So either one, fine with us. Axelrod would prefer the Democrat, obviously, but if it’s Jeb, we got a lot to work with there. Guthrie then said, “The question of whether racism animated some of the president’s critics was a question you deflected through your time in government, but you take it on in your book. And you say that some people refuse to accept legitimacy of the first black president and are seriously discomforted by the growing diversity of our country. Does the president share that view?”
AXELROD: Has any other president experienced someone shouting “you lie” in the US Congress or persistent questions about his citizenship? No, and I think that reflects some attitudes that are deeply ingrained in some people in this country.
RUSH: Okay, now, this takes us to the final bite here in this. Remember Axelrod’s book was released, and one of the pull quotes that they released to hype the book and hype sales was Axelrod claiming that Romney called Obama in his concession call in 2012 and insulted him. Basically Romney called, according to Axelrod, Romney called up and praised Obama for really doing well in places where there are a lot of black voters. He mentioned Cleveland and Milwaukee and a couple of other cities, and Axelrod said that Obama was profoundly insulted, just mad as he could be. He thought Romney was digging him. He thought Romney was telling you him, “Yeah, you won, but only because you got black people voting for you blindly. I like the way you did in Cleveland. I like the way you did in all these other urban cities.”
Well, Romney has denied it, and an aide to Romney, who was there when Romney made the phone call, the concession phone call, has denied it. Says it didn’t happen. So we have another potential Brian Williams situation here. So we got Axelrod and Obama claiming that Romney insulted them, threw down the race card in his concession call. But Romney and one of his aides are saying it didn’t happen. Savannah Guthrie said, “There was a bit of controversy last week. You write in the book that when Romney called Obama to concede on election night, 2012, the president hung up and reported to you he said, yeah, we turned out the vote in Milwaukee and Cleveland. He said, in other words, black people. That’s what he thinks it’s all about. Now, Romney’s body man has said that he was sitting next to Romney and he said that Romney never said any such thing, Axelrod, what about it?”
AXELROD: There were five people standing around the president when he got off the phone. All of them have the same recollection. Several of them have gone public since this started. I don’t think the president made that up. I don’t think Romney was trying to be ungracious, either, but, you know, we had just come through a long battle. They saw this through different lenses.
RUSH: Well, if you didn’t think Romney was trying to be ungracious, why offer that as a pull quote to hype the sale of the book? Why make a deal of it, if it ain’t no thing? If it ain’t no thing, why are you making a big deal of it? They got what they wanted out of it. It was another message to Romney: This is just a little bit of what’s waiting for you if you do decide to run again.