RUSH: They did it to us again and we continue to be fooled by it. We continue to buy into it. Despite all the experience and intelligence that we bring to this, it is just… not impossible, but it is difficult to avoid getting sucked in to the mainstream media soap opera narrative of the day. It’s just hard. And even I, your host, yesterday got sucked in, believing all of the preelection news and the preelection polling data coming out of Israel, which pretty much had Netanyahu defeated.
Netanyahu was gonna lose. And why was Netanyahu gonna lose? He was gonna lose because he was rude; he was extreme; he was a right winger; he didn’t appreciate the greatness of Obama; he disrespected Obama by coming and speaking to Congress when Obama didn’t invite him and preferred that he wasn’t here. He deserved to lose because the Iranians don’t like him, and the Arabs don’t like him. He deserved to lose, he was going to. And they had exit polls, they had polling data, they had everything.
They had all lined up to tell us how the race was close, it was too close to call, oh my gosh, it’s gonna be a disaster. And just by portraying the race as close, one of the objectives was to try to suppress pro-Netanyahu vote turnout yesterday in Israel. That’s one of the things. That’s why it’s important to always be vigilant and try to resist this stuff. And it’s hard. It is hard to avoid getting sucked in. No matter how experienced and how much we know about how the Drive-By Media and the left operate worldwide, it’s still difficult to put up your hands and say “Stop” when the onslaught is at you.
And yet my instincts, if you were here yesterday, my instincts were how can this even be close? And it turned out not to be. How can this even be a contest? How can it be that an opponent of Netanyahu, who will actively weaken Israel security, how can a candidate like that even have a chance? And it turns out he didn’t have much of a chance. And now the Drive-By Media, which was so excited about what they convinced themselves and everybody else was gonna be a Netanyahu defeat, now they’re not even talking about the election today, not much.
They certainly aren’t giving it the energy that they gave it yesterday and in days prior. They are not excited about it. It’s now just your average, run-of-the-mill, ordinary story, yesterday’s news, all because they didn’t get the outcome that they wanted. Folks, there’s a lesson here. There are many lessons here. One of the big lessons is that conservatism can beat Barack Obama.
Scott Walker has shown that conservatism can beat Barack Obama and beat the Democrat Party and beat the left in its own backyard. In Scott Walker’s case, Wisconsin, not just once, not just twice, but three times Scott Walker won, and then after winning, implemented his agenda. He implemented his agenda and it worked. It improved things in the state of Wisconsin for the vast majority of people.
Here’s Netanyahu. There’s no question Netanyahu is a conservative, particularly if you use the American definition of the ideology, there’s no question. And look at the array of forces against Netanyahu led by Obama campaign experts. And he still wins. He had the socialist movements of Western Europe opposed to him. He had the American media opposed to him. He had most of the world media opposed. They had him dead and buried, politically. They had the Iranian media, of course, opposed.
Barack Obama’s campaign experts raising money for, spending money for, advising Netanyahu’s opponents. And they still lost. And I was thinking last night, remember shortly after Obama was inaugurated, one of the first things that happened — you’ll remember this, Snerdley — one of the first things that happened is that Obama and Moochelle and their delegation from Chicago flew in to wherever, wherever the Olympic committee is, and made their bid for whatever future Olympics.
They went in there thinking it will be a slam dunk, why, the guy just won the Nobel Peace Prize, why, let’s get the Olympics for Chicago. They strut in there and they were shut out, they were shut down, and it was humiliating. They were seen slinking out of town, wherever the Olympic committee decisions are made. Everybody scratched their head, how can this be? Barack Obama, he’s from Chicago, he wanted the Olympics, just won the Nobel Peace Prize, he’s the first African-American president elected in America, and he got shut out.
It can happen, is the point. Conservatism can beat Barack Obama. Conservatism can beat the Democrat Party. I’ll tell you who needs to realize this is the Republican Party. What we have learned is centrism will not beat Barack Obama. RINOs will not beat Barack Obama. Moderates will not beat Barack Obama. Republican Northeastern liberals, Rockefeller types, are not gonna beat Barack Obama. By Obama, I mean the Democrat Party, or Hillary Clinton, throw your name in there. But a conservative candidate will, Scott Walker, Netanyahu, any number of other examples are readily available.
Let me tell you a little story here just to illustrate something. It happened on the golf course recently. I happened to be playing with a prominent Republican analyst, strategist. And by Republican, he was not a conservative, but he’s not a lib. He was a centrist, a moderate. He’s one of these guys that doesn’t want anybody to think he’s Tea Party because he thinks they’ll think he’s like Sarah Palin.
He was telling me, you know what he said to me? He said, “You know what the greatest thing that could happen to us would be? It would be if the Democrats nominate Elizabeth Warren.”
And I said, “Why would that be great? Why does it matter? They’re either gonna nominate Hillary or Elizabeth Warren, what does it matter?”
And he said — are you listening? — this guy said to me, “Because if they nominate Elizabeth Warren we could nominate a centrist candidate and look like we are the Tea Party when we’re not, by comparison.
I said, “Wait, let me understand this. You want them to nominate the furthest left candidate so that your moderate appears conservative in comparison?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Well, why don’t you just go all in with somebody from the Tea Party? Why don’t you just go in with somebody conservative?”
“Ah, that isn’t gonna work. It isn’t gonna work.” And I got all the predictable reasons. The Tea Party has been destroyed by the media, the extremism and all this stuff, the stuff they didn’t want to deal with in refuting, all the allegations. I thought it was quite telling. Let’s have the Democrats nominate Elizabeth Warren because we could nominate a centrist candidate who would look conservative, i.e., Tea Party-ish by comparison.
So what does that tell you? They still don’t get it. Conservative candidates can win. That is the modern and recent history and it still is something that doesn’t permeate. The Netanyahu election is just the latest example. And make no mistake, don’t tell me that Netanyahu wasn’t running against Obama. He most definitely was. Benjamin Netanyahu was running against Obama clear as Mitt Romney did. Obama may not have been on the ballot, but he was advising Netanyahu’s opponents. Obama had made it clear he did not want Netanyahu.
Obama and the Democrat Party and the American left made it clear that they thought anything along the lines of Netanyahu would stand in the way of a good deal on nukes with Iran. I mean, let’s be up front and honest. This election was about the Obama way of dealing with Iran or the Netanyahu way of dealing with Iran, and you can’t tell me anything different.
You want to tell me, “Well, he wasn’t on the ballot, Obama.” Yes, he wasn’t on the ballot, but everybody knows what this was about. The point is Barack Obama lost an election yesterday, too. He wasn’t on the ballot, but the things he stood for and the things he tried secure victory for went down in flames. And it wasn’t even close. What is Netanyahu, among many other things? He’s fearless. Right? It shows you, it illustrates, there’s no reason to be afraid.