RUSH: There’s a story out there today, and it’s an illustration of how things happen, how things are said and reported. This is preposterous, and I have personal knowledge of this. Now, this story appears in the New York Daily News, and the headline is: “Margaret Thatcher Won’t Meet with Sarah Palin During Her Trip to London, En Route to Sudan: Report — Margaret Thatcher, the former U.K. Prime Minister — and heroine of the former Alaska governor — has no interest in meeting the ‘nuts’ potential presidential candidate, Thatcher aides tell British media. Palin recently revealed that she’ll make a stop in London en route to Sudan this summer. ‘I am just hoping Mrs. Thatcher is well enough to see me as I so admire her,’ the Tea Party favorite told Britain’s Sunday Times.
“But the feeling isn’t mutual. ‘Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts,’ a source told the Guardian. An aide told the Independent that the 86-year-old conservative rarely makes public appearances due to her declining health. ‘Nowadays, the Lady rarely meets people at all,’ the aide said. ‘If a meeting went ahead, it would be very much low-key, and would very much depend on how things were on the day. We don’t make firm appointments for this sort of meeting.'”
Now, personal disclosure here, I happen to know Margaret Thatcher. I happen to know her pretty well. I haven’t talked to her in years, but I’ve known her for years. And I got to know her very well through some mutual friends of mine here in Palm Beach, Florida, Stanley and Gay Gaines, who are very close friends of hers. I have driven Lady Thatcher around golf courses. We were out in Vail, Colorado, in Ego Springs. It’s actually Eagle Springs but we call it Ego Springs, Colorado. The Gaines had a home out there at one time and we’d go out in the summertime now and then, play golf, and Lady Thatcher and her husband, Sir Denis were guests a number of times, for a week, long weekends. And I remember Lady Thatcher wanted to see the golf course, so we grabbed a golf cart, she was always dressed to the nines each and every day, was wearing a dress, we got in the golf cart and I drove all 18 holes on the cart path, never went on the course but just showed her every hole.
We’d drive up and because of etiquette we would stop if there were players on tee boxes getting ready to tee off or if they were in the fairway near where we were we would stop so as not to distract, and you should see the looks, double-takes all over the place. Here’s Margaret Thatcher on a golf cart at Ego Springs golf club being driven around by me, El Rushbo, and people are doing double-takes because she’s instantly recognizable. I have been with her in social and professional settings as well. It’s obvious that her health is not today what it was, but back in the day, Margaret Thatcher would in no way allow an aide to refer to anybody, Sarah Palin notwithstanding, as “nuts.” She talked to anybody and everybody that came into her orb. I mean she literally had to talk to some people that were nuts. I saw it and she was as gracious as she could be. It was an education being around Lady Thatcher. It was one of the experiences of my life that I’ll never forget. I can tell you that you have here an aide saying, “Ain’t no way Lady Thatcher’s gonna meet with that nutso Sarah Palin.” I guarantee you Lady Thatcher is probably not aware that the aide is even saying this. That is not the way she speaks.
Now, don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying she’d be a Palin supporter, I don’t want to go there, but I mean Reagan met with Bill Clinton after he was inaugurated and gave him some jelly beans. This is absurd for this to be the case, but this is a classic illustration of what is happening in the press, not just here, but around the world with Sarah Palin. Now, I mentioned at the close of the program yesterday, I wanted to develop something a little further today that I didn’t have time to get into in great detail yesterday, and it’s about Palin. As you know I have no brief for Palin, I’ve not chosen anybody, I’ve not anointed anybody, I’ve not endorsed anybody, and I’m not prepared to today; that’s not the point of this. But I can’t let this go by, all of these things that are happening, this continued effort to literally destroy her. I mean I understand the Democrats wanting to do it, but there are people on our side engaging in this. That’s unseemly.
Now, for all of the stated Republican opposition to Sarah Palin, if she gets in the race, and you heard it here first, and don’t doubt me, she is going to end up being the one to beat. Now, I’m not gonna mention any names here because it’s not the point, but I have spoken to a number of people in the Republican presidential field. We got Rick Santorum coming on this afternoon. Two o’clock we got Santorum, so top of the third hour we got Santorum today. Gonna be interviewing David Mamet after the program tomorrow for the Limbaugh Letter. This guy’s written a big book. He’s the lib playwright who’s undergone this massive conversion to conservatism and away from liberalism, and the things he’s saying about liberalism are just right on the money. He’s abandoning it, so we’ll talk to him about that tomorrow. But I talked to a lot of these people.
I make it a point to bring up Palin because I want to see how they react, ’cause I know how I react when people bring up so-called competitors to me. (interruption) Well, Snerdley, that’s my point. You know, it doesn’t benefit me at all to comment on anybody else who does what I do. There’s no win in it. So I don’t. But these guys, you know, I’ve thrown Palin’s name out and the reaction that I get from virtually all of them is cautious respect. None of them have trashed her to me. None of them have done anything other than demonstrate or express respect for her. I’ve not talked to all of them, of course, but I’ve not heard one of them just lambaste her like you see other Republicans doing. If she does decide to get in the race, and I have no idea about that, she will be the one to beat.
Now, there’s a reason McCain picked her. He picked her ostensibly against the wishes of the party at large. He picked her because he needed somebody fresh and energetic to restart his floundering campaign, and it worked. And anybody who’s willing to be honest will tell you that the crowds that were drawn during the McCain campaign stops were due to Sarah Palin. And the energy that she brought to that campaign was unmistakable, and the attachment that Republican voters had to her was also unmistakable. Now, we’ve gone through all the reasons Republicans don’t want her in the race, the insiders versus the outsiders, the Beltway elites and all that, the consultants, GOP operatives. They don’t want her in the race not because they fear she will lose. The standard line, and you heard it from our caller Vinny in Queens, ” Rush, I love Palin, love you, but she’s gonna lose. The media’s destroyed her. She’s got no chance. I’m sick and tired of backing people that are gonna lose, Rush.”
Right, okay, so we just chalk it up, media has another victory, is that it? We sit here, we let the media destroy one of our candidates and we move on to somebody the media hasn’t destroyed? Somehow that just doesn’t sit well with me. I mean on the one hand I have people constantly complaining about the media destroying our guys and nobody ever defends our guys and here they go out and destroy Palin. “Well, she’s destroyed, Rush, it’s impossible. I don’t think that she can win, and I’m really tired of nominating losers and so forth. I hate to say it, Rush, the media’s just totally destroyed her.” Fine. This is that cut-and-dry? You’re happy with that? No. They don’t want her in the race not because they fear that she can’t beat Obama. They don’t want her in the race because they are afraid she can beat others in the Republican field for the nomination, leaving them on the outside looking in.
Look at it this way. With as much piling on of Sarah Palin as there has been on our side, if she gets in and if she wins, look at all of the people on our side who are by virtue of the way they’ve treated her up ’til now out of it. They will have no role. When she went to New Hampshire on the bus tour and happened on the very day the Mittster announced himself she’s up there taking and stealing his thunder and at the same time she’s making her appearance while he’s making his, she is denouncing and disagreeing with some of his policies. A lot of people said, “Well, that’s really stupid. This is another example of Palin being an idiot. Why, she’s not even consulting with the Republican hierarchy on this bus tour. She ought to be coordinating her schedule so she doesn’t step on some of these other people.”
Well, wait a minute, now. That argument stems from the narrative that she’s an idiot and doesn’t know what she’s doing. What if she’s settling a score with somebody? What if Romney’s got somebody on his team that has been very scornful of her? Who knows, I don’t know. But I do know she’s not stupid, and I do know that she is highly competitive, and I do know that she’s willing to go to the throat, and I do know that she keeps score. Because everybody in politics does. And she’s certainly in politics. So all of this, “Rush, you can’t win, I mean 41% of Republican voters…” I have never in my life put it to you this way. I have never in my life seen the Democrat Party and its media operatives spend so much time destroying somebody who didn’t have a prayer anyway. This woman is so stupid, she’s got the entire press corps chasing her bus all up and down the East Coast.
NPR yesterday grabbed their own historian about this Paul Revere mess, and it was clear that NPR, I’m sure thought their historian was gonna just make it very apparent that Sarah Palin was an idiot, didn’t know what she was doing. This expert did an Ollie North on the Iran-Contra committee, ended up telling the hostette at NPR, (paraphrasing) “Yeah, she was very right about everything she said.” And the NPR babe was obviously a little deflated and depressed here. But these Republican operatives don’t want her in the race not because they fear she can’t beat Obama but because they fear she can beat their favored candidates and Obama, which would leave them on the outside looking in.
And again, for whatever it’s worth, the Margaret Thatcher that I knew would in no way, even if she thought it, in no way would she say it or allow an aide of hers to describe Sarah Palin or anybody else in the American political system, a former governor, a former vice president, as nuts. She doesn’t even talk about her opponents that way. She never did. So even across the pond people working for Margaret Thatcher or speaking for her have gotta get in their digs at Sarah Palin. And again, I don’t know that Margaret Thatcher would support her or not; this is not the point here, and the fact that she won’t meet with Palin, she’s not meeting with anybody.
Frankly, folks, she’s not capable, and it’s very sad that she’s not capable of meeting with a whole lot of people. The people she meets with are very close, and that’s it. Just the ways of life. But she’s not making an active decision not to meet with Sarah Palin because she’s nuts. And I wouldn’t even rule out the meeting anyway. Palin is gonna go to London, she’s gonna be there, I don’t know when, on her way to the Sudan. I don’t know what she’s going there for. I have no clue. Palin’s not my candidate, don’t misunderstand any of this, but I read this stuff and I have to comment on it ’cause it’s absolute BS. It is lies, it’s distortion. We’ve all been personally impacted, affected by this kind of crap, and it never ends, unless somebody tries to put a stop to it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Grab audio sound bites 30, 31, 32. We’ve got the NPR sound bites that I was describing to you earlier. On All Things Considered Monday it was funny. They had their historian in there, and I’m sure they thought that the historian was gonna come in there and rip Sarah Palin a new one and it turned out to be just the opposite. Monday night NPR’s All Things Considered, the cohost was Melissa Block. She’s talking to Suffolk University’s History Department Chairman Robert Allison about Palin and, blah, blah, blah. Block said, “Let’s review Paul Revere’s midnight ride, April 18, 1775. He’s going to Lexington. According to Sarah Palin, he’s riding his horse through town sending warning shots and ringing those bells. Is that right?”
ALLISON: He is telling people so that they can ring bells to alert others. What he’s doing is going from house to house knocking on doors to members of the Committee of Safety saying, “The regulars are out.” That is he knew that General Gage was sending troops out to Lexington and Concord — really Concord — to seize the weapons being stockpiled there but also, perhaps, to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, leaders of the Continental Congress who were staying in the town of Lexington. Church bells are ringing throughout the countryside. He also was a bell ringer, that is he rang the bells at Old North Church as a boy, but he personally is not getting off his horse and going to ring bells. He’s telling other people — and this is their system. Before Facebook, before Twitter, before NPR, this is the way you get a message out —
BLOCK: (haughty chuckle)
ALLISON: — is by having people ring church bells and everyone knows there is an emergency.
RUSH: “So Sarah Palin was saying that Paul Revere’s message to the British and his warning was, ‘You’re not gonna take American arms,’ basically a Second Amendment argument even though the Second Amendment didn’t exist then?”
BLOCK: The Second Amendment didn’t exist yet.
ALLISON: Yes, he was making a Second Amendment case but, in fact, the British were going out to Concord to seize colonists’ arms, the weapons that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was stockpiling there. So, yeah, she is right in that. She may be pushing it too far to say this is a Second Amendment case. Of course neither the Second Amendment nor the Constitution was in anyone’s mind at the time. But the British objective was to get the arms that were stock mild in Concord.
RUSH: She never said it was a “Second Amendment case.” She never used those words. She just talked about the Paul Revere warning the Brits, “You’re not gonna get our arms. We’re ready for you,” and so the hostette says, “So you think basically on the whole Sarah Palin got her history right in this?”
ALLISON: Well, yeah, she did — and, remember, she is a politician, she’s not an historian; and God help us when historians start to act like politicians and I suppose when politicians start writing history.
RUSH: Well, I don’t know what that means, “God help us when historians start to act like politicians,” but regardless, yeah, yeah, she did. She got it right. Yeah. She did. She got it right. Do you think that was NPR’s purpose? I don’t know. I kinda doubt that it was NPR’s purpose.
END TRANSCRIPT
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