RUSH: Interesting little poll here from The Politico. Well, actually it’s a story, but it’s a poll from James Carville and Stan Greenberg by their company Democracy Corps. I wonder why they put this out? You ready for this? Wait for it. ‘Racism is not a factor driving conservative opposition to President Barack Obama, according to the results of focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps, a Democratic organization, released on Friday. Nevertheless, members of the conservative base of the GOP said they believe the president is pursuing a ‘secret agenda’ designed to push the country toward socialism.’
What’s secret about it? Nobody thinks it’s secret. It’s right out in the open. The only thing secret is how some people refuse to see what’s right in front of their face. ”This is a pretty dominant view in the Republican Party,’ said Democratic strategist James Carville, who worked on the report. Rather than attributing their dislike of Obama to race, participants in the focus groups, which were a project of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, said that their disaffection was borne out of a sense that the president was orchestrating an effort to steer the country away from its ‘founding principles.’ ‘They want him to fail,’ said pollster Stan Greenberg. ‘It’s not just a political motivation, it’s an ethical imperative given what they think Obama’s goals are.” This is October 19th. It took them nine months to figure this out. Took them nine months to figure out that ‘I want him to fail’ is not political. It’s an ethical imperative given what they know Obama’s goals are. So now a Democrat group, Carville and Greenberg, have gone out there and they’ve talked to Republicans in focus groups and conservatives, ‘Guess what out there? Eat my gumbo! It’s not racism!’ It’s not racism. And it’s not political. It’s an ethical imperative given what they think Obama’s goals are.
‘The research team held focus groups from Sept. 29-30 with conservative voters in suburban Atlanta and another set of meetings with conservative-leaning independents in the Cleveland area. The Atlanta groups consisted of older white, self-identified conservatives who voted for both John McCain and a Republican Congressional candidate. The Cleveland groups included older white swing voters — half of whom voted for Obama and half of whom supported McCain in 2008. In the two places, researchers found vastly different results. Whether or not they voted for Obama, the independent voters said they wanted to see the president succeed and were not concerned that he was championing so-called socialist policies. ‘On virtually every point of discussion around President Obama and the major issues facing our country, these two audiences simply saw the world in fundamentally different ways — underscoring the extreme disconnect of the conservative Republican base voters,’ the report’s authors wrote.’
Now, look at this. They think they’re putting out a positive here for Obama. ‘Independent voters said they wanted to see the president succeed and were not concerned that he was championing so-called socialist policies.’ Independents are who are fleeing Obama in droves. The conservatives were never with him. Independents are the reason his poll numbers are dropping in approval, in health care support, cap and trade, whatever it is, it’s independents who are fleeing him. But they want to try to portray independents here as moderates. Well, they just want everybody to get along, ah, the moderates want him to succeed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s just fascinating. One conservative focus group participant said — they quote him in this Greenberg and Carville poll — ‘When Republicans try to be like Democrat-lite, they’re not going to convert any Democrats to them and they’re just going to lose conservatives.’
Well, damn. Carville has found out what I have been saying for years. It’s all right here in his own little poll. Opposition to Obama is not racist, it is said to be racist. We don’t oppose Obama because he’s black, because he’s ruining the country is why we oppose him. We don’t have time to worry about race here. We’re concerned about ideas. The poll also found out we don’t trust the media and also found out we want the Republican Party to be conservative. It sounds like any given hour of my show for the last year. Carville and Greenberg could have saved their money and just listened to an hour of this program at any point in the last year and they wouldn’t have had to go out and do focus groups on anybody. They would have known what the truth is.
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RUSH: You know, I wonder if Carville and Greenberg’s poll research show that racism is behind opposition to conservatives. James, why don’t you and Stan go out and poll some Democrats? Find out where the racism in America really is, James, ’cause I’ll tell you: You know, all of you people… Here’s our Media Tweak of the Day, by the way. As you know we do media tweak, we know exactly what to say to jack ’em up and get ’em on the hysterical roll again. It’s not the color of Obama’s skin that attracts, opposes or causes us any trouble whatsoever. It’s not the color of his skin. It’s the color of his policies. In other words, it’s not his blackness; it is his redness that we oppose. Deficit is one place. You’ll find red everywhere in the Obama agenda and the results of his policies. You’ll find red ink; you’ll find red policies.
It is not his blackness. It is his redness that we oppose.
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RUSH: Let me go to Las Vegas real quick. Wendy, welcome to the program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Oh, Rush, it’s so wonderful to be here. I’ve been listening to you since before your TV show. But I can tell you that 24/7 subscription, I’ve had that for two years, and I do not miss a show, not one. It’s like I have a second full-time job here. If Carville — now he comes out with this brilliant analysis of why the right is so angry and reasons for protesting and all this. All he had to do was show up to one, just one of the events. I flew all the way to DC to be there on September 12th. There were so many people, and yeah, this is what we’re afraid of. We don’t want what this president is doing. It won’t work.
RUSH: What she is referring to — if you’re just joining the show, one of the first stories of the day today, Stan Greenberg and James Carville — thanks very much, Wendy. It is frustrating. Greenberg and Carville do this poll. Democracy Corps is the name of their company. They’ve done focus groups. You know what they found? They found that conservatives are not opposed to Obama because of his race. They do want him to fail, but that’s not political. They want his policies to fail. They are afraid Obama is marching us to socialism. What Wendy here is simply repeating is what I said. All he would have to do is listen to one hour of this program in any of the past nine months or talk to any of the people in the tea parties. They didn’t need to wait nine months and do one of these surveys. Now, they’re out spinning this in a little bit different way from what I understand, the exact results because they’re trying to say the independents here are really the ones, ‘The independents, oh, they want Obama to succeed and they’re not worried about socialism at all.’ So that’s the part of the poll that they’re highlighting. But it’s nothing to do with race. As I said, it’s not his blackness that we oppose. It’s his redness, his ideas.