RUSH: Obama said yesterday, “This election will be a test of the model that got us here.” I don’t know what that means. I don’t think that makes any sense at all. I think they put it on the prompter or they put it on his notes and he goes out there and says this stuff. “This election will be a test of the model that got us here”? Now, I know what he’s trying to say. He’s got this notion that this is a campaign of the continuation of Bush, which is “what got us here.”
The Bush tax cuts.
Which he just extended yesterday!
He just extended the problems!
He just extended that which he has blaimed for his inability to fix this. He just extended the number one problem he inherited: The Bush tax cuts. He just extended them yesterday! He just extended 98% of “the model.” That’s why I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about. “In his remarks on extending the Bush tax cuts yesterday, Obama told America that his plan to only extend the cuts for those making [a couple hundred grand], ‘shouldn’t threaten you.'”
“It shouldn’t threaten the 98% of Americans who just want to know that their taxes won’t go up next year.” Now, this is a guy who thinks tax cuts are destructive, and now he wants people to not feel threatened that their taxes might go up. He is in effect saying he doesn’t want people to be threatened with him as president. I’m sorry, I don’t see this elite, cut-above-everybody-else intelligence. I just don’t see it. Of course I, El Rushbo, am not fooled by the way people talk.
Now, what was he talking about? He said, “We’ll learn whether it’s still true that a grassroots campaign can elect a president, whether ordinary Americans are in control of our democracy.” The model is a grassroots campaign. The model is the Tea Party. He wants to find out if the American people and their grassroots efforts still have the ability to elect a president or whether the Alinsky way can finally prevail. That’s what he’s saying. He can’t dare say it that way, but that’s what he’s saying.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to this thing that Obama said that was incoherent, and I want to explain to you why it’s incoherent and why it’s also filled with braggadocio and hubris that is breathtaking. When he talked about the model, suggesting that this campaign is about a model of what got us here, Obama wants us to believe, he wants you to believe that what got us here is everything Bush did. The Bush tax cuts, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan. That’s what got us here. Plus a couple of hidden tricks that Bush put in there that poor old Obama didn’t know about ’til after he was immaculated. The old, “We didn’t know how bad it really was ’til we got here. They didn’t tell us how bad it was.” Same thing Clinton tried in 1993.
So we hear this phrase “what got us here,” but we never hear the specifics. It’s just assumed that what got us here is Bush. Well, I want to tell you, it was not the Bush tax cuts that got us here, and it was not the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan that got us here. And there’s a very simple way of explaining this. In 2006, we’d had the war going on in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003. The Bush tax cuts since essentially 2001, 2002. In the year 2006, unemployment was under 6%, and the annual deficit was $160 billion. So clearly what got us here had nothing to do, or very little to do, with George W. Bush.
What got us where we are is excessive government borrowing, artificially cheap and low interest rates. The subprime mortgage mess, which did occur during Bush, but was created under Bill Clinton, and it was fully fueled by Democrats who basically saw to it that people who had no business being lent money got loans to buy houses. There was no credit check. I mean it was perfectly clear the people that were being given mortgages had no way of paying them back. They did not have the ability. They were given the mortgage anyway because the liberals thought it was unfair that some people in this country didn’t have houses while others did.
It was predominantly a program for the poor and for minorities to get them into the American dream. The banks were forced under pressure to make these loans. Well, the banks are not gonna sit there and just willingly lose money. This is worthless paper. All of these loans are worthless. So in an attempt to get some of the money back that they had just literally thrown away in these subprime mortgages, they pooled these mortgages and then sold them to unsuspecting buyers, who thought they were buying a phenomenal income stream with all of these pooled mortgage payments every month. But there weren’t any. It was all on the come.
There’s a great analogy. A guy owns a bar. Everybody in there is an alcoholic. One by one they lose their jobs, but they’re in there every day nevertheless and they’re buying booze. And pretty soon none of ’em can pay for it. But there’s a built-in clientele in there every day so the bar owner goes to the bank and says, “Look at this customer base I’ve got. This place is full every day.”
And the bank says, “You know what, you have got some future income out the wazoo here. Okay, pal, here’s more money.”
So the bar owner borrows more money but none of his customers can pay for the booze that they’re buying, but it’s still looked at as an incredible income stream, and they keep investing in it. Finally the bar owner can’t get any more money, there’s no income, it all goes south and everybody that’s lent the bar owner money is out. This is exactly what the subprime mortgage was, with a couple of variations. That’s what got us here. What got us here is the Democrat Party. What got us here is liberalism. What got us here is all of this incomparable spending by Obama, all of this debt, all of these mounting deficits. All of these economic policies that killed job creation. In 2006 unemployment was under 6%. The deficit was $160 billion. What happened between 2001, 2006 is not what got us here. What got us here is Barack Obama. What got us here is the Democrat Party.
Now, the Republicans, they have their own culpability in some of the spending. But Barack Obama went along with every penny of it that was proposed when he was a Senator. He didn’t oppose one penny of spending. He went along with all of it. But to try to say that who got us here is George Bush, what happened in his first six years or seven years, is absolute BS. Now, Obama is trying to capitalize on this, this is what got us here, in this model. In a fundraising e-mail, he says, and he’s repeating this on the campaign stump. He’s saying, “This election will be a test of the model that got us here. We’ll learn whether it’s still true that a grassroots campaign can elect a president — whether ordinary Americans are in control of our democracy in the face of massive spending.”
“We’ll learn whether it’s still true that a grassroots campaign can elect a president — whether ordinary Americans are in control of our democracy in the face of massive spending.” The model that he’s talking about is the grassroots campaign, as opposed to massive spending. It’s like the Super PACs are doing. Obama is pretending he’s the grassroots campaign. Obama is doing a 180. This is why I think he’s incoherent. This is why I don’t think he knows what he’s saying. If he does know, if this is a structured campaign, they have gotta be fooling themselves if they think that they’re gonna sneak this past us.
Now, this mention here of the model that got us here, what does that show you? Obama is saying, what he’s trying to convince people to believe is that if he isn’t reelected, democracy will have failed. If he is reelected, democracy will have succeeded. Romney is not democracy. Romney is the rich. Romney is Wall Street. Romney is anti-democracy. Romney is powerful forces that overcome democracy. It’s just the exact opposite. Obama is powerful forces that wipe out democracy. Obama represents powerful forces that wish to stomp on and squish democracy. What Obama is saying on the stump and in his fundraising e-mails is that if Romney wins, then control of our democracy will have been taken out of the hands of us, ordinary Americans, and taken over by the rich. That’s his campaign, that’s what this means.
I don’t think — and I could be wrong about this, it’s a function of memory — but I don’t think that any president or even any presidential candidate has ever made such an outrageous statement, and he just tossed it off. Just tosses this off. “We’re gonna learn whether it’s still true that a grassroots campaign can elect…” A grassroots campaign is gonna send Obama packing. A grassroots campaign is what happened in the 2010 midterms. A grassroots campaign is the Tea Party. There isn’t anything grassroots about Obama. Obama is Alinsky. Obama is a thugocracy. Obama is the Chicago way. Obama is wiping out the playing field, not leveling it or any of this other happy horse manure.
He is pretending that his is the grassroots campaign and that Romney represents these powerful anti-democratic forces who wish to use their power to force themselves on you and on this country. He’s talking about this fundraising model, grassroots model, versus Romney’s rich guys. And this because he’s being outspent, he’s being outraised, and he can’t abide this. Obama is the leader of the clique. Obama is Mr. Popularity. Obama is Mr. Loved and Adored, he’s Mr. America. This nerd, this 65-year-old dinosaur, this nerd, this absolute kook, Romney’s outraising me? Well, that’s just because of the rich. His grassroots model versus Romney’s rich guys is gonna allow Romney to outspend Obama. That’s what he’s talking about here. And all it means is that they are beside themselves.
They can’t believe any of this is happening. They can’t believe Romney is outraising them. By the way, a lot of fat cats, these three fundraisers that Romney had in the Hamptons over the weekend at a couple of these places, a lot of huge Obama donors showed up, rich Obama donors who don’t want any more of Obama, want no more part of him. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that unions spent over $4.4 billion on politics just in the six years between 2005 and 2011, which included one presidential election year. Now, folks, this is astounding. They are spending more than they are collecting in dues. They’re not collecting $4 billion in dues. They’re spending — this is unprecedented — $4.4 billion in politics in six years, which encompassed only one presidential race. And they’re still losing.
They’re lost in Wisconsin. I’m telling you, there is slapped-upside-the-head bewilderment and panic on the Democrat side. All this money is supposed to be the equivalent of landslide victory, and because they look at it that way, they are beside themselves that Romney is outraising them. Obama’s not going to be outspent. All of this crying and moaning about Romney outraising. Romney is not gonna outspend Obama when all is said and done here. Obama is crying like a spoiled little kid over all this to his donors who aren’t coming through. Got a fundraising note out there, “If you don’t step up, why, we gonna lose.”
Now, I know that money is the mother’s milk of politics, but, folks, the reason there’s so much focus on this is because Obama has nothing else. He only has negative ads. That’s the only option he’s got. He cannot run on his performance. He can’t run on his record. He can’t run on one aspect of his presidency. There’s not one aspect of his presidency that says to a majority of Americans, “Four more years.” Not one.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It takes a lot of money, folks, to run away from your record. It takes gazillions of dollars to run away from your record. That’s what Obama has to do. Even the Washington Post in their poll story today has this little passage, shall we say. Quote: “The challenge for President Obama may be trying to turn attention away from a stubbornly negative take on his performance.” No kidding. The challenge for the president might be trying to turn attention away from a stubbornly negative take on his performance? Hey, Washington Post, why is there a stubbornly negative take on his performance? Is it perhaps because his performance has been drastically negative? There’s nothing stubborn about us. We live in Realville.
Stubbornly negative take on his performance. Despite everything we’ve done here at the Washington Post to pass this guy off as FDR, he still comes across as Wile E. Coyote. Bunch of dumb voters. He just said it again. He’s out there now, said it again to the kids at a community college in Iowa. He’s out there decrying Romney and Republican policy. He said, “We tried it their way through most of the last decade, and it didn’t work. We tried it their way.” It’s three-and-a-half years of his way. Our way in 2006, unemployment under 6%, deficit $160 billion. We tried it their way. That’s the 2008 campaign. We tried it their way. Can you imagine, if Obama’s reelected, the mess he’s gonna inherit? And then who’s he gonna blame that on? I know the answer.
Here’s Laura in Manalapan, New Jersey. Welcome to the program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Such an honor to talk with you, Rush. I’ve been listening to you for so long, 20 years this November.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you.
CALLER: You actually caught up with my thought, I think. You were saying that when President Obama was saying this is gonna be a test of what got us here, originally you were saying he thought it was about Bush and what Bush did and the situation we’re in. But I was thinking — and I think you just caught up with that in the last segment — I think it was more he was talking to his own people. I think he was saying, “This is gonna be a test of your resolve, of our grassroots movement, all that you did to get me here. Now let me see if you’re all gonna do it again.” That’s what I think he was saying.
RUSH: You could be right. And it’s entirely possible I have to catch up with you today.
CALLER: (laughing) Well, one other question I have.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Something a little different. Why doesn’t anybody ever go after Pelosi? I always hear these phone calls come in about how bad San Francisco is and the crime and this and that. Why doesn’t anybody ever zoom in to her territory, because it’s just a mess over there, and really take her to task?
RUSH: People in San Francisco don’t think there’s anything wrong. It’s Oakland that’s in trouble. San Francisco, nah, there’s no problems there.
CALLER: Hmm, it was just a thought. I figured I would ask you.
RUSH: You know, Cindy Sheehan ran against her. If Cindy Sheehan can’t beat Pelosi, nobody can.
CALLER: (laughing) Well, she’s no great person, either, Cindy Sheehan. Seems like they’re all in the same bag.
RUSH: Yeah. Pelosi is just an untouchable. Nothing is gonna change there until she decides to retire. Cindy Sheehan ran against her, lost in a landslide, and Cindy Sheehan was loved and adored by people in San Francisco up until the time she challenged Stone Face. And then she quickly lost favor, and they forgot everything they loved about her. And Sheehan hasn’t been the same since. Have you heard from Sheehan since that happened? She hasn’t been the same.
Okay, folks, another obscene profit time-out here on the EIB Network. Eighty-three percent of doctors, it says here, have considered quitting over Obamacare. Eighty-three percent.