RUSH: TIME Magazine: ‘What Happened to Obama’s Army?’ by Jay Newton-Small. I pronounce it that way because it’s hyphenated. Jay Newton-Small. Why would somebody’s last name be hyphenated? When you see that, do you wonder why their name is hyphenated? I must admit, I’m intrigued by how people name themselves, by how parents name kids. Yeah. (interruption) That’s right, Dawn, Newton-Small means that either his wife is named Newton or his wife’s named Small, and he’s the other one. Isn’t that what you mean? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, it’s usually girls that do that. No, this is hyphenated: Jay Newton-Small, not Jay Newton Small, but Jay Newton-Small. It’s hyphenated, and it’s by design. It’s like there’s an infobabe for some Washington publication, her name is A.B. Stoddard. She goes with A.B. precisely so I will mention A.B. That’s how she stands out. What woman goes by her initials? Well, A.B. does. So now here’s Jay Newton-Small. Anyway, this is just a little sidetrack. These are just the things that occupy my mind when I see them.
But he’s written a story here: ‘What Happened to Obama’s Army? — What happened to Barack Obama’s once vaunted political machine? The outfit that put upwards of 8 million volunteers on the street in 2008 — known as Organizing for America — is a ghost of its former self. Its staff has shrunk from 6,000 to 300, and its donors are depressed: receipts are a fraction of what they were in 2008. Virtually no one in politics believes it will turn many contests this fall. ‘There’s no chance that OFA is going to have the slightest impact on the midterms,’ says Charlie Cook, who tracks congressional races.’
It is an interesting question because remember shortly after the immaculation everybody was living in fear of this kind of thing, that this army was going to be motivated, organized, and infiltrating every aspect of American life, and it was going to be growing and growing and growing. It goes back to what I said in the first hour of the program. The magic is gone. He’s not connecting with anybody. Even his supporters, there’s no ‘there’ there. I mean how do you connect with somebody when you have to use a teleprompter every time you show up to speak? I’m serious. Even when you’re in a grade school and you have a teleprompter setup, not to speak to the kids, a lot of people misunderstood, thought he had a speech to the kids on a prompter. After he spoke to the kids, some other remarks he was making, he had a prompter. You don’t connect with people via prompter.
So Mr. Jay Newton-Small says here: ‘Neglect is to blame. After Obama was elected, his political aides ignored the army he had created until it eventually disappeared. No one was in charge; decisions were often deferred but rarely made.’ This is all a bunch of gunk. The reason why this army has gone away is because there’s nobody leading it and inspiring it from the top. Everybody in the Obama crowd just assumed that they would continue to look at him as The Messiah, as the one. But he never was that and they’ll never be able to get that back, and I don’t care how many times they go out to Parma, Ohio, and try to redo the campaign with campaign speeches, they’re never going to recapture that. It’s gone. It is totally gone. He’s just a big-eared mortal guy and even with the big ears he doesn’t hear anybody. It’s just that simple. Imam Obama.
Now, here’s the Hotline, On Call: ‘Democrats Breaking With Obama’s Economic Plan — In a sign that Democrats are not on-board with what was supposed to be a major cornerstone of their platform this fall, an increasing number of Democratic incumbents and candidates are criticizing Pres. Obama’s economic plan. Within 24 hours of Obama’s major address in Ohio on Thursday…’ where 75 seats were open at show time, ‘…a Democratic senator, three House Democrats and another two Democrats vying for open House seats all distanced themselves from Obama’s economic plan,’ after he spends all that time ripping into Boehner for not having any new ideas. After a two-hour speech talking about all the wonderful things he’s done and will continue to do for the country, his own party abandons him. ‘Their remarks indicate that it will be difficult for Obama to get his plan through Congress before the November elections. They also show that Democrats are increasingly on shaky political footing on the economy — the top issue for voters this year.’ So there you have it.
I had some people question a statement I made in the first hour. ‘What do you mean? What’s your source?’ Obama has added more to the national debt in 19 months than all of the country from the founding to Reagan. Well, here it is. Terry Jeffrey at Cybercast News Service: ‘In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.’ The U.S. Treasury department, that’s the source of the figures. We’re not just making it up. Obama said yesterday, (imitating Obama) ‘You didn’t elect me to read polls and figure out how to stay in office.’ Well, yeah, why did we elect you? That’s what a lot of people are asking, what the hell were we doing?
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RUSH: I shoulda known it. Jay Newton-Small, hyphenated reporter from TIME Magazine, is a woman. J-a-y, I’ve had a lot of people send me notes informing me of this, so Jay Newton-Small is a woman. That sorta makes the hyphenated last name a little bit more understandable.
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Jeff in Indianapolis, we go back to the phones. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Hi there, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I’m a big fan of your media tweaks and probably your most famous media tweak in the last 19 months is, ‘I hope he fails.’
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, what I’m curious is, where in the heck is the media reporting that Obama is succeeding? I mean shouldn’t they be headlining: ‘Rush hoped for failure, Obama scores successes’? They pay no attention to the fact that the country is failing and Obama keeps piling up victory after victory.
RUSH: Yeah, that’s what you and I would look at it as. The media is not gonna do that. Nobody’s gonna come out, and certainly not Obama, and say, ‘This is exactly what we intended to do.’ They’re trying to present Obama, ‘He’s fighting hard for us. The Republicans left him with an even bigger mess than anybody knew. Bush screwed up worse than anybody could have imagined. Obama’s in there working really, really hard.’ They’re not going to give up the truth on this.
CALLER: Yeah, but there’s not one agenda item that he hasn’t gotten passed that he wanted.
RUSH: Yeah, I know. I know. What they’re doing, ‘Why don’t people appreciate Obama? Where’s Obama’s army gone?’ We just had the story, TIME Magazine, ‘Where’s his army gone?’ ‘How come the Democrats are defecting this man, why are they running away from him?’ You’re exactly right. He has not failed, according to his own ideas and proscriptions.
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet. It’s always a pleasure to take people’s calls.