RUSH: The Apple announcement in less than an hour. And judging from even my own e-mail, you people in the Stick-to-the-Issues Crowd may not like it, but there is more interest in the Apple announcement today than in Obama’s speech tomorrow on ISIS. And the reason why is that Apple is gonna create jobs and provide excitement and show the potential of America and create never-ending Christmas mornings for people, whereas the public perception of Obama is he doesn’t care about ISIS.
The public perception of Obama is that he’s checked out. He doesn’t really care about the job market. I don’t think this is true, but I mean the public perception is. And, by the way, it’s bad out there for Obama. Even the Drive-By Media is beginning to turn in slight ways. The Drive-By Media’s beginning to get panicked because now all of a sudden the word “wave” is being talked about again in terms of the November elections. Pollster Stuart Rothenberg is out with that today.
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RUSH: Moving over to Obama and his ISIS speech tomorrow night and all of the related political events. There’s a story in the New York Times today, and there’s also a quote by F. Chuck Todd, who is the new star in the media as the host of Meet the Press. He was on Charlie Rose last night. You know what F. Chuck said? F. Chuck said two things. He said, “Rush Limbaugh is right; Obama is engaged.”
Well, he didn’t say, “Rush Limbaugh’s right,” but I’m the one that’s saying he is and he’s only faking looking disengaged. It helps him get away with stuff, looking like he’s not there and doesn’t care while the agenda keeps moving forward. It helps to have it appear that Obama’s checked out. F. Chuck said, “No, no, no. He’s engaged.”
F. Chuck also said, “If Hillary Clinton were the second female seeking the presidency, she wouldn’t be the front-runner and nobody would care.” For those of you in Rio Linda, what F. Chuck Todd is saying is that the only thing that makes Hillary candidacy noteworthy is her gender; that if she were the second female, there’d be a big yawn.
Nobody would care, she wouldn’t have any support, and she certainly wouldn’t be the front-runner. In the New York Times today, Peter Baker: “A President Whose Assurances Have Come Back to Haunt Him.” You know, if I’m a lib, and I’m going for coffee today at Zabar’s up on the Upper West Side, I have got to be totally dumbfounded and confused, because my Bible, the New York Times, is turning against The Messiah.
“A President Whose Assurances Have Come Back to Haunt Him.” The left must be so confused, ’cause they kip they keep reading their stenographers, their reporters at the New York Times bashing The Messiah. They must be wondering if the Koch brothers secretly bought the New York Times last night and they begin to run it. Here is Peter Baker: “A President Whose Assurances Have Come Back to Haunt Him —
“When President Obama addresses the nation on Wednesday to explain his plan to defeat Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, it is a fair bet he will not call them the ‘JV team.’ Nor does he seem likely to describe Iraq as ‘sovereign, stable and self-reliant’ with a ‘representative government.’ And presumably he will not assert after more than a decade of conflict that ‘the tide of war is receding.’
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RUSH: Back to this New York Times piece: “As he seeks to rally Americans behind a new military campaign in the Middle East, Mr. Obama finds his own past statements coming back to haunt him. Time and again, he has expressed assessments of the world that in the harsh glare of hindsight look out of kilter with the changed reality he now confronts,” and then there is this…
You might think this isn’t any big deal.
Keep in mind, this is the New York Times.
“To Mr. Obama’s critics, the disparity between the president’s previous statements and todayÂ’s reality reflects not simply poorly chosen words but a fundamentally misguided view of the world.” Fundamentally misguided view of the world. “Rather than clearly see the persistent dangers as the United States approaches the 13th anniversary of [9/11] Mr. Obama perpetually imagines a world as he wishes it were.”
This is by no means, my friends, the usual 100% sycophantic coverage. It’s 98% sycophantic, but the 2%? I mean, they’re coming down hard on Obama. It’s not gonna change it. That’s not the point. The polling, if you put it all together, there is grave concern on the left. To understand it, you have to go back to 2009.
Well, go be back to Election Day 2008 and then into the inauguration and remember what these people all thought, and what they thought has now been blown to smithereens. They realize that what they all thought never was. I mean, here’s this guy out there saying, “You know, I’ve got to work harder on getting the theater of this job down pat. You know, I don’t like the theater aspect.”
No, no. The guy that goes to the Brandenburg Gate (or wants to) in Germany and says, “People of the world, listen to me,” and then his acceptance speech at the Democrat National Convention’s a bunch of fake Greek columns, and the guy says he’s not into theater and is never comfortable with it? His whole administration is theater. The entire Democrat Party is theater. It must be. It isn’t reality.
They couldn’t get anywhere with reality. They’re all putting out illusions. But the true believers believed it. They thought we were finally on the way to utopia and wiping out — this is the key thing — the Republican Party forever. Now they’re looking at polling data which shows the Republicans in a potential wave victory in November, and their Messiah is not even up to being called average.
It is a massive shock to their systems.
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RUSH: Now, Good Morning America today, George Stephanopoulos speaking with Jon Karl, White House correspondent, about this new poll on the terror threat from ISIS, and Stephanopoulos and Karl are in crisis. They look at the poll, they see America wants to fight ISIS, America wants to vanquish ISIS, and they don’t think Obama’s ready.
KARL: An equally large number of Americans in this poll support expanding those air strikes into Syria. This is a dramatic change in public opinion. Just a couple of months ago there was deep reluctance to get involved militarily in any way in the Middle East. Now you see widespread concern about the threat posed by a group that has been beheading Americans, taking over large territory, large amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria. In this poll, 91%, 91% say that they see ISIS as posing a vital threat to US interests.
RUSH: But they don’t think Obama looks at it that way and they’re not happy. Here’s Stephanopoulos, he’s a Democrat strategist masquerading as a news anchor. Never forget that. He’s a Democrat operative masquerading as a news anchor, and you can hear the panic in his voice here.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But the president is not prepared to announce tomorrow night that he’s ready to strike Syria with air strikes, and it comes at a time when he’s facing some real popularity problems. We see 56% of the country disapproving of how the president’s handling foreign policy.
KARL: Right, and the single biggest factor in that is that a majority say that the president has been too cautious in responding to this threat.
RUSH: So he’s got this big plan tomorrow night, apparently three aspects to the plan. And his speech tomorrow night’s gonna be the result of poll-driven research, no doubt.
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RUSH: I just want to continue one thing — a carryover, if you will — from the previous hour. We had media Drive-By anchors and analysts expressing grave concern. The New York Times is very worried that Obama’s in over his head with ISIS, and sees the world in a way he wishes it was rather than the way it really is.
You know, I know the root of this, too, by the way. The Middle East is blowing up, and Obama went out at a fundraiser and said, “You know, everybody thinks the world’s on fire and the world’s blowing up, but it’s gonna be okay. It always is. These kind of things happen, but it always ends up that they end up okay.” Something like that.
There was a collective gasp from the Drive-By Media. They could not believe it. These are people that are conflicted about the United States’ role in the world. They are quite uncomfortable with the use of power, the projection of power. Yet they like the ability to do so, and Obama’s basically saying, “Hey, it’s none of our business! They can do what they want over there.”
Obama really believes, “Hey, if the Iranians want a nuclear weapon, we’ve got one, why can’t they?” In other words, “Who are we to tell these people what they can and can’t do? Who are we to tell Syria? Who are we to tell ISIS? Who are we to tell Al-Qaeda?” That’s what he really believes. Because he thinks the US… Well, we kind of deserve some of this.
But his acolytes on the left, that doesn’t sit well with them. So there’s some concern over that. And then the ABC News/Washington Post poll. Remember these people live and die by polls, and the polls are not good for Obama. There’s a Gallup poll last week. He’s at 38%. They’ve all ignored that, but the ABC News/Washington Post poll they cast Obama at 42%, and they’re paying attention to that.
They’re very, very, very, very concerned about it, because they don’t want the Republicans to win in November no matter what. The primary objective of the media and the Democrat Party is the elimination of the Republican Party as a viable opponent. I know there’s always gonna be one, but they would like to relegate the Republican Party to permanent minority/irrelevant status.
That’s victory to them, more so than anything to do with ISIS or the Middle East. It’s really shellacking and wiping out the Republican Party. So they see these polls that show the American people unhappy with Obama, unhappy with the way things are going in the country, and they are now seeing polls that show it could be a wave Republican election, and they are worried.
Here is Stuart Rothenberg. This is at Politico.com. “Political analyst Stu Rothenberg sees a wave election upcoming for Senate Republicans in November. In a Roll Call column published Monday, the electoral expert said he is expecting Republicans to gain at least seven seats in the Senate and earn a November victory more dramatic than several pollsters have suggested.”
Then there’s old standby, Nate Silver, Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog. This is the wunderkind at the New York Times who predicted all these polls and results, election results, and left to basically do work for ESPN. But he’s out crunching the numbers, and last week he was worried there weren’t enough polls to crunch, there weren’t enough numbers to crunch. But now he’s got some.
He says there’s a 65% chance that the Republicans will win the Senate.
Holding the House is apparently not even a question.
Silver says that all they have to do is win open seats in states that Romney carried in 2012, and it’s over. Rothenberg is pretty much saying the same thing. So they’re beginning to get panicked, because remember, they haven’t been taking polls. Even as recently as the week before last, they were relishing reporting that it didn’t look like there was a wave.
In fact, the Democrat senators looked like they might be making a comeback, and then Obama helped out by delaying amnesty ’til after the election. But now it’s descending into a downward spiral. Let’s go John King at CNN. Last night. The Situation Room. The fill-in host… Wolf Blitzer’s not there. The fill-in host says to John King, “You’ve been looking at these numbers, John. They’re pretty stunning out there, right?”
KING: It is stunning, Brianna, in how quickly and how profoundly Americans’ views about terrorism and their willingness to use military force have changed. Right now what’s the most important issue facing the country? Terrorism has jumped to number two, if you look at the numbers here, at 14%. Now, you might not think 14% is a lot.
The economy at 30% is number one. But if you go back to September 2012 or September 2010, just 3% then said terrorism was the number one issue. So, clearly, these barbaric videos have convinced the American people this is a serious threat. Fifty percent now say the United States should be ready and willing to use military force.
RUSH: Yeah. Okay. So there’s the second bite here, where King continues, and this is the part that has him in hysterics or near hysterics.
KING: Here’s what’s damning for the president as he prepares to give this speech Wednesday night: 67% of the American people do not think the commander-in-chief has a clear path to deal with ISIS. How are things going in the country right now? “Badly,” 55%. That’s up a bit from April. That is a recipe for a big Republican year, Brianna. The president’s poll numbers are stagnant in the forties. The president’s poll numbers are personally weak. People think the country’s heading in the wrong direction. Uh, that is a recipe for a Republican big ripple, if not a wave, come November.
RUSH: There it is again, folks: A wave election. So we’ve got three different people — well, two different people — talking about the possibility of a wave election. They’re not even talking about the unemployment numbers. Don’t forget now the media thinks there’s a recovery going on. The media is totally disconnected from real life in this country where it comes to careers and advancement and raises.
They pay very little attention to that. They look at the unemployment rate coming down, staying stagnant, and say, “No harm.” They have no idea what it’s like for people. They are looking at ISIS and some of their own polls to show that the American people are fed up with the direction the country, and they are genuinely worried. I don’t think they know how bad it is, is my point.
I don’t think they know how bad it is going to be. They’re starting to get a feel for it, and it is a very disquieting thing for them. Even in the congressional polls — the Gallup poll on congressional disapproval, even in that poll — it is seen that congressional disapproval hurts the Democrats more than the Republicans. Even though the Republicans are seen running the House of Representatives, there is a tremendous amount of concern.
It’s just they’ve been in denial, folks. The Drive-Bys and a lot of their acolytes in the news-consuming public — the people that pay attention and get all excited about the soap opera — there’s been a state of denial, in a sense, that Obama could rally them at any time, ’cause this is a presidency governed by the aggressive use of speeches.
It’s why they get so excited every time Obama is gonna go out and make a new speech like he’s gonna do tomorrow night on ISIS. But ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force, not the aggressive use of speeches. We don’t win wars and establish ourselves and our dominance with doctors, nurses, and clean water and all the rest.