RUSH: Unless you have been sleeping in a cave out there, you probably have heard by now that Herman Cain paused for up to 11 seconds in responding to a question put to him by the editors of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It was a question about Libya, and because of this 11 second pause, Herman Cain is not fit to be president. Because, you see, you only get ten seconds on a quiz show, and Herman Cain took 11 seconds out there. So he’s definitely finished. But it’s funny now. It seemed like our watchdog news media are doing their level best to prove that Mr. Cain is not only not “clean,” sexual harassment charges, but now that he’s not “articulate.” We had Joe Bite Me out there saying about Obama, “Finally we got a clean, articulate black guy on our side!”
Now they’re trying to show that Herman Cain’s neither clean nor articulate. Our media brothers are attempting this.
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RUSH: Herman Cain, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This is all over their website. This video has gone viral. It’s an editorial board meeting where they’re interviewing Cain about things, and one of the members of the editorial board says, “So you agree with President Obama on Libya, or not?”
CAIN: Okay, Libya. (11 second pause) President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of Khadafy. To make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say yes, I agree, or no, I didn’t agree. I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason. No, that’s a different one. I gotta go back and see — got all this stuff twirling around in my head.
RUSH: Okay, now, there were three pauses in there. We edited them all out. I made sure the first pause you heard, that’s why we stopped for 11 seconds, there was an 11 second pause. The pauses in his answer are the story. The pauses indicate he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s having to fake it. He’s having to try to think on the fly ’cause he doesn’t really know. It’s foreign policy, the narrative is he’s an idiot, he doesn’t know a thing about foreign policy and doesn’t care about it and so they thought they had him nailed with this. And then they asked him later on about collective bargaining. “Would you favor collective bargaining for federal employees?”
CAIN: They already have it, don’t they? Yeah. They — they already have collect —
REPORTER: No, they don’t.
CAIN: They have unions.
REPORTER: They have unions.
CAIN: They have unions, okay.
REPORTER: But they don’t have the same bargaining —
CAIN: They don’t have the same bargaining powers. Here again, collective bargaining I support as long as it doesn’t create an undue burden on the state, the government, the taxpayer, and this sort of thing. That’s the issue.
RUSH: Now, he said that twice. He said, “Well, I’m for collective bargaining as long as it’s not collective hijacking, and as long as it doesn’t create an undue burden on the state.” Again, the attempt here is to make it sound as though he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But on Libya, when you listen to the whole interview, the whole question and answer, he ended up getting Libya right. His biggest mistake was admitting he was having a hard time focusing. He shouldn’t have said that in front of the enemy, the enemy being the editorial board, but he said I’m having a hard time focusing here.
Federal workers do have collective bargaining. Some of them do. Some federal workers do have collective bargaining. It’s not the same as in some of the states. For example, the air traffic controllers do have collective bargaining over their wages, and some federal workers only have collective bargaining rights over work conditions. Some of them have collective bargaining rights over other aspects, but not wages. It’s all over the ballpark. It is a mistake to say that federal workers, as the editorial board member here said, don’t have collective bargaining rights; some of them do.
In any event, substantively Cain was right. Substantively Cain got it right on collective bargaining for federal unionized workers, and the editors got it wrong. And even the Journal Sentinel article that accompanies the video eventually admitted that Cain got it right in his answer and their editors had it wrong. But no matter, they are attempting to portray via the video here a slow, ignorant, uninformed, unsure of himself candidate who really is just out classed and is just totally out of his league. And the video, under that impression, under those auspices, has gone viral, and that’s the thought accompanying it with everybody who sends it out.
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RUSH: Herman Cain’s laughing all this off. They ran into him, some media camera crew, this morning. “Mr. Cain, Mr. Cain, what about the fact that you looked like such an idiot answering your question on Libya?” He looked into the camera, he smiled real big, and he said, “9-9-9,” and continued to sip his coffee in his cowboy hat and walked off. Here’s Herman Cain. This is last night in Green Bay, Lambeau Field, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaking to reporters about this pause that he took during a question in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board.
CAIN: I mean, they asked me a question about Libya, and I paused so I could gather my thoughts. You know, it’s really complimentary when people start documenting my pauses. You know, it’s one thing to document every word. It was a pause! That’s all it was. Good grief.
RUSH: Yeah, and you have to see it. There’s a bottle of water there; they ask him a question; and he pushes the bottle of water away, shifts in his chair for a while, and they’re saying, “See, he looks uncomfortable, totally out of his league,” and, look, folks, this video is being sent around even by conservative websites as, “Okay, that’s it. All right, we’ve had it, Cain’s finished, it’s over with. This has nothing to do with sexual harassment, let’s just finally admit it, he doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s saying or what he’s doing when it comes to foreign policy. Could we please move on?” And everybody that’s sending this video out, be they left or right, is prefacing it with that same message: “Hey, wait ’til you see this idiot.” So that’s gone viral in the context of Herman Cain’s a fool, an absolute idiot. It’s just the latest hit piece started by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editors that I guess they’d have to chalk up as a success. That’s the context under which it has gone out.
We’ll get to your phone calls here in just a second. One more audio sound bite. I just want to go back. June 5th, 2008, Bristol, Virginia, campaign event, Senator Barack Obama talking about Iraq.
OBAMA: What they’ll say is, well, it costs too much money, but, you know what? It would cost about — it — it — it would cost about the same as what we would spend — over the course of ten years, it would cost what it cost us — it — huh — all right, okay. We’re going to. The — it would cost us about the same as it would cost for about — hold on one second. I can’t hear myself. But I’m glad you’re fired up, though. I’m glad.
RUSH: Thirty-eight seconds. Thirty-eight seconds of sheer, total idiocy, confusion, ignorance, whatever you want to say. Thirty-eight seconds of it. I’ll stack that up against anything Rick Perry stumbled on or Herman Cain. That’s June 5th of 2008. And, by the way, that’s right in the midst of Operation Chaos. The Democrat nomination process, primary process is not yet concluded at that point. They’re asking about Iraq. He hasn’t the slightest idea, he hasn’t a clue.