RUSH: Let me sum this up for you. It’s not going to take very long. Prior to the president’s press conference beginning, I told you that based on the leak that Don Rumsfeld was asked to resign, it alerted me to the reality that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. The president’s press conference confirmed that for me. The president referred several times to the phone call that he had with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, soon to be the speaker of the House. I think the best way to sum up the substance of that call, and I’m just guessing, of course, because I was not privy to it, but I think the best way to sum up the substance of that call was the president saying, ‘What do you want? I’ve got it. What do you want? You want a minimum wage raise? You got it. You want guest worker program and an amnesty program for illegal immigrants? You got it.’
Democrats won the election. They get to choose what we get. That was the attitude that I got from the president. They won. They get to choose what we get. He reminded everybody of his new tone that he tried to bring and unite people in 2001 when he was inaugurated, going to try to do that again. I think what’s going to happen here, folks, this is why I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I think the president has seen how this is done. This is a page out of the Clinton playbook. After the 1996 and the 1998 elections and after the impeachment, Clinton’s only objective, (not saying this is the president’s only objective, but Clinton’s only objective) was to keep those poll numbers up and get out of town loved and adored, just make everybody happy, just get rid of all the controversy, get rid of all the consternation, get rid of all the confrontation, all of the partisanship, whatever. Just give it to them.
We’ll find a way to compromise and give you what you want, if not all of it, a lot of it. So if you want something done on stem cells, we’ll talk to you about it, or we’ll come up with a compromise. If you’ve got a problem with our tax cuts, why, you won the election and we’ll find a way to work with you on it! The bottom line is that there’s not going to be any partisanship from the president. There’s not going to be any partisanship from the Republicans going on, especially these next two months before the Congress assumes power. After that, the Republicans are going to be busy reorganizing themselves, trying to figure out who is going to be in the leadership positions. Hastert has said he’s not going to run for the majority, just read that. He’s not going to run for the Republican majority leader position, so that’s wide open, they’ll be jockeying for that.
In the meantime, the bottom line is, ‘Ms. Pelosi, what do you want? I want to work together with you on it and we’re going to make everybody happy.’ When it comes to Rumsfeld, he’s gone. This is sort of tough to watch because the president said that he… I don’t know how to characterize this. He was asked (summarized), ‘You said just two days ago over the weekend that Rumsfeld was going to serve the last two years.’ ‘Yeah, I knew that. I thought that was the case, but I didn’t know that we were going to lose, and when we lost and so forth,’ and he got caught. He got tripped up. He didn’t answer the question I’m sure as well as he would have liked because the report’s going to be that he misled the reporters over the weekend knowing full well he was going to can Rumsfeld when he wouldn’t admit it, and he said, ‘Well, I wasn’t going to make a major change in the command structure in the campaign. I don’t want the troops to think that I do that kind of thing, make moves for political reasons only, and so that’s why I didn’t do it.’
But they’re going to harp on that left and right. I think they’re next going to move on Cheney. Left-wing kooks are going to demand war crimes investigations against Rumsfeld. I mean, they’ve called for his scalp and now they’ve got it, and the idea that this is going to satisfy them is wrong. We all know liberals and this is just going to whet their appetite for more — especially if they run into a very compliant president who wants only to make them happy and avoid any confrontation. If he wants to go back to Crawford with a 65% approval number, he’s seen how that’s done. All he had to do is watch how Bill Clinton did it. Clinton signed welfare reform, Clinton did a whole bunch of things that angered his side, but it satisfied the American people that want us to get along, want us to work together. He might even consider firing Josh Bolten, his chief of staff, and hiring Leon Panetta, hire a Democrat chief of staff, just to show that he’s willing to work together with these people and be open to all kinds of ideas. When you start talking about entitlements with Democrats, you’re talking new ones, folks, I’m sorry. You’re not talking about getting rid of existing ones.
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