McCain Implosion Begins; Edwards Hypocrisy Reported

RUSH: I think I remember a year ago, six months ago, maybe 12 months ago, 13 or 14 months, a little over a year, maybe, friends of mine panicking over Senator McCain and his candidacy. ‘Rush, he’s not a conservative.’ I said don’t worry. Don’t worry. Senator McCain will implode at some point. I think the implosions have begun. He’s imploding here at Romney, accusing Romney of flip-flopping. He imploded with Cornyn. What that was all about was here are they guys in the Senate, Republicans in the Senate are trying their best to hold their own, some of them are, on the immigration deal with the Democrats and Ted Kennedy, and McCain’s out there missing all kinds of Senate votes and he’s out there running around campaigning, and he’s really intentionally out of town because he hasn’t raised as much money as he’s wanted or needed. All of a sudden at the last minute, the eleventh hour, he buzzes into town, heads into the negotiation room and starts talking about what should happen. Cornyn said to him, ‘Look, you fly in here after being out of town for three months, start telling us what we’re going to do, get in line, pal,’ something to that effect. And here came the F-bomb from McCain. (Doing McCain impression) ‘I know more about this legislation than anybody in this room. You got that, sailor? You got it?’ Just blew up. That got reported.

McCain’s people tried to downplay it; even some of the Republican senator staffers tried to downplay it, obviously. And now the Romney flip-flop. I’ve seen stories — I haven’t reported them or haven’t shared them with you — but there have been stories in the last couple of weeks about McCain’s health. Writing about his inability to get off his Straight Talk Express bus smoothly, bum knee, not moving around as fluidly as he used to, and they’re beginning to wonder, some of the Drive-Bys are starting to speculate, ‘Hey, is his age becoming a factor here?’ Seventy years old now, I think, and he’s had two bouts of melanoma.

This story about John Edwards, too. Now, let’s look and see where this story comes from, shall we? This is from the San Francisco Chronicle. The San Francisco Chronicle qualifies as the Drive-By Media. ‘Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who recently proposed an educational policy that urged ‘every financial barrier’ be removed for American kids who want to go to college, has been going to college himself — as a high paid speaker, his financial records show. The candidate charged a whopping $55,000 to speak at to a crowd of 1,787 the taxpayer-funded University of California at Davis on Jan. 9, 2006 last year.’ Now, this is just coming out now. Why is this being reported? The Drive-Bys didn’t go out and sniff this out. This is in his financial reporting information. But why are they reporting it? They normally sweep this stuff under the rug. He’s one of their guys.

John Fund has a piece today, the Wall Street Journal, speculating that it’s getting to be even too much for the Drive-Bys to ignore and look the other way. The guy is such a blatant hypocrite. He goes to this hedge fund where he ostensibly is going to learn about poverty. It’s an offshore hedge fund. He’s got statements on the record opposing tax shelters that are brought about by having offshore hedge funds. He goes to work for one. After he comes out of his little consultancy deal there making whatever, 400 and some odd thousand dollars I think he made, he said he learned about poverty. What did he learn about the offshore hedge funds, tax shelters and so forth, he claims to want to put down? Then there was the story, after bashing Wal-Mart to hell, one of his staffers is sent to Wal-Mart to get a PlayStation 2 or 3 or something for one of Edwards’ kids. Fund’s theory is that they’re beginning to wonder if the guy’s not just a total and utter phony. The Chronicle noted that parents might be excused for wondering, given that the University of California system is being hit with a 7% tuition increase that will impact a lot of struggling students. Why didn’t Edwards offer to do his speech gratis for a public institution? The senator’s office wouldn’t comment, but journalists covering Mr. Edwards have lately started connecting certain dots.

‘Sooner or later the public’s going to have to make a decision about whether Edwards with his $400 haircuts, his 29,000 square foot house, his lucrative hedge fund employment, walks the populist walk that he talks.’ Now, this is Joe Klein, a columnist at TIME Magazine. ‘Other reporters recall on the same day last November, Edwards participated in a union conference call criticizing Wal-Mart. One of his staffers trying to obtain a coveted PlayStation 3 console for his family by calling the local Wal-Mart and bypassing the hordes of ordinary Americans waiting in line, and then Edwards issued a bizarre statement claiming the staffer was acting apparently without our knowledge. The former senator either knew what was being done in his name or he didn’t.’ The fact that this stuff is being reported, and you could say some of it’s coming from Clinton, Inc., and you could say that Hillary’s out there, got her pals in the Drive-By Media and they want to take out some of Hillary’s opponents as quickly as possible. And, by the way, remember that press conference when John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth announced the return of her cancer? The Drive-Bys started speculating about how great this was politically and what a wonderfully executed political press conference and how it was going to buy — they’re all saying this — how it was going to buy a little cover for Senator Edwards. He’s going to be a little bulletproof now because how do you go out and attack the guy politically whose wife just announced that her cancer has come back? Well, it’s happening. I guess there was a little grace period there, but now it’s happening. It’s the Drive-Bys that are doing this.

The guy is phony. There’s no two ways about it. It’s just stunning to me that the Drive-Bys have turned on him. I guess it shouldn’t be. They don’t want him. The Drive-Bys’ candidate of choice right now, believe it or not, is Algore. They’re literally going bonkers. What do you think Matthews is doing that bit that we played for you last night about Hillary and Bill and how often they stay under the same roof at night, and TIME Magazine has been going on and on and on about Algore and all that, and Obama has been built up. It strikes me that there’s not a whole lot of love and affection for Mrs. Clinton. Now, this could be that they’re just trying to provide obstacles for her to overcome to make it look like she’s not the candidate of inevitability, that she can get into fights and win these things. But it doesn’t look like she can on her own. She has to send Bill out to fund-raise, to make campaign appearances for her. The Drive-Bys always end up touting and supporting the wrong guy. Algore in 2000, Kerry in 2004, and if you listen to the Drive-Bys, they will come through and pick a Democrat presidential loser I’d say eight out of ten times.