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RUSH: I wasn’t going to talk about the McCain thing. Do you know why I wasn’t going to talk about the McCain thing? (sigh) Well, I was going to talking about it. I wasn’t going to lead off. I wasn’t going to talking about it, because the McCain campaign is imploding, and you don’t kick people when they’re on the way to the mat. You just don’t do that. But I gotta bring this up because the AP — and I shoulda known this was going to happen — is blaming the implosion of his campaign on his stance on the Iraq war! ‘John McCain’s campaign manager and chief strategist are gone from their leadership roles, a major staff shake-up. The struggling Republican presidential candidate is all but broke and trails in opinion polls. In statements, Terry Nelson, a veteran of President Bush’s successful ’04 reelection effort, said that he resigned as campaign manager effective immediately, and John Weaver said that he stepped down from his post of chief strategist on Tuesday. Other officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, though, said that Nelson was fired. There’s also been a third resignation, and that’s Mark Salter, who is McCain’s chief of staff and coauthored five of McCain’s books,’ and so his soured campaign is first blamed on his embrace of victory in Iraq. Can you believe that? Can you? They’re actually trying to say that this is all happening because McCain wants to win in Iraq.

I’m not sure because I have not paid that close attention, but I think all of the Republican candidates — aside from Ron Paul, I’m not sure about him — have at the at least been hopeful about the surge, if not embracing it outright. Is McCain standing alone in the Republican presidential field wanting victory in Iraq? Hell no! Giuliani is the front-runner, and he’s all for victory in Iraq. This is absolute BS. If anybody wants to know the truth about why McCain is losing, two different things are going on. The McCain campaign is imploding because of illegal immigration. When you have the ‘courage’ to get in bed with Ted Kennedy and you seek the Republican nomination, somebody needs to stop you from getting in bed with Ted Kennedy. Somebody on your staff needs to tell you, ‘Senator McCain, if you want the Republican nomination? This ain’t the way to get it.’ They say he ‘showed great courage’ in teaming up with Kennedy on immigration. Maybe so, but that’s the primary factor here. There are other things, too. His embrace of the Drive-By Media, for crying out loud! We predicted this years ago when he was out there bragging about the media as his base. The base of the Republican Party distrusts the Drive-By Media as much as they distrust government, and they don’t like people sidling up to them.

They don’t like people trying to curry favor with them because the way you do that is rip your own president and rip your own party. Republican voters don’t particularly like limits on free speech, which is what McCain-Feingold was. There are all kinds of policy reasons here. This is absurd for the AP to sit here and make it out to be totally Iraq when they know damn well — well, they may not, they’re so out of it. Who knows? But it’s ridiculous. Now, as far as the campaign shakeup, that could have nothing to do with any of this. There could have been an internal battle in there for control. There could have been a power struggle, and somebody won out, and the other guys have to go in a power struggle. Who knows? It could also be that the going got tough in there when they started losing ground. It could have been that some tempers were fraying (I don’t know whose — a-hem), but there could have been some tempers, any number of things. But don’t buy this silly notion that this is all happening because of the senator’s embrace of victory. (interruption) That’s another point, too. Snerdley has just reminded me of something that I would have come up on my own if you’d have just let me, and that is he’s never been the front-runner in anybody’s mind except his own and the media’s. He’s never been the front-runner in this field. He’s been the ‘presumptive’ in the eyes of the Drive-By Media.

‘Scranton, Pennsylvania — A Pennsylvania man who sympathized with Al-Qaeda…’ A Pennsylvania man who sympathized with Al-Qaeda? Of course there’s no war on terror as we listen to the Breck Girl and others describe it. ‘A Pennsylvania man who sympathized with al Qaeda plotted to blow up U.S. energy installations in a bid to drive up gas prices and prompt a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, prosecutors alleged on Monday. Defendant Michael Curtis Reynolds believed gasoline prices could hit ‘astronomical’ levels if he succeeded in attacking the Alaska pipeline or the Transcontinental Pipeline connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the U.S. Northeast… Reynolds, 49, of Wilkes-Barre, faces six charges including attempting to support al Qaeda, plotting to damage an interstate pipeline, distributing instructions on making explosives over the Internet, and possession of hand grenades. [Reynolds’] suspected plans were uncovered by Shannen Rossmiller, a former Montana magistrate and Internet sleuth with a record for tracking down extremists online. Rossmiller posed as an al Qaeda operative, luring Reynolds to a rest stop on a remote Idaho highway with the promise of $40,000 to finance his plot. He was arrested there by the FBI. Reynolds’ attorney, Joseph O’Brien, argued that his client had done no harm and was, like Rossmiller, snooping for potential security threats online.’ That is not what he’s being charged with. ‘Now, according to one e-mail from Reynolds, ‘An attack on major energy facilities would force President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq and lead to the government’s downfall.’ What do you think this guy’s political party affiliation is? Take a wild guess. What do you think the likelihood is that this guy is a Republican? Not likely. What do you think the likelihood is that he’s a Democrat? What do you think the odds are this guy hangs around the kook Internet blogs that comprise the Democrat Party base? What do you think the likelihood is? I’m leveling no charges here or even accusations. I’m just wondering aloud about all this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let’s go some audio sound bites since we’re talking about Senator McCain. He did display some courage today on the floor of the Senate. There was a New York Times story yesterday saying if McCain comes back from his latest trip to Iraq and tells Bush it’s over, then of course Bush will have to surrender; Bush will give up, and if McCain doesn’t do that then Bush can go this all the way out till September when Petraeus is supposed to report.

Well, what did Senator McCain say on the Senate floor this morning?

MCCAIN: This fight is about Iraq, but not about Iraq alone. It’s greater than that and more important still about whether America still has the political courage to fight for victory, or whether we will settle for defeat with all of the terrible things that accompany it. We cannot walk away gracefully from defeat in this war. General Petraeus and his commanders believe that they have a strategy they can, over time, lead to success in Iraq. They ask just two things of us: the time necessary to see whether their efforts can succeed, and the political courage to support them in their work. I believe we should give them both.

RUSH: Well, he’s coming out strong on this and remaining consistent, which I applaud and many as well of you should, too, in the support that Senator McCain here continues to show for the cause, and for General Petraeus. Again, the answer to why the Democrats don’t want to wait ’til September, is because they can’t afford for the report to come out and say it’s working. That would just… Well, they could deal with it by saying it’s a bunch of lies, that Bush made Petraeus say it, but they don’t want to even take it that far because they don’t want that news even getting out where some Americans might actually believe it. McCain also said this:

MCCAIN: I know that senators are tired of this war, tired of the mounting death toll, tired of the many mistakes we’ve made in this war and the great effort it requires to reverse them.

RUSH: Yeah.

MCCAIN: Tired of the worst politicization —

RUSH: Yeah!

MCCAIN: — and the degree to which it has become embroiled in partisan struggles and election strategies.

RUSH: Right on, right on, right on.

MCCAIN: I understand this fatigue, and yet I maintain that we as elected leaders with a duty to our people and the security of their nation cannot let fatigue ticket our policies.

RUSH: Would we find similar courage on the Democrat side of the aisle? Let’s see if we find any in these comments here from Senator Boxer.

BOXER: Oh, the $12 billion in Iraq, no problem. No problem, Madam President, to save his reputation, to save him from having to prove to the world that he was wrong! Well, it’s one thing to have an argument with someone and have pride and say, ‘You know, I’m not going to admit I made a mistake.’ It’s another thing when people are dying because of your mistake, every day. Now in November 2006, the American people voted against the Iraq war! (banging podium) They elected Democrats! They want this war to end! They want this mission to end!

RUSH: Oooookay. It’s exactly what we expect, and that is no courage and a lot of prevarication, ladies and gentlemen. She’s speaking at variance with the truth there. The November ’06 elections were not about that. If they were, we’d be out of Iraq or we’d be on the way because all these resolutions would have passed easily. One more from Senator Boxer:

BOXER: We will be dealing with the problems of this war for decades to come. Anyone who lived through Vietnam knows —

RUSH: Ah-ha! A-ha!

BOXER: — that if you go on the streets today and look at who the homeless are —

RUSH: Ah-ha! A-ha!

BOXER: — you know who they are — half of them are veterans.

RUSH: (Gasp!)

BOXER: Most of those from Vietnam who never got over the experience.

RUSH: Okay, now, let’s sum all this up, because I’ll tell you again what the Democrats are doing. They want to leave Iraq now, and the aftermath? You won’t find much disagreement about this. There will be a mass slaughter, as there was when we got out of Vietnam: Cambodia, the killing fields, Pol Pot. It will happen, as with the north invading the south and wiping out as many people as possible. That did not deter the libs from getting us out of Vietnam and forcing us out of Vietnam. They say they care about poor people and the disadvantaged and the disaffected and the thirsty and the hungry and the put-upon and all that. They couldn’t care less! That’s another one of the many smoke screens behind which they hide. They take no responsibility for the mass murder of Vietnamese and Cambodians that followed our massive pullout of Vietnam. They pretend they had no role in it whatsoever. They have no second thoughts about any of it, as they demand the same outcome in Iraq! They’re trying to make Iraq into Vietnam. They’re trying to turn this administration into Nixon: scandal after scandal after scandal. It’s amazingly similar. They’re not even hiding it. This is what people don’t understand.

The Democrats have done this before. This is nothing uncommon for them. They are in charge of losing wars! That’s their mission. They’ve done it. It’s out in the open, in history for people to see. I mean even here, this is what’s amazingly different about this. The enemy actually struck us at home, murdered 3,000 of our citizens on 9/11, and they still want to lose to this enemy! The Vietnamese never attacked us directly, is the point. Al-Qaeda has. That doesn’t change the Democrats’ outlook. You know, I keep saying they’re McGovernizing themselves. I hope they have the same landslide defeat in ’08 that they had in ’72. They will at some point. It may not happen in ’08. Republicans won that landslide, and then were forced out of Vietnam after Watergate. They believed they set up the same scenario. This is clearly what they are up to: trying to create Nixonian like scandals. Leahy is even calling them that. ‘Nixonian-like scandals,’ weaken the president, then lose the war. It’s all part of their strategy. I read McGovern. McGovern has a piece today. He said he’s not sure if the country’s ready for an anti-war president. He was an anti-war candidate and it got him the nomination, but he’s not so sure that the country is ready for an anti-war president. I don’t mean to scare you here, but the truth is, unless we start to explain why the country should not be ready for an anti-war president, the country may well elect one. You can’t just sit there and rely on the fact, ‘The American people never elect people like this that want to lose.’ You gotta explain to the American people what’s bad about this and what’s dangerous about it. I mean that the Republican candidates have to do this.

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