RUSH: ‘Democratic presidential hopeful [the Breck Girl] has a ready answer the criticism about his expensive haircuts and huge home. The former North Carolina senator says a man can be wealthy and care about poor people.’ He’s got his poverty tour next week starting in New Orleans, and he’s making a point of going to places that are not early primary states, that it’s not political, that he’s not just stumping for votes out there. He’s going to show that he cares about poverty! But he’s gotten all this publicity about $400 haircuts, a $1200 haircut, the 28,000-square-foot house that half a forest had to be clear-cut to make room for, hundred of thousands of dollars in salary, and it’s threatened his message that he’s a man of the people. ‘His advisers point out nearly all the leading candidates for president are wealthy.’ So here once again we’re treated to the blinding intelligence of John Edwards — intelligence that few of us will ever understand. Remember, it was earlier this week where the Breck Girl actually came up with a solution to poverty, and that was to ‘reward work.’
We’ve been around for 231 years as a country, ladies and gentlemen, thereabouts, and it’s amazing: it took that long for somebody among us to come up with that idea! It was brilliant. A check, a ‘pay-check’ is what the Breck Girl was suggesting that work be rewarded. Now I know why so many liberals are against all these corporations. They haven’t been paying anybody! It’s indentured servitude out there. So we were treated to that brilliance, blinding brilliance earlier in the week. Today, we get another flash of that blinding brilliance from the Breck Girl: a man can be wealthy and care about poor people. Yeah, maybe, but only if you are a Democrat. Breck Girl, you’re behind the times here. Ted Kennedy owns this one on you. There are many Democrats that have come before you that are far, far wealthier than you, and they don’t get the same garbage about $400 haircuts and stuff. They shelter their wealthy lifestyle habits in ways that their constituents never, ever see. Ah, Ted might end up on the yacht with Walter Cronkite now and then, but you never see Ted out there flaunting his wealth, building big houses. Of course he didn’t have to build one. He inherited it. (Laughing.) Or two or three. Well, what a signature cause, folks.
I don’t know where in the Sam Walton, that the Breck Girl got the idea that rich men don’t care about the poor. How is it…? Sam Walton and his family are among the wealthiest, and look at what they do with Wal-Mart — and they care about poor people. They have priced those stores so that people of modest means can go shop, and guess who’s trying to shut them down? People like the Breck Girl! The idea that wealthy men care about poor people? Yeah, and if you’re not the right kind of wealthy guy and you care about poor people, people like John Edwards come and sue you into bankruptcy or try to put your company out of business! Wealthy men and women in this nation have been generous throughout our nation’s history, more so the less government is seizing their wealth through confiscatory taxes! We know that giving boomed during the Reagan years thanks to those Reagan tax cuts. I’ll tell you something else. USA Today had the story earlier this week that we talked about, that the primary giving, the largest volunteer charity giving comes from the Midwest, comes from the middle class.
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RUSH: A suspicious package addressed to the Breck Girl ‘forced the evacuation of his campaign headquarters today. It’s the third time authorities have responded to mail addressed to the [Breck Girl]’s office in Chapel Hill. Captain Bob Overton of the Chapel Hill Police Department said he didn’t know the contents of the package but said that authorities have deemed it suspicious. ‘We are investigating the package at this time.’ It showed up about ten o’clock this morning. A small section of the Southern Village complex in Chapel Hill was blocked off.’ They called a bomb squad (muttering). Let’s see: ‘…another suspicious package in May after finding a letter contained a powdery substance.’ So they’ve evacuated. This is the third time that this guy’s office has been shut down due to a suspicious package with a powdery substance. Three times! You gotta start wondering if this is real or contrived way to appear like you’re under attack. I wonder if they’re going to find a return address: ‘Ann Coulter.’ Elizabeth Edwards will go on TV: ‘Look at what just showed up in our office! Ann Coulter sent this!’ (Laughing.) That’s right: ‘terrorism just a bumper sticker.’ I think the Breck Girl is failing to warn his staff of incoming Avon shipments, and they’re getting all hot to trot here over nothing.
Seriously, I have a question. You know, the Breck Girl starts his ‘poverty tour’ on Monday, in New Orleans. He’s already been to New Orleans. He announced his presidential candidacy in New Orleans. If poverty is so widespread in the country, why does he have to take a tour? All he ought to have to do is leave his front door. You know, get in the car, drive a couple miles and there’s poverty. All he’d have to do is look around him, wherever he might be, not have to go on a ‘tour’ as if going to a museum. Seriously, folks, if poverty is so widespread, then why hasn’t the Breck Girl pointed out that after the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, the War on Poverty and the Raw Deal, the Democrats have failed to make a dent in poverty? We have the New Deal. We have the great deal. We have the Great Society. We have the War on Poverty, and the percentages are still the same, and these are big, big, big Democrat programs. It seems to me, Breck Girl — because I know he’s not going to listen — if you really want to have a meaningful poverty tour, instead of going to New Orleans and Appalachia and these other places, do a tour of the failed bureaucracies and buildings that house them and tell us how he intends to fix them.
Go wherever the Great Society is administered. Go to wherever the New Deal remnants are administered. Go to wherever the War on Poverty is being fought, because that’s where it’s being lost and go find out why. You need to tour a bunch of failed government bureaucracies, Breck Girl. That’s what you need to do. Do a taxpayer tour. Apologize on behalf of his party for the recession rip-off in world history. We’ve had $6 trillion transferred, wealth transfers to ‘wipe out poverty’ since 1964, the Great Society. It hasn’t worked. So he wants to do any kind of a tour, taxpayer tour, apologize to us for wasting a bunch of money, a huge rip-off. Here’s the thing, folks. The Democrats cannot have it both ways. We allow them to get away with this, and it’s time this stopped. They claim their programs are critical. They claim that the social safety net, the hammock and all these programs that they have come up with to wipe out poverty, they claim those programs are so critical and humane — and then half the Democrats run around and talk about what rotten lifestyles Americans have!
So if you’re going to praise your own programs — ‘oh, these programs have meant so much to so many people!’ — and then you got a leading presidential candidate running around talking about all the poverty in America, isn’t it time you start looking at yourself? Because you can’t have it both ways. Either your programs aren’t working — well, not ‘either,’ because we know the programs aren’t working. Why go back to New Orleans, anyway? You already been to New Orleans. You announced your campaign from there. We can measure, by the way, the poverty tour that the Breck Girl is going to take. It will be very, very easy to measure the tour. He’s going to be in New Orleans for, what? He’s not even going to be there for a whole day. He’ll be there in the morning. Let’s say he’s there for two or three hours. When he leaves, will there still be poor people? If after the Breck Girl leaves Appalachia, will there still be poor people? If there are still poor people in New Orleans, and there are still poor people in Appalachia and wherever the hell else he’s going… Because he cares, and he’s the only one, folks. Nobody else is doing anything about poverty, do you understand? He’s going to go on this tour, and we’ll find out just how much of it he cures on this tour.
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RUSH: I really think, folks, we need benchmarks in the War on Poverty. That’s what we need. We need benchmarks we can measure. We actually have the benchmarks, and we know that they’re not being met. (sigh) Anyway, the Breck Girl might have a bit of a challenge finding a lot of people in poverty in New Orleans, because most of them are gone. Most of them moved to Houston, and the people that are back in New Orleans are the entrepreneurs and risk-takers and moderately well off rebuilding it — which, by the way, is a meaningful problem for liberal Democrat politicians down there.
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RUSH: I’m going to do my own poverty tour this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. … That’s right. I’m going to do my own poverty tour, and I’m going to do it today! I’m not going to wait ’til Monday, and I’m not going to go to New Orleans. I’m just going to cross the bridge. I have to go to the airport later today, and my route is going to take me to it. If I just make a two-block detour from the main drag, my route will take me past poverty, and I’m going to drive by and I’m going to look at it, and I’m… (interruption) No, I won’t get out that far to Snerdley’s place. (Laughing.) No, it’s really just across bridge, and I will drive by. I’ll slow down a little bit, look out both sides of the car, see what I see, and on Monday when I get back, I’ll report in on my poverty tour. I’ll let you know if I see any. In fact, I’ll take the poverty tour Monday morning again before coming back and see if I did anything by driving through there, because I’m going to drive through with a pretty nice car. It might inspire people to get out of poverty. You never know. I’ll go back on Monday on my way to work. I’ll take a big detour. I don’t have to cross the bridge to get to work, but I’ll be doing that on Monday. I’ll take a second tour so I’ll get two poverty tours in before the Breck Girl even gets his started. I’ll get the same results he does.