RUSH: What a great juxtaposition of headlines on the Drudge Report page today. First headline: ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq Takes Heavy Losses.’ The headline right under it: ‘Frustrated Democrats Mull Strategy.’ (Laughing.) If that doesn’t say it all: ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq Takes Heavy Losses,’ meaning we’re kicking butt, and ‘Frustrated Democrats Mull Strategy.’ UPI: ‘Al-Qaida militants in Iraq have taken heavy losses in two joint U.S.-Iraqi raids north of Baghdad, the U.S. military reported Thursday. In one operation involving more than 1,000 U.S. troops and Iraq Special Forces in the Hemreen mountain area and Diyala river valley, three al-Qaida fighters were killed and 80 others were arrested, the Army statement said. The report said four of the arrested men are considered senior leaders in the terror group, Kuwait’s KUNA news agency reported. U.S. air support was used to conclude the raid, after which a major weapons cache was found, the statement said. Elsewhere in Salah Al-Din province, U.S. forces arrested 12 al-Qaida suspects…’ These numbers are really low. I happen to know what the numbers are because, as a powerful, influential member of the media, I have access. The US military by policy will not announce enemy death tolls. That got ’em into trouble back in the Vietnam days. But these figures are way, way low, considering the success that we’re actually having. Try this set of headlines. I like to do this some days, just go through and get the headlines and compare them.
New York Times, Carl Hulse: ‘Disappointed Democrats Map Withdrawal Strategy.’ Disappointed Democrats! They are disappointed! Folks, they got skunked by General Petraeus. They’ve just done it to themselves again. New York Times Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Steven Lee Myers: ‘Bush to Sell Limited Iraq Pullout as Middle Way.’ Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson: ‘General Petraeus Wins the TV War in a Rout.’ Wall Street Journal: ‘Iraq Testimony Appears to Have Won No Converts.’ (laughing) From the Washington Post: ‘Democrats Push Toward Middle on Iraq Policy.’ Wait a minute! We were just reading the New York Times, which says Bush is headed to the ‘middle.’ The Democrats say they’re headed to the middle. Won’t this result in a giant ‘Kumbaya,’ maybe down the road, since they’re both headed to the same place? No, because wherever Bush goes it won’t be enough, as far as the Democrats are concerned. The Washington Post — get this headline — ‘Petraeus Returns to War That is Now His Own.’ Here’s the Washington Times, by the way. This is a great story: ‘Petraeus Unites the GOP on the Pullout.’ You know, real leaders can have this effect. I don’t care whether they’re elected officials or average, common, ordinary, everyday Americans like you and me: Real leaders have that effect. What’s happened here is, the Democrat strategy was to split a bunch of Republicans — liberal and moderate Republicans — away from Bush on the war. It’s not going to happen.
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RUSH: All right, now, a little bit more on this Washington Times story: ‘Petraeus Unites GOP on Pullout.’ We talk about leadership a lot on this program, because I have it, and I exude it on a daily basis, and people respond to it, and it’s been sorely missing in a lot of high levels of the Republican Party. But this story is interesting. ‘Senate Republicans, bolstered by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus’ war report this week, are closing ranks and say Democrats will continue to fall far shy of the votes needed to force a pullout from Iraq. Republicans facing intense antiwar pressure in home states, such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and the party’s war critics, including Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, say the general’s congressional testimony helped persuade them not to switch their votes. ‘I’m supportive of a reasonable plan which they offered,’ Mr. Lugar said on PBS’ ‘NewsHour.”
What does this signal? It’s a replay. This is a loop of Democrat losses. You know what the headline for this story ought to be? Instead of: ‘Petraeus Unites GOP on Pullout,’ the headline ought to be: ‘Not One Democrat Permitted to Change His Vote.’ They are in lockstep. Here’s that New York Times story: ‘Disappointed Democrats Map Withdrawal Strategy.’ Let me summarize this for you. Any move away from a firm withdrawal could cause Democrat defections. It looks like Dingy Harry is screwed again, folks. I want to pause here for a second. I want to talk to you a little bit about human nature. I want to talk to you about arrogance and cockiness, the feeling of superiority, feeling of being the smartest guy, smartest person in the room. Those are characteristics that apply like glue to today’s Democrat Party, and especially its leaders. Throughout the summer, throughout the spring, from the moment the surge was announced, the Democrats did everything they could to undermine it. They had help from their willing accomplices in the media. They waved the white flag of surrender. They had all these resolutions.
They were convinced, or tried to convince themselves and the American people, that the election results last November gave them a mandate to get us out of Iraq. I don’t care if it’s Durbin, Chuck Schemer, Nancy Pelosi, Dingy Harry, whichever of them we saw on TV, either singularly or together, they appeared confident, cocky, arrogant, condescending, intolerant and all that. They just knew that they were eventually going to make their policy plans work. They have been skunked, not just defeated, they have been skunked and humiliated from the moment they started the anti-surge rhetoric back in March, all up to this week. It’s sort of like what Oliver North did to these guys during the Iran-Contra hearings. Remember Arthur Lyman sitting up there, and John — I forget his name — weird hairdo up there, and George Mitchell, this giant select committee. Here’s Oliver North, in full-dress uniform, and they’re going to get him, they know it, this is the day they’re going to get him and they’re going to get Reagan. Hallelujah.
North ran rings around them, rallies the American people to his side of the issue, even went so far — one of his questioners said, ‘Colonel North, I have a document here.’ North said, ‘Wait, wait, I shredded all these. Did I miss one?’ These guys were looking around at each other like, ‘What did he just say?’ The American people loved it, because people do not like arrogance; they do not like condescension; they do not like people who make obvious that they hold other people in contempt. These are human characteristics that are like fingernails on a chalkboard. They just really irritate people, the arrogance and condescension, the smart, little, know-it-all elite types. Throughout the summer this typifies who the Democrats have been, and they always are. Many leftists are this way. They don’t know diddly-squat about what they’re talking about, like these two guys Dawn ran into last night. But they nevertheless think that they are God’s gift to humanity, and they know everything, when they don’t know anything. In the process of having this attitude, they look at their opponents, in their case George W. Bush, and we know how they look at him, not just in contempt, they have sheer rage. Bush Derangement Syndrome, it’s called. They are delusional and deranged. They are foaming at the mouth with anger and all this contempt, and he outsmarts them and gets his way on the things he really cares about every time.
They were going to cream Petraeus. They were going to hold him up. They were going to treat him like a judicial nominee. They were going to destroy his career. They were going to destroy his reputation. And don’t tell me they didn’t try and didn’t have that in mind, calling him a liar before he ever says a word; calling him a puppet and so forth. After two days of testimony, it is clear once again just who the mental midgets are, just who the incompetents are. These Democrats, I want you to try to understand how they feel today. You can see it in the headlines of these stories. They’ve been confident since 2001 they’re going to beat this guy, and they’re going to stop this guy, and they’re going to make sure he doesn’t get what he wants because he’s a dumb frat boy. He’s a barbecue jockey from Texas with a can of chewing tobacco in the back pocket. He can’t speak in public. He’s a blithering idiot. He’s got the IQ of a pencil eraser. This is what they run around thinking, and no humility among them at all. He just outfoxes them and outsmarts them at every turn. ‘Disappointed Democrats Map Withdrawal Strategy?’ What the hell kind of headline is this? Well, it’s a New York Times headline, but I mean the focus is still, ‘Okay, what are the Democrats going to do now? This is Petraeus’s war, it’s his; he owns it now. Since he came in and skunked our precious Democrats, fine, he’s getting our load next,’ says the Drive-By Media.
They’ve tried to take Bush out. They haven’t been able to do it. They tried to take Petraeus out, were unable to do it. Folks, I know a lot about human nature. You think that they’re going to learn a lesson? No, this is going to make them even angrier and they’re going to come back and be even more extreme. They’re going to come back and be even more intolerant. They’re not going to get anything done because they’re not going to have the votes. They have to go out there and keep all these lunatics that vote for them appeased. Dingy Harry said, ‘Democrats plan to vote on more aggressive legislative challenges to the war which could help appease critics who are demanding Democrats take tougher action.’ Harry Reid has been reduced — you want to talk about incompetence. You’ve got two leaders of Democrats, you’ve got the House Leader, Pelosi, the Democrat leader, Reid, if we’re going to talk impeachment or getting rid of current leadership, if I were you, Democrats, if I were you, kook fringe, I would say you gotta get rid of Reid, you gotta get Pelosi. They are failing you. They are embarrassing you, and they’re embarrassing themselves. And they’re harming the country.
I still am stunned as I sit and actually contemplate this. You know me, folks, I’m naturally ebullient and optimistic and I try to look at things and laugh and enjoy myself. Every time I stop and think about what happened Monday and Tuesday this week, and then combine that with months of this behavior on the part of the Democrats, look at how divided we have become over the concept of American exceptionalism. We’ve actually got a percentage of this country that doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism to them represents the major problem in the world and they’re doing everything they can to cut their own country down to size, in the midst of a war against a bunch of extremists, who are telling us every day what they intend to do to us if they get the chance, and they’ll get the chance and more of a chance if we don’t keep up missions and efforts to stop them. And yet we can’t count on a political party, a major political party in this country, to help secure victory to protect and defend the Constitution and this country.
Like I said yesterday, we’re going to have to win this war without Democrats. We’re going to have to, in fact, win the war on two fronts. We have to beat the Democrats and beat the media, and beat their lunatic fringe and the external enemy. We’re going to have to do it at the same time, and we’re capable of it, because we’re Americans. This is the United States of America. I guarantee you, the Democrats, when they slinked away after those two days of hearings into the privacy of wherever it is they hole up, they were stunned. They couldn’t believe it. This was it. This was the Oliver North moment. What is it about these people that they do not learn? This happens to them and has happened to them since 2001. On virtually everything that’s important to George W. Bush, it has happened to them. The Wellstone Memorial, this is what arrogance and condescension, cockiness, leads you to do. I’ll tell you something else. One of the things that contributes to this combination of really unflattering human characteristics that they’re displaying as a party is that the Drive-By Media constantly does puff pieces on these people, makes it sound like they represent a majority of thinking in this country, makes it look like they are the ones defining the future of the country, when they’re not.
They may have won the House and Senate but I guaran-damn-tee you, folks, the way the Democrats think today is definitely a minority. Their mode of thinking, their view of the world, their view of this country’s place in the world, is a minority opinion in this country. They may not even realize it. When you have a bunch of lap dogs around you, this is one of the problems that highly successful people have. They surround themselves with a bunch of ‘yes’ people that will say whatever the highly successful person wants to hear, so they can stay in good graces, get paid and be whatever. That’s the Drive-By Media, in a sense, just bucking these guys up. These headlines are ridiculous here today. ‘What do the Democrats have to do now? What will the Democrats do now?’ Well, they’re going to retreat, well, they’re going to withdraw, well, they’re going to move to the middle, well, they’re depressed, well, they’re this or that. So they sit there and live with this preoccupation that they’re getting tricked, this barbecue jockey from Texas somehow is using slick packaging and marketing to defeat them, because he’s too stupid to do it on his own. They really think they and the American people are being screwed. The lesson here is humility. When something goes wrong, the first person or organization that you look to to find out what might be wrong, is yourself and your organization. They are incapable of it, which bodes well for us in the future, by the way — they are incapable of it precisely because of their arrogance and their cockiness and their superiority and their elitism, and basically the way they lie to themselves.
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RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, I do something that many hosts up there do not do, and that is when I make allegations about people such as I just did about the Democrats, I don’t just say it. I give you evidence. I want to share with you something that Nancy Pelosi said this week: ‘What Congress is trying to do is a responsible deployment, redeployment and a change of mission in Iraq so that we can focus on three things: redeployment out…’ You gotta listen. Folks, stick with me on this. She said they’re focusing on three things in Congress: ‘redeployment out, readiness of our troops, strengthening our military to protect our interests wherever they may be threatened, and focusing on the real war on terror — which is Afghanistan, as well now as in Iraq.’ Now, in the first place, that’s four things. But do you understand what she just did? She just said we want to take the troops out of Iraq, redeploy ’em out so that we can have them ready to protect our interests in Afghanistan and Iraq! Where does this assumption come from that we’re dealing with wizards here when we talk about Democrats? They’re always portrayed as the smartest people, the most learned, the most scholarly. I’m telling you, here, we’re dealing with mental midgets: people with the IQ basically above that of two eraser heads — and I’m being generous there!
She said this: ‘We have said the troops can stay.’ Arrogance, condescension. We have said? She has no constitutional power to say ‘we’ anything. She ain’t the commander-in-chief, and neither is Dingy Harry. But she said, ‘We have said the troops can stay, a small number can stay, whatever number necessary to fight the Al-Qaeda. But we must get our combat troops out of that civil war in Iraq. We are trying to find our common ground. That’s where I told him the House Democrats were.’ You cannot say something like this without having two characteristics about you: A, genuine stupidity; and, B, arrogance and superiority. ‘We have said the troops can stay, a small number could stay, whatever number necessary to fight the Al-Qaeda.’ Whatever number necessary to fight ‘the’ Al-Qaeda? ”But we must get our combat troops out of that civil war in Iraq.’ Uh, if a Republican had said something like this, it would have been Dan Quayle all over again. That’s just Nancy Pelosi. Here’s Dingy Harry: ‘This war is president’s war, and the Republicans have bought this war hook, line, and sinker. We’ve done our very best to do the right thing for our country. We’ve kept the president’s foot to the fire. And as a result, we believe the American people see what we’ve done here and what we have here. We have a Bush war supported by Republicans in Congress.’
Now, he’s being political. He’s trying to position this as Bush’s war because they have to circle the wagons now. But, again, you clearly are able to see the arrogance, the elitism in this. ‘We’ve done the best to do the right thing for our country. We’ve kept the president’s foot to the fire. We believe the American people see what we have here.’ Dingy Harry, I’m going to just tell you, if those election results in November were as you have been telling us they are, your first resolution would have passed. If the election in November was about getting out of Iraq — and it wasn’t, Senator Reid. It was about two things: Macaca and Mark Foley, and Republicans who failed to govern as they had campaigned. You guys didn’t ‘win’ anything. The incumbents lost. So Dingy Harry has just now confirmed what I said yesterday. It’s the president’s war; it’s the Republicans’ war. We, ladies and gentlemen, are going to have to win this war without Democrats. Frankly, as stupid as they are, that’s probably an advantage.