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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: All right, a quick question here, folks. If you watched the debate last night — and, by the way, I want to apologize for hyping it. It was a dud. Nothing of note happened. I’ll talk about it in some detail but not nearly as much as I hoped, because nothing happened. But I’ll just ask you a quick question. Did it appear to you that Wolf Blitzer was behaving as though he had, in fact, been warned?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let’s go back to the debate for a second. I’m really bummed about it. I’m sitting there at the computer last night, and I’m always torn. There’s always much more to learn and enjoy on my computer than there ever is on CNN. But I was duty-bound, ladies and gentlemen, as your host to watch this, and I was excited to watch it. Finally we get to the season here in the campaign where these debates could be interesting and fun, and I tuned in, and I actually thought I was watching the NBA All-Star Game, when this thing started. All these candidates get introduced, one by one, and the fanfare and so forth, and I said, ‘I just can’t believe CNN would ever do this and program it this way for a Republican debate and make these people out to be superstars,’ and, in fact, most of them are duds anyway. I was talking to ‘Flee’ [Mark ‘F. Lee’ Levin] in here before the program started. ‘The thing you come away with last night is that Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have to say anything. All she has to do is destroy these other people, and that’s not hard to do — and that’s basically what her technique is, is to destroy her opponents rather than advance substantive policy issues, because, as you know, she can’t be honest about that.

So then I’m watching. Okay, I’m going to watch how Wolf behaves here. As I said, Wolf has been warned supposedly by the Clinton high command. He’s been warned to not go personal, all this personal attack stuff. Don’t pile on. In the Clinton world, that means: ‘Don’t ask a question. Don’t ask a tough question.’ A ‘personal attack’ is one in which you dare make a Clinton explain what they actually think about something, or have them explain something they have said on a prior occasion. So I was watching this, and Wolf looked to me like he was behaving as somebody who had been warned and Drudge today on his page: ‘CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer did an ‘outstanding’ job in Vegas, a senior adviser to the Hillary campaign said early Friday. ‘He was outstanding, and did not gang up like Russert did in Philadelphia. He avoided the personal attacks, remained professional and ran the best debate so far. Voters were the big winners last night.’ A rival campaign insider charges: ‘Wolf turned into a lamb. No follow-up question on Clinton’s huge flip on drivers licenses?” Wolf even got a phone call from Bill Clinton today.

(Playing of Wolf-Clinton spoof.)

RUSH: So Wolf gets the testicles back from Hillary’s testicle lockbox after the debate performance last night. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. If you watched the debate, you probably remember, it was the second hour, and they had registered — they said — independent voters, and here was one of them.

JACKSON: I finally got my son home after three tours of policing in the Iraq civil war. Now, members of the Bush administration and the conservative members of Congress are beating the drums of war again. My son is still part of the Marine Individual Ready Reserve. And, if President Bush starts another unnecessary war, there will be a chance that he will likely be recalled for war. All of you on the stage have formal political power or significant informal power, and have the ability to stop the rush to war. Please tell me how you are going to show us your leadership on this issue now so I can decide who I think would be the best leader for tomorrow.

RUSH: Okay, so we were told these were registered independent voters, and there has been a question about plants in Hillary campaign appearances. This woman’s name is Catherine Jackson, and it turns out she’s been in the news before. I’m holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a printed copy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper from May 18th of this year, and headline of the story: ”Protesters Employ Monkey to Decry Harry Reid’s Iraq Stance. Group includes woman whose son was killed in war’ — With a sleepy monkey in a camouflage outfit and white handkerchiefs on flagpoles, a small group of pro-war activists Thursday gathered outside the federal courthouse that houses Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s Las Vegas office decrying what they said was a policy of surrender. The anti-Reid demonstration was organized by a national group, Move America Forward, most of the protesters were from out of town.’

At any rate, one of the people that showed up here in the anti-war part of the protest was, in fact, Catherine Jackson who got into this debate last night. She’s a Las Vegas resident; she’s obviously an activist, and she got in there last night. Do you think it’s a coincidence that a huge anti-war protester who is a mother of a son who served three tours there got in? Do you think it’s a coincidence she got into this debate last night? Of course, it’s not a coincidence. So CNN clearly the Clinton News Network last night. There’s no question about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want you to hear the sound bites I was talking about earlier in the debate portion where Obama, who had to know that the subject of illegal driver’s licenses was going to be brought up, I want you to hear how unprepared he was and how Mrs. Clinton was cued by Wolf Blitzer right on time and after Obama made such a mess of this. Two sound bites, here is the first.

OBAMA: I am not proposing that that’s what we do. What I’m saying is that we can’t — no, no, no, no, look, I have already said. I support the notion that we have to deal with public safety and that driver’s licenses at the state level can make that happen. But what I also — but what I also — know, Wolf, is that if we keep on getting distracted by this problem then we are not solving it.

BLITZER: Because this is the kind of question that is sort of available for a yes or no answer. (laughter) Either you support it or you oppose it.

RUSH: Yeah. So the audience is laughing at the guy. This is what I meant earlier when I said this is just a pathetic bunch. If you look at the years of experience these people have and what they’ve accomplished, it’s really not much. Kerry was in the Senate 19 years and authored four pieces of legislation. I don’t even think he authored them. He just put his name on them that other people had authored. Literally nothing. Obama’s been in there two years, and it shows. At any rate, after the audience stops laughing at Obama, then Obama finally gives his one-word answer and then Wolf moves on.

OBAMA: Yes.

BLITZER: Okay.

OBAMA: I am going to be fighting for comprehensive immigration reform, and we shouldn’t pose the question as that somehow we can’t achieve that. I believe that the American people desperately want it. That’s what I’m going to be fighting for as president.

BLITZER: Senator Clinton?

HILLARY: No.

RUSH: And we’re supposed to believe that this kind of stuff is not choreographed.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Jim somewhere in Connecticut. Republicans in Connecticut do not like to identify where they are. Jim, somewhere in Connecticut, works for us. How are you?

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing? Actually I’m a Republican who lives in New Jersey and Massachusetts. I consider myself bi-taxual. I’m somewhere in the middle of Connecticut heading up to Massachusetts.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: But I want to get right to my point here. I was watching the debate last night, and in addition to the Feng Shui, the way they laid out Hillary in the center of all of those guys, it’s clear that they want to control how the debates are going to go. And I was just wondering what you thought about setting up parameters, the Republicans setting up parameters when we get to the national election in that you want to not have a crowd in there that can yell and cheer and sway the television audience and not have moderators that are going to set up questions.

RUSH: Well, the way those debates work in theory, once you get to presidential debates, each side is given a certain number of tickets to distribute to supporters and donors and so forth so that the hall is largely constructed 50-50. But both parties try to sabotage the other side. Both parties try to infiltrate and get their own people in as representatives of the other party. One thing the Republican candidates are going to have to figure out, and I think they know it, they can’t rely on staging. They have to know that the moderators of these debates in large measure are going to be out to get them. They have to know that the same people are going to be out to promote Mrs. Clinton. They cannot rely on the moderators to sit there and be tough on Mrs. Clinton, who will be the nominee. They can’t do that. They’re going to have to do it themselves. Wolf Blitzer asked a question — well, he didn’t ask a question. This is one of the craziest things that happened last night.

After the candidates had been rolled out like they’re being introduced at the NBA all-star game, they’re all standing behind Wolf in a photo-op, various people, Howard Dean and others coming up, shaking everybody’s hands while they’re standing there at the podium, while Wolf is in a close-up giving ground rules. He said one of the ground rules is that you have to answer the question asked. You cannot take the question and move on to something you’d rather talk about. I said, ‘Okay, well, how did he do?’ Well, one of the writers at the American Thinker today said he did about as good a job maintaining the rules as a referee does in the World Wrestling Federation. The Republicans just have to realize this. So, stacking the audience, stacking the place, they all try to do it, both parties do. I think the Democrats are more oriented in that direction because they don’t trust people. They think they have to stage things in order to win. Reality is the biggest problem the Democrat Party has, reality is the biggest problem, truth is the biggest problem they have, it’s the biggest inconvenience that they have to deal with, and their whole existence is built on denying who they are and what they believe.

Here’s Curt in Fort Knox, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush, great to speak to you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: Calling from here in Kentucky, I live right next to Fort Knox. And right next to the military base.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: What I wanted to comment about, you mentioned Obama, and him being off last night. Correct me if I’m wrong —

RUSH: Hey, Curt, Curt, Curt, can you hang on just a second?

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: The Brinks truck is out there, Brian, bringing in my paycheck, and there’s no parking spaces. I don’t want the guy to leave. Go ahead, Curt.

CALLER: All right, sir. You mentioned Obama being off his game last night. Now, correct me if I’m wrong. I listen to a lot of news. I listen to your show every day. I’m a news junky. But when Obama mentions two months ago that he would negotiate directly with Iran, with a terrorist nation, didn’t Hillary jump on the bandwagon to destroy Obama over his naïve foreign policy?

RUSH: She did.

CALLER: You know, saying that you don’t negotiate with terrorist nations. Last night she said she would negotiate with Iran.

RUSH: Look, we’ve been pointing this out. She’s all over the board on this like she is the driver’s licenses.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: The next time the driver’s license thing comes up she’ll find a way to be for it in order to salve the hurt feelings of New York Democrats who think that Hillary has thrown immigrants under the bus.

CALLER: What I’m curious about, why didn’t Obama come back and attack her for that? He sat there as if he were asleep when she said that.

RUSH: I got two theories. One theory is, Obama has realized he’s out of his league right now. He’s gone into this too soon and is just phoning it in.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: The second thing is is that he gets up there and gets paralyzed. His brain stops moving, he is so defensive, he’s so worried about what he’s going to say he’s not listening to what he’s heard and responded. So he’s in a defensive posture, he’s trying to not to lose, in the process he’s losing.

CALLER: I have a third option, Rush. Do you think Clinton castrati got to him and they already told him that he’s going to be the vice president, or possibly he’s going to get a free ticket to Fort Marcy Park?

RUSH: When you start talking about Don Vito Clintonleone and Clinton, Inc., and who they might have, you can’t rule any of it out.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: I don’t think they have any fear of Obama. I don’t think he’s going to be the veep.

CALLER: They don’t seem to have any fear of him right now.

RUSH: No. She doesn’t have any fear of anybody. The biggest fear she has, folks, — and this is not good for me — but the biggest fear Clinton, Inc. has, is me.

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