RUSH: From The Politico, this was from the 30th. Was that Friday? Yeah, Friday was the 30th. This came in after the program was over on Friday. ”Democrats: Voters Shifting Focus From Iraq.’ — Congressional Democrats are reporting a striking change in districts across the country: Voters are shifting their attention away from the Iraq war.’ Ahem. Ahem. Who, ladies and gentlemen, mere months ago predicted to you that this would be the case, that the Iraq war would not be an issue in the ’08 presidential race and, in fact, the future of the country would be the issue? ‘Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat from Tennessee, said not a single constituent has asked about the war during his nearly two-week long Thanksgiving recess. Rep. Michael E. Capuano, an anti-war Democrat from Massachusetts, said only three of 64 callers on a town hall teleconference asked about Iraq, a reflection that the war may be losing power as a hot-button issue in his strongly Democratic district. First-term Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.) — echoing a view shared by many of her colleagues — said illegal immigration and economic unease have trumped the Iraq war as the top-ranking concerns of her constituents.’ See, folks, you know what’s going to happen, particularly with Democrats, before it happens, if you listen regularly to this program.
Now in the Washington Post today, Peter Beinart. I don’t know, is he still an editor for New Republic or not? Oh, that’s right. He’s now gone on to the CFR. He has been promoted to the Ron Paul conspiracy organization, the CFR. Peter Beinart used to be the editor at the New Republic. Now he’s senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has a column in the Washington Post today: ”A Non-Story Remakes the Race’ — Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion bounced from subject to subject, she marked the topic and the time, then gave her thoughts. At 8:34 p.m., it was driver’s licenses; 8:55, Pakistan; 9:57, the Supreme Court. By night’s end she had 17 entries totaling almost 1,500 words. And she hadn’t typed ‘Iraq’ once. … The reason Iraq is fading is simple: Not as many people are dying there. Fewer deaths mean fewer front-page stories … The result is that both the Democratic and Republican campaigns are looking more like the campaigns of the 1990s.’
He basically goes on to say that: ‘On the Democratic side, the impact is even more striking. Iraq, bizarrely enough, was a great issue for Hillary Clinton. True, she had voted for a war that everyone in her party now hates. But when asked which candidate they most trusted on the war, Democrats consistently chose her, often by huge margins. Iraq played to Clinton’s biggest asset: her reputation for experience and strength. Iraq reminded Democrats of how dangerous the world is, and the more dangerous it seemed, the more they gravitated to the safe choice.’ And, ladies and gentlemen, he goes on to say that Iraq is not a story. This column actually says that no Iraq in the debate means we are into the new direction of the country. Peter Beinart, Council on Foreign Relations, formerly New Republic, echoing thoughts and sentiments expressed presciently by your host on this program months ago.
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RUSH: Speaking of the war, ladies and gentlemen, where are all the media polls on the Iraq war now? I know there have been a couple, but there used to be bunches of polls all the time. Where are they now? Well, of course, the issue’s off the table, folks. I know I just said that. But I’m disgusted, folks, how the media do the Democrats’ bidding. Every politician who said that we lost, that we’d already lost or that we should lose and that we were going to lose, should be held accountable by these people. But it won’t happen. The media would then have to be held accountable for its lies, too. Harry Reid, Dingy Harry, ought to be embarrassed multiple times over. Instead he just moves on like nothing ever happened. In a politically sane world, Harry Reid would be ridiculed to this day, as would Pelosi, and as would Jack Murtha, and now all of a sudden we’re told, ‘Well, the issue’s off the table! Yes, Iraq war is off the table. We want to talk about the future of the country.’ Here we got The Politico. We’ve got Peter Beinart. The issue is off the table. Why is it off the table? Because you people failed to secure defeat! So now it’s time to move on to some other way to secure defeat of Republicans, using the Drive-By Media as the catalyst.