RUSH: Let me just tell you what’s happening. It is absurd and you’re going to have to really gut it up here because the Drive-By Media is doing everything it can to disqualify the true conservatives on the Republican side. They’re saying, ‘Romney, he can’t win. If he loses Michigan, he’s done.’ They said that about Romney in Iowa, they said that about Romney in New Hampshire. Now Fred Thompson apparently scored. Did you watch it last night, Mr. Snerdley? Fred Thompson was just fabulous, and people said, ‘Where has this been? All of this time, where’s this been?’ And I can’t answer that, but now the Drive-Bys are saying, ‘Well, yeah, he was pretty good last night, but it’s too late.’ We’ve had two states! It’s too late for Fred Thompson? And, of course, ‘Rudy, why, he’s lost all of his momentum, Rudy’s out of it.’
If you go back to Iowa, somebody leaked the news, it was false, that Fred was going to get out of the race if he lost Iowa and endorse McCain. It turned out to be totally untrue. Now, who would leak that? Who would possibly leak that? Could it have been somebody in the McCain camp? And, if it was, and if Fred knows that, then they’ve gotta be pretty livid. Fred, if he wants to get back in this thing seriously, he’s going to have to go after all these guys. I know the thinking might be, ‘Well, we gotta go after Huckabee first because of South Carolina and we’re looking for the same voters that Huckabee is looking for there.’ The proclaimed front-runner, even though he’s not because he doesn’t have the delegate lead right now, McCain, nobody laid a glove on him last night. I think what it is with McCain is, let’s be polite to the old guy, and I think it’s a POW/MIA thing. I think it’s the war hero thing, and that sort of provides a little boundary and a wall here that people don’t want to scale. I got an e-mail from a subscriber…, ‘Rush, I keep hearing that Thompson was so great last night, but that he got started too late.’ She says, ‘Thompson is great. Late into the race, yeah. My husband also comes in late sometimes, and we’re still married.’ (laughing)