RUSH: Snerdley, I’m still not sure I read that right. Obama is down in Miami, he’s talking to the Cuban exile community, they hate the Castros, they despise the Castros, they want the Castros overthrown, they want their island nation back. They don’t want the embargo lifted, and Obama is telling them that we need to have diplomatic relations with no preconditions with the Castros and he’s still standing there? They have not run him out of the building?
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RUSH: He then said something about democracy is more than just the ballot box. I really think this dweeb is making it up as he goes along. I don’t even think he’s writing this stuff. Axelrod or somebody else is writing. I think he’s not on the prompter, that’s why he makes so many gaffes. He forgets what other people have written for him and what he said, and he goes out there and when he’s on his own he makes all these gaffes. He made some kind of gaffe about the Cuban exile community, which is why he’s down there trying to save face and fix it. But I can’t imagine what he said to them fixed it. I didn’t hear any applause. The sound was down, I was watching on closed-captioning. But I know the Cuban exile community and the last thing they want to hear is diplomatic relations with the Castros without any preconditions. He’s saying this on the heels of putting his foot in his mouth over Iran on the same basis?
Something about this guy is not right. There’s something about this that doesn’t jibe. This guy, two years ago in the United States Senate barely could find the men’s room. He was still preoccupied with trying to figure out how to ingratiate himself with the Chicago machine politics. He didn’t do one thing of any significance in the Senate. He’d had more ‘I don’t care’ votes or ‘I’m not here’ votes or ‘present’ votes or whatever in the Illinois Senate. Somebody’s gotta be behind this. None of this Obama campaign makes any sense whatsoever, particularly him.
Let’s talk about Senator McCain here for just a second. Senator McCain has thrown two preachers under the bus now. Last night in Stockton, California, McCain held a press conference.
MCCAIN: I just think that the statement is crazy and unacceptable and certainly Reverend Hagee, Pastor Hagee is entitled to his views. I’ve never been in Pastor Hagee’s church or Pastor Parsley’s church. I didn’t attend their church for 20 years and I’m not a member of their church. I received their endorsement, which did not mean that I endorsed their views. But the comments made most recently by Pastor Hagee are just too much.
RUSH: Okay, so McCain has disavowed the endorsement of both Pastor Hagee and Pastor Rod Parsley, yet drawing a distinction, hey, neither of these two guys were my pastor. This drew a response from Barack Obama last night in Boca Raton.
OBAMA: You know, John McCain is having to deal with his Hagee, who said stuff that is mind-boggling. I don’t attribute those statements to John McCain. Nobody — nobody thinks that McCain believes that stuff. And for McCain to then suggest that, you know, every single statement that was made by somebody is somehow attributable to me is just wrong.
RUSH: Senator — (laughing) — you don’t get it, you don’t get it. You chose your pastor! You were in that church for 20 years. This nutcase baptized your two crumb crunchers. Your wife is out spouting in speeches some of the very philosophies espoused by Reverend Wright. I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to talk about his wife. Well, slap me. Bottom line here is that this guy is getting awfully defensive. You know, he’s trying to basically cleanse himself here with a flawed comparison between these two preachers that endorsed McCain. He knows this association with Jeremiah Wright has upset him. Now, there’s even a bigger, bigger contretemps going up between McCain and Obama. Obama went to Washington yesterday to vote on the new GI bill, and he voted against it. McCain was not there. He was somewhere out campaigning. So this is on the Senate floor yesterday. This is Obama about McCain.
OBAMA: I can’t understand why he would line up behind the president in his opposition to this GI bill. I can’t believe why he believes it’s too generous to our veterans. I could not disagree with him and the president more on this issue. There are many issues that lend themselves to partisan posturing, but giving our veterans the chance to go to college should not be one of them.
RUSH: Well, this did not sit well with Senator McCain, who again in Stockton, California, last night, held a press conference and said this to reporters.
MCCAIN: I don’t know if the American people will judge Senator Obama as to whether he has military experience or not, but I think they may judge him as to whether he has experience and knowledge to make the kind of judgment necessary to care for our veterans.
RUSH: Now, this is a little bit like the John Kerry defense. You didn’t serve, so don’t criticize me. That only works for Democrats, Senator. Ask Bob Dole. He tried it against Bill Clinton, too. Jonathan Martin at The Politico has written up this episode: ‘Jim Webb’s GI bill passed the Senate bipartisan majority 75-22. Clinton, Obama were both there, McCain in California on the fundraising trail. Obama used the opportunity to once again tie his rival to the president. Obama said, ‘I respect McCain’s service to our country, he’s one of those heroes of which I speak. But I can’t understand why he’d line up behind the president in opposition to this bill,” what you just heard him say. ‘The McCain campaign responded by issuing a sharply worded and lengthy statement in McCain’s name. McCain notes his support for an alternative to the Webb measure, but points out his own military service and points out Obama’s lack thereof.’
Part of the statement: ‘It is typical but no less offensive that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of. Let me say first in response to Senator Obama, running for president is different than serving as president. The office comes with responsibilities so serious that the occupant can’t always take the politically easy route without hurting the country he’s sworn to defend. Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect, and deep gratitude for America’s veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge. I think I’ve earned the right to make that claim.’ And at the end of the statement, he says, ‘Perhaps if Senator Obama would take the time and the trouble to understand this issue, he would learn to debate an honest disagreement respectfully, but as Obama always does, he prefers impugning the motives of his opponent and exploiting a thoughtful difference of opinion to advance his own ambitions. If that’s how he would behave as president, the country would regret his election.’ That is Senator McCain speaking about Obama in this little dust-up that Obama started on the Senate floor. Joe Biden on MSNBC Live this morning, cohost Willie Geist was talking to him. ‘Senator, essentially Obama has questioned McCain for not backing up this bill. How do you see these two guys coming down on this?’
BIDEN: There’s a difference between an ad hominem argument and a logical response. A logical fallacy is an ad hominem argument. That’s basically what John engaged in. It’s a little bit like my saying, if we’re having a debate about standards for trucking safety on the highways and I voted against making the rules more stringent, and one of my colleagues got up and said, ‘You know, Senator Biden’s wrong on this, this is gonna make people less safe,’ and I said, ‘Look, my wife and daughter were killed by a tractor-trailer, don’t you tell me what it is to deal with safety.’ That’s an ad hominem argument. That has nothing to do with the response. It’s not right; it’s not fair; it’s kind of beneath us.
RUSH: Ohhh! All of McCain’s buddies are now lining up against him. All of his Democrat buddies are lining up against him, accusing him of ad hominem attacks. Now, this GI bill, just for the sake of filling you in on this, this GI bill, ladies and gentlemen, is opposed by the Pentagon because it is so loaded with short-term benefits. They fear that it will hurt troop levels because it gives troops incentives to leave the service! Plus there’s a whole bunch of domestic spending tacked onto this thing that is irrelevant to the GI bill, and this bill was designed specifically for many reasons, one of them is to give Obama cover on the fact that he is an anti-military dove who has joined the ‘let’s lose’ chorus. So they’re constructing things in the Senate so he can vote for to make it look like he’s this big hawk and big pro-military guy that loves the troops when in fact he’s voted every chance he could to de-fund them or has joined the chorus of people saying they can’t win or they have lost. Ad hominem argument. And then finally yesterday, Union City, California, here is Senator McCain on Senator Obama.
MCCAIN: I admire and respect Senator Obama. For a young man with very little experience, he’s done very well. So I appreciate, with his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he has been very successful.
RUSH: Now, you can read this two ways. You know, you can react to this two ways. What is your reaction to it, Snerdley? Okay, okay. Snerdley’s reaction is that this is a great way to take a shot. It was funny and lighthearted, and it was a great way to take a shot at the fact that Obama has no experience. Others are comparing it to Ronaldus Magnus and his reply to Walter F. Mondull in their debate, when Reagan said, ‘I’m not going to make an issue of my opponent’s youth and inexperience,’ in the second of three debates they had, because in the first debate, Reagan seemed overprepared, and after that debate everybody raised the age question again on Reagan and other things, so he came back with that line in the next debate, and it quelled it. Other people are reacting to this, ‘Wow, Obama’s really gotten under his skin. This is a cheap, overly sensitive put-down and an example of McCain’s temper.’ One analogy is that it’s like when an 80-year-old lady says to a 50-year-old employee, ‘Young man. Young man.’ It’s a put-down.
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