RUSH: I want to go back to something yesterday that I did not have a chance to get to in the Stack of Stuff. There was a piece in the New York Times, and the New York Times piece attempted to establish the fact, the notion, that there’s no difference in John McCain and George W. Bush. Now, on the face of it, this is frankly absurd. The New York Times has endorsed John McCain. Do you think the New York Times would ever have endorsed George W. Bush? No. Over the years, McCain has achieved and acquired his ‘maverick’ status quite legitimately. He has crossed the aisle, sat down across the aisle. He has been appropriately critical of his own party and of his own president on a number of issues. He has stood with the Democrats in many instances of expanded government, and government power: campaign finance reform, immigration and so forth.
Yet here comes now the story in the New York Times yesterday. It’s not just the New York Times, it’s a bunch of places, and it’s in the Obama campaign. ‘But, hey, you know, there’s no difference in McCain and Bush.’ Now, what is really going on here is we are seeing the media narrative joined at the hip with the Obama campaign. That’s exactly what this is. Because it’s the Obama campaign that got this whole thing started, that there’s no difference between Bush and McCain. The Democrats are desperate to run against George W. Bush. They think that the country hates George W. Bush. A lot of Republicans think that, too, and they are making a big mistake if they think that the country hates George W. Bush. So to keep Bush on the ballot, to make Democrats think that they’re voting against Bush, they run these stories about the similarities of McCain and Bush, but the country — and this is what people have to keep in mind. The country does not hate George Bush. He is unpopular, but he is not unlikable.
He’s not disliked. He’s not hated. I mean, he’s hated on the fringe left, but I’m talking about the mass population. George W. Bush is a decent man. He’s not partisan. He doesn’t say mean things about anybody. He’s devoted his presidency to protecting the people of this country from another massive terrorist attack, and he has succeeded at this. I’ll tell you why his approval numbers are low. His numbers are low, in my estimation, because a lot of his own party and the people that voted for him are not supportive because he will not defend himself; and has not defended himself against any of these libelous, scandalous, scurrilous, brutal assaults and personal attacks that he has undergone for the past seven years. And when the leader who is under assault does not defend himself or his policies or his administration, then the people that voted for him say, ‘My gosh! He’s not even defending me. I voted for him. He’s not defending the country.’
I think it’s a big secret in terms of why his approval numbers are low. It’s not that the country hates the guy. The country doesn’t want to lose in Iraq. The country doesn’t agree with the Democrats about that. The country doesn’t want to pull out of there in defeat — the majority, anyway. So the Democrats think everybody hates Bush. Therefore they want to keep Bush on the ballot. The way to keep Bush on the ballot is to say McCain is just like Bush. The New York Times runs around and endorses McCain and now says he’s just like Bush. I mean, there’s no credibility. There’s no consistency. There’s absolutely no factual basis for any of this. Now, the second point about this is this. If either of these two campaigns is a fraud, it is Obama’s. Obama is who? Obama is the messiah! He’s promising change. He’s promising hope. He’s assuring voters he will bring enlightenment and solutions, unlike any seen before in American politics.
The real story, however, is not how McCain is like Bush. The real story is how identical the Obama campaign is to every Democrat presidential campaign since McGovern. He will serve Jimmy Carter’s second term. There’s nothing new here. There is no change. His support staff, his council of economic advisors, his national security advisors — and I’m surprised he needs any, because Obama, by the force of his will and personality can fix all these foreign policy problems, can fix the health care program. Why does he need advisors? Well, nevertheless, he has advisors, and guess where they’re all from? They’re all from the Clinton era or previous Democrat administrations. If I were the McCain campaign, I would not even reply to this drivel that I equal Bush.
McCain’s doing that. He’s going out making speeches: ‘I am not George Bush. You got it? One more time: I am not George Bush, my friends. Never, ever! I distanced myself from George Bush. I — I — I — I attacked Bush. You can’t say it!’ It’s the wrong thing to do. Don’t even respond to it. Take aim at the fact that there is nothing new about Obama or his campaign. Uh, uh, uh! I take it back. There is something new about Obama, and that is he’s the first black American to have a legitimate chance to win the presidency. But that’s it. There’s nothing else new. There’s no new hope; there’s no new change. The hope that we have is that we don’t get this guy and his policies and return to the Carter’s second term. He is bringing a lot of hope, but not the kind he means. He’s not going to bring any change other than if you want to say, ‘Yeah he’ll change us from a market-based economy to a government-based economy.’
We have seen what Obama is offering in every Democrat campaign since McGovern and he’s locked into it, and it’s become gloriously obvious.