RUSH: Yep, it was a disaster. It was a total disaster. It could not have been worse, and the thing is, everybody on Obama’s side knows that it was a disaster. That little forum they had Saturday night at Saddle Sore Church or whatever it is, I’m telling you, folks, I have so much to say about this. Now, Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life is a pastor. He’s a preacher. He’s sold 35 million books. He had this forum on Saturday night with both Obama and McCain. They got basically the same questions; Obama went first, which is something he’s not used to.
You know, in the debates you remember when Mrs. Clinton constantly complained that she got the first question and that allowed Obama to go second or after her, and she was a little jokingly whining about it. Obama drew the first hour as a result of a coin flip, and it was clear he knew he was out of his comfort zone, given the audience there. But despite that, he got several rounds of applause. But it was just a disaster in every which way you can think. A lot of people today, ladies and gentlemen, are complaining that this forum took place at all, that this business of politics going on in churches is a little diminishing. It’s problematic.
Well, to the people that are saying that, I understand why they’re saying it, but it’s been going on for a long time. The Democrats have been running presidential campaigns out of churches for as long as I’ve been alive, violating what everybody knows is separation of church and state because they are black churches. Nobody complains about it. Nobody’s got the guts to. Nobody substantively complains about it. But nevertheless, you know what this thing showed? We got clearer, more precise answers. We learned more about these two people on Saturday night than anything the Drive-By Media has told us or that they have told us within the sphere of the Drive-By Media. This two hours was worth more than any presidential debate I have ever seen.
I thought Warren did a fabulous job knowing who his audience was, putting together his questions and the order in which they came, and then sticking to the format. In fact, he had to ask McCain some more questions because McCain answered his questions a lot more briefly and succinctly than did Obama. It was so bad, it was so bad for Obama that the kook fringe began a drumbeat Saturday night of accusing McCain of cheating! Now, McCain did not cheat. McCain was driving to the event when Obama was on, and when he got there, he was put in a secure greenroom. The rule was that the guy that went second was not allowed to hear the answers of the guy who went first, and McCain didn’t.
So the Obama disinformation about McCain hearing the interview, I mean, it’s priceless. We’ve got this little man-child that is being called The Messiah. He’s got this deeply ingrained sense of entitlement, and when it doesn’t go his way, it’s just cry-in-the-sandbox time. (sobbing) He insulted Clarence Thomas. He lied about the ‘most gut-wrenching decision’ he’s ever made. He said, ‘The most gut-wrenching decision I ever made was voting against the Iraq war.’ He didn’t vote against it. He wasn’t in the Senate! In fact, later on a couple times he voted for funding packages for the Iraq war. I would think that would be his most gut-wrenching decision, having made such a big deal of opposing it.
We’re going to touch on all this with audio sound bites and expert commentary as the program unfolds today.
There’s also some Olympic news. They’re trying to figure out why the ChiCom stands have only been half full. Everybody’s been asking, ‘Where’s the crowd? We got a billion people over there. Where’s the crowd?’ We have come to learn from the Times Online… I hope David Brooks is reading. David Brooks wrote a piece out of there, out of the Olympics in the New York Times last week, talking about how wonderful the Chinese-managed society and culture is. That there is no individuality and perhaps this is the best way to manage a society — and he’s our ‘conservative’ at the New York Times! I hope somebody shows this story from the UK Times from yesterday to him, ’cause the reason the stands are half empty at the Olympics is because the ChiComs have not let a whole lot of people get in there fearing protests, fearing out-of-control crowds, people they can’t manage. That’s why. They got their money, whether the crowd shows up or not.
So there’s lots to do here on the program, but this Obama disinformation about McCain hearing the Obama interview and Obama’s answers on Saturday night, is priceless. This shows the ugly underbelly of news and leftist politicians having been roundly destroyed in that Saturday forum because Obama’s complete lack of substance and experience was impossible to conceal. He even caught himself. When he was asked about Clarence Thomas, ‘Well, I don’t think he has the right exper…’ He caught himself and said he wasn’t qualified at the time he was elevated to that position — and here’s a guy who’s been to Yale, a guy who’s been to Holy Cross, who spent a year on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. He worked for Ashcroft as assistant attorney general in the state of Missouri, and Obama is what? A street agitator with 140 days in the Senate, and Obama claims that Clarence Thomas is unqualified?
Obama could not shine Clarence Thomas’ shoes! He’s not fit to shine Clarence Thomas’ shoes. By the way, if you look, Kathryn Lopez at National Review Online today put together a great little piece looking at all of the cases that Thomas has decided that agree with Obama’s positions, and all of the cases that Obama’s favorite jurist, Ruth ‘Buzzi’ Ginsburg, voted against Obama’s positions on these case. He’s so out of his league. The thing is, we’ve all known this. We’ve all known he’s out of his league in terms of substance, experience — and, by the way, here’s another thing. You all have heard about Clarence Thomas’ life story. You’ve heard about how he grew up in Pin Point, Georgia; how he escaped abject poverty with a tough and demanding grandfather.
Obama was born with a silver spoon in his mouth compared to Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas has more experience living life as an American than Obama will ever understand, and Obama’s side is knowing it. New York Times yesterday, big Democrats very worried here that Obama start getting specific about all this ‘hope’ and specific about all this ‘change,’ ’cause all this lofty rhetoric — as I said last week — has worn off. After awhile, everybody begins to demand substance. Now, back to this cheating business. There is no evidence of any kind that any cheating occurred. The evidence, in fact, shows that McCain was still driving to the event, that he was sequestered in the holding room when he got there. Both candidates were informed generally beforehand of the topics in advance. So guess what? Yesterday morning on Meet the Press, David Gregory filling in, spoke with the correspondent Andrea Mitchell (NBC News, Washington) about the Saddle Sore Civic Forum, and Gregory said, ‘Andrea Mitchell, there was a pretty clear contrast between Obama and McCain.’
MITCHELL: Oh, absolutely. You know, there was crisp, immediate, forceful response by John McCain — clearly in a comfort zone because he was with his base — and Barack Obama taking a risk in going there but seeing an opportunity, and a much more nuanced approach. The Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context because that — What they’re putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the Cone of Silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.
RUSH: Now, she’s getting this from Obama people who are putting it on the Web, but they put it on there privately. So McCain has written Steve Capus, the NBC News president, a letter saying (summarized), ‘I want to sit down…’ his campaign has, ‘I want to sit down and talk with you about this. You guys, you’re starting to look like MSNBC now on your real news network, and it’s time you sat down and talked about this, because this is just absurd.’ Cover up for your guy’s lack of substance by accusing the other guy of cheating? This is just too rich. I love it. McCain did so well. I was watching this Saturday night, and could not believe what I was hearing. I’ve not heard this stuff out of McCain in a long, long time — and it was decisive, and he was not hesitant at all in any of his answers.
His answer on when does life begin, when a human being acquires human rights: at the point of conception. Bam! The place stood up. Now, I’m thinking, ‘Why is he flirting with the idea of blowing all this by putting a pro-choice person on the ticket with him?’ He’s flirting with Lieberman, he’s flirting with Tom Ridge (this is what we hear, anyway) and both of them are pro-choice. He can destroy all of the tremendous, major progress he made Saturday night with a wrong vice presidential nomination — and if it’s somebody who is profoundly pro-choice, it’s going to disappoint so many people and anger a lot of people, and it’s going to cause McCain to lose all of the positive ground that he picked up Saturday night. Now, on CNN Sunday night, the anchor Rick Sanchez talked to the Saddleback Church, Pastor Rich Warren, about the forum, and they had this exchange.
SANCHEZ: Last night, I heard you say that McCain would be in a Cone of Silence.
WARREN: Yeah.
SANCHEZ: And a half hour into the event I hear our guys here in our political desk announce that McCain has just arrived at the worship center. And I’m thinking, ‘You know, hey, if — if he — he just arrived at the worship center, he couldn’t have been in the Cone of Silence,’ right?
WARREN: Yeah, well, that’s true. He was in a Cone of a —
SANCHEZ: Shuh!
WARREN: — Secret Service motorcade, that’s exactly for sure.
RUSH: So CNN carrying the water even Saturday night that McCain had cheated. So the Drive-Bys, again, are aligning themselves with the Democrat candidate. They kept pressing this on Sunday, on Sunday night, the anchor Rick Sanchez talking to Rick Warren, and the question: ‘Just out of fairness, look, this is CNN. We trying to be as exact as we possibly can. I just want it on the record. Of course there are going to be people out there who will say, ‘Well, if he wasn’t there like a half hour before the event started, well, what would have stopped him from watching an event that was on all three channels, on the radio? There’s BlackBerrys, the Internet. There’s everything else.’ I guess you don’t know and I don’t know whether he had the questions or not.’
WARREN: You know what? In the first place, we asked him. We flat-out asked him, ‘Did you hear any of the debate,’ I mean, ‘any of the discussion?’ and I trust the integrity of both John McCain and Barack Obama that they said they would abide by the rules. They knew the rules way in advance that I would not give them the questions. I did tell them all of the themes, and went through all of the themes, said, ‘Here’s the kind of question, the themes that I’m going to deal with.’
SANCHEZ: Yeah?
WARREN: ‘I’m going to probably throw out a question about economy, going to probably throw out a question about climate change,’ which, by the way, I never got to, and a number of other issues.
RUSH: One thing about this — and I know a lot of people are big fans of Rick Warren. I have a lot of respect for him. But as a man of the cloth, a pastor, I wonder how he can say so profoundly he respects the ‘integrity’ of Obama, given Obama’s abortion stance. That’s another thing he got caught on, by the way, this bill that he voted against three times in Chicago that would allow the killing of babies born alive, babies that had been through an abortion and survived. Obama said he wanted to go ahead and let those babies be killed because that was the initial intent. He said he voted against it because none of the legislation had any kind of protections specifically aimed at Roe v. Wade. Well, one of the occasions, of the three occasions, did, had the specific request Obama wanted regarding Roe v. Wade and he still voted against it — or for it, whichever. He voted for killing babies.
Now, his answer on abortion was, they say, ‘nuanced.’ This is not nuance. ‘Nuance’ implies brilliance and elitism, intellectualism. This wasn’t nuance. That was avoidance. Obama was avoiding everything that he had to because he knew who the audience was, and because he can’t be honest about what he really thinks and believes — not seeking to be elected president of the United States. It’s gotten down to the point now. Look at how tough a job poor old Caroline Kennedy has. You know, she’s at the top of the list vetting Obama’s veep choices. How difficult must it be for her to find somebody less qualified than Obama? Every resume she’s looking at makes his look like a first grade report card! Seriously, folks. I mean, every resume she’s looking at makes Obama look like a total beginner, a neophyte. It’s gotta be a problem for them. Everybody is starting to whisper that if he has any prayer of winning, he’s gotta choose Hillary. And if he chooses Hillary, he’s going to have to have somebody taste his food every day and start his car for him every day.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Robert in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, you’re up first, sir. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush? It’s a pleasure to debate ya.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Okay, I watched that forum twice, because two things caught my eye and I just had to see them again. The first thing that caught my eye was a question — an answer that McCain gave before he received the question, which was about teachers pay. He answered yes, yes, and find bad teachers another work of line (sic). Unless he’s Carnac, how did he know what the question was? The second thing that popped out was his story about the cross in the sand. So I did a little research, and sure enough, he — he lifted that from an Alexander Sloth-something (sic) from his time in the Soviet gulag, and it seems that McCain has been morphing that story about humanity of a guard to about Christian faith. So that’s — that’s where I think he cheated.
RUSH: You think McCain cheated?
CALLER: Did you hear what I just said about him answering a question before he got the answer (sic)?
RUSH: I watched this, and I heard the question, and I could have answered it the same way. Anybody with a solid view — a substantive, confident view and understanding of what they believe — could have answered most of these questions wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. McCain wasn’t trying to prevaricate. He wasn’t trying to walk a thin line to avoid embarrassing himself. Obama, with every answer, had to make sure he didn’t say something wrong. The contrast between these two people was so distinct that even the left, Robert, realizes here that their guy is in big trouble. He lost this thing going away, so much so now that they have to call up this business of McCain cheated. I want to give you some information that you may not have.
I just got a note here, ladies and gentlemen, from Byron York at National Review Online, and he’s been looking into this whole allegation, and he’s going to post this on their website here in just a second. According to one of the media representatives for the Saddleback Church, A. Larry Ross, both Obama and McCain knew exactly what was coming at the start of the appearance. A. Larry Ross told Byron York that Rick ‘Warren ‘gave both candidates the first two questions because he didn’t want them to be nervous … so they would be at ease.’ Ross says that in separate phone calls with McCain and Obama, Warren also went through the four general categories of questions and said things like, ‘I’ll probably ask you a question on this, or on that,’ but gave no specific wording. In addition, according to Ross, Obama knew a third specific question that Warren would ask — the one about a ‘president’s emergency plan for adoption.’
”[Warren] felt that since that was basically asking for a commitment, he felt that it was fair to tell them in advance that he was going to ask them that,’ Ross told [Byron York].’ So Warren did tell Obama and planned to tell McCain when McCain got to the church but he wasn’t able to do so because McCain shows up after the whole thing had started. So according to what A. Larry Ross of the Saddleback Church told Byron York, Obama actually knew one more question in advance than McCain did — and then try this. Here’s a question from the forum. Warren said, ‘This one is dear to my heart. Most people know there are 148 million orphans in the world, 148 million kids growing up without mommies and dads. They don’t need to be in an orphanage; they need to be in families, but a lot of families can’t afford to take these kids in. Would you be willing to consider and even commit to doing some kind of an emergency plan for orphans like President Bush did with AIDS, almost a president’s emergency plan for orphans to deal with this issue?’
OBAMA: I — I — I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea, uh, uh ahead of time. I — and I think it is a, uh — I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s something that we should — we should sit down and — and figure out, working between nongovernmental organizations, international institutions, the US government. Try to figure out, ‘What can we do?’
RUSH: That is the question, the third question that Obama was told in advance, which is why he said, ‘Yeah, I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time.’ McCain never got this question. This is the third question that Obama got versus only two that McCain got. So if the truth be known, if anybody cheated — although I don’t think anybody did — it is Obama who had at least a one-question advantage here. And he admits that he ‘cheated a little bit,’ and so there goes Andrea Mitchell parroting what’s on the kook fringe leftist blogs saying that McCain probably cheated, ’cause he wasn’t in the Cone of Silence and he might have been able to hear some of this stuff on TV or on radio or what have you. The point about all this is for you people that want to believe that McCain cheated: What you saw Saturday night was a tremendous distinction.
You saw one guy who has a lifetime of core values versus another guy with a lifetime of no values, or not core values. They shift, they amplify, they change, depending on what the wind is doing that day, depending on what polls are doing that day, depending on what advisors and consultants tell you to say; depending on what Reverend Wright has put in your head, whatever Bill Ayers has put in your head. So what was on display, and I think this is a good way to put it: If you’ve got core values, you’ve got core values and no question’s going to stump you. If you don’t have core values or if you’re trying to hide yours — heh, heh, heh, which is certainly what Barry is trying to do here — then you run into the problems that he ran into.
Here’s Karen in Oklahoma City. Karen, thank you for waiting. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you so much for all that you do, and it’s such an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, madam.
CALLER: Well, I can just about imagine what’s going on at CNN because Friday I was held captive — you know, how they only air CNN at the airports? — and they were so sure that John McCain was going to fall so flat, not connect with anybody and just totally be blown out the water.
RUSH: So was I. A lot of people had that fear going in about McCain. That’s why everybody was so, on our side, satisfied and excited and pleased.
CALLER: Well, it made me so sick just listening to those pundits talking about how Obama is just, as you put it, ‘The Messiah’ and how he can ‘connect’ and how he is just so much more brilliant and McCain just cannot connect with evangelicals, or with conservatives. So it’s so good to hear the responses that he had, and thank you for just sharing all this, because I did not hear the whole session.
RUSH: We’ve got lots more coming up, but thank you for that. Let me tell you something. They have bought the myth. The Drive-Bys have bought into the myth just as Obama has that he’s The Messiah, that he’s special, that he’s smarter than everybody, smarter than anybody ever has been. The reason for the is, Karen, as we have mentioned on this program on several occasions, you gotta understand liberals to understand what’s happening here. It’s not that you have to understand the media, because everybody understands the media. What you have to do is understand liberals, and there are (more than I can mention) recognizable characteristics, traits, that liberals have. Chief among them — and you have to put this in the top five — is their never-ending sorrow and guilt over slavery, and in their mind we still have not moved anywhere far enough in eradicating that episode in our history.
We still have rampant sexism. We still have rampant racism. There are still white racists that are going to prevent Obama from winning and all this. So this is the attitude that the left has, that this country is very imperfect, and we have created much of the evil on our own streets because we have continued sexist and racist behavior. We have not tried to do anything that they approve of to eradicate this — and so here comes the first black candidate for president, they think this is historic. They think this will say such great things. So they have as much a vested interest for themselves and this guy winning as he does. They’re looking at his candidacy as something historic, that they, and only they, can make happen, and it doesn’t matter what he says. As long as he says the right things that a Democrat or a leftist may say, then that’s plenty. He doesn’t have to be specific.
All he has to do is seem like he’s smart and they’ll do the rest. They’ll take care of the mythology. They’ll take care of the image packaging and marketing. They’ll take care of the public relations. They’ll build this guy up. What they didn’t understand is that all that was going to lead to a backlash, and they created such a myth. When you actually start portraying somebody as a messiah-like figure? There’s no way an ordinary human being can ever become a messiah or even close, not even approach it, and when you try to make somebody do that and that somebody — in this case Obama — starts to believe it himself, you are watching a disaster in the making, and that is what’s happening. So they bought these CNN people talking about how Obama is going to just wipe the floor with McCain. ‘McCain can’t connect. He’s too old. He’s a white-haired, wrinkled guy.’ They’re so divorced from reality because of their desire to make history here, that they are being embarrassed and humiliated every time they report on this campaign.