RUSH: The State-Controlled Media doesn’t know what to make of the story in the Huffing and Puffington Post today, quoting Axelrod. ”We have to deal with the world as we find it. The world of what it takes to get this done,’ Axelrod said, during an unusually candid…’ What does that mean, he lies most of the time? ‘[D]uring an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office’ with the Huffing and Puffington Post. ”There are concerns,’ he added, ‘that Congress will continue to kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again. But I don’t want to trade away security for the middle class in order to make that point.”
Listen to this. ‘The temporary continuation of Bush-era tax cuts, including for the wealthiest taxpayers, appears to be the only way, Axelrod said, that middle class taxpayers can the key their tax cuts, given the legislative and political realities facing Obama in the aftermath of last week’s electoral defeat.’ So he’s trying to say — and they’ve been working on this for the longest time. They’re trying to say that the Republicans, if they don’t get their tax cut extension for the rich, that the middle class are not gonna get their tax cuts at all. And so Axelrod is saying, ‘Look, we have to deal with reality, we gotta make sure the middle class get their tax cuts to we gotta go along with the rich getting theirs.’ That’s not why this is happening. The reason this is happening is because everybody knows the economy is a disaster and this would make it worse.
They can’t go full bore destroying the economy overnight. I think it’s spiraled out of their control. I don’t think they have any clue what to do with the circumstances they find themselves in now. But this little sentence here, ”That appears to be the only way,’ said Axelrod, ‘that middle class taxpayers can keep their tax cut.” Is that not a direct endorsement of the concept of tax cuts being helpful? You want the middle class to keep their tax cuts. Why? If tax cuts deprive the government of money, why is it preferable? Because the middle class pays much more in tacks a total aggregate than the rich do. I mean, the rich pay the largest percentage but if you add up all of the dollar-for-dollar comparisons it’s not an insignificant amount of money the government, quote, unquote, ‘doesn’t get.’ So they’ve come around and they will admit, in their darkest times, that tax cuts do make sense. The bottom line is these people are lying through their teeth all the time when they’re said to be advancing their agenda. Here’s the State-Controlled Media not happy about it. We have a montage here their reaction to Axelrod in the Huffing and Puffington Post today.
TAPPER: The White House continues to signal its willingness, the president’s willingness to compromise on the Bush tax cuts.
BRZEZINSKI: The administration softening its position on the Bush tax cuts.
LOTHIAN: He’s hoping to compromise.
MCSHANE: President Obama making his first concessions to Republicans.
DOOCY: So the White House has caved, essentially — and we’re talking about all of the tax cuts, across the board.
TODD: Obviously compromise is in the air.
RUSH: So what is to be learned from this? Now, on one hand you could say January 1st is coming up, we got the lame duck session of Congress coming up — and you could interpret this, if you wanted to, as saying the president blinked. You could say Obama caved. Axelrod is out there saying, ‘Well, look, we have to deal with the world as we find it.’ That’s a tantamount admission that they got creamed. It’s a tantamount admission that there is no support for their political position on these tax cuts. So now there’s a little maneuvering going on in terms of the language. They want to make it look like the Bush tax cuts are now the Obama tax cuts. The tax increases would take Bush off the president’s blame list.
Now, the economy was the number one issue in exit polls. The economy has killed the Democrats in this election cycle, and now the president’s in the crosshairs for 2012. Obama didn’t care about Democrats in 2010, but this is now. So if Obama’s caving on raising taxes — and remember how firm he was in this. Remember how firm the Democrats, Axelrod and Obama, have been throughout the year on the fact that there would not be any compromise on the tax cuts. Bush ‘tax cuts for the wealthy’ being extended, it wasn’t gonna happen. So if — and we don’t know this yet. I mean these people are liberals, they lie. This could be a trial balloon floated out there.
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RUSH: The media, the left, they have gone bat guano, folks, over this tax cut business. Salon.com: ‘Obama’s Tax Cut Surrender — The richest Americans can breathe easy. Their taxes won’t go up, not now, probably not later.’ Something else that Axelrod did in this interview with the Huffing & Puffington Post (we still haven’t seen a transcript of it, by the way) is when he acknowledges that they had to do this to the key tax cuts for the middle class, he’s admitting that there were tax cuts for the middle class, which up ’til now the Democrats always denied. They always said they were Bush ‘tax cuts for the rich.’ This is Andrew Leonard writing at Slate.com.
‘There’s no sugar-coating this: The White House has failed utterly on a goal that it tried to make its signature issue right before the midterms. Now the administration is clinging to a very slender thread — the notion that if Congress makes tax cuts for the middle class permanent, while only allowing a temporary extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, it will force a vote further on down the line on whether or not to continue extending tax cuts for the richest Americans. … So far, the GOP has conceded nothing, while operating as the minority party in both the House and Senate.’ That’s as of now. We are still the minority party. We won’t become the majority until January. ‘What possible reason do we have for thinking that Republicans will be in any mood to compromise, on anything, after such a clear, overwhelming victory?
Damn straight! But Mr. Leonard? (ahem) You asked, so let me answer the question for you and try to make you feel better. ‘What possible reason do we have for thinking Republicans will be in any mood to compromise’? Because they’re Republicans, and they think reaching across the aisle’s gonna get them loved by people like you.
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RUSH: Well, that didn’t take long, Axelrod is denying what he said he said in the Huffing & Puffington Post. Now, that story has been out there all morning. Not until I make hay about it does Axelrod say, ‘Hey, you know what, I didn’t say it,’ already walking it back. ‘Axelrod Denies Obama Would Concede Tax Cuts.’ This is from the National Journal: ‘Senior White House adviser David Axelrod said this morning that President Obama has not caved to GOP demands on the extension of the Bush tax cuts, despite a report to the contrary,’ in the Huffing & Puffington Post. ”We’re willing to discuss how we move forward,’ Axelrod said in an e-mail to National Journal rebutting the Huffington Post story, ‘but we believe that it’s imperative to extend the tax cuts for the middle class, and don’t believe we can afford a permanent extension of tax cuts for the wealthy.” Well, the story didn’t say that you did agree to a permanent extension, you agreed to a temporary and then your buddies on the left are afraid it’s gonna be temporary and then temporary and temporary, effectively permanent. Do you know that Axelrod’s son works at the Huffing & Puffington Post? Not anything wrong with that, but I mean Axelrod is throwing his own kid’s publication under the bus here. You just can’t trust those George Soros front groups even when they’re on your own side.
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RUSH: Here is Will in Columbus, Ohio. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It’s an honor to speak to you. I’m a first-time caller and a 20-year-listener.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Sure. And I’d like to send dittos out to Patty who sent you the e-mail about unemployment. I’m closing in on my third anniversary of being unemployed and it’s not an anniversary that I want to commemorate.
RUSH: Yeah, I understand that.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, I just wanted to comment on something you said earlier. I don’t normally disagree with you, but I disagreed with your analysis of Axelrod’s comments regarding the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts. I believe Axelrod’s words are just another way of blaming Bush and the Republicans by saying they inherited this environment in which to work, and that this environment is having to work with a party that identifies with and supports the rich.
RUSH: Fine. Well, that party just won in a landslide, so fine and dandy. He can try to characterize it that way, and you may be right. He might be saying we have to deal with reality as it is. A lot of people are interpreting that to mean, ‘Hey, we lost, we don’t have any power here in Congress, and there is no impetus here to discontinue the tax cuts,’ but your theory is, he’s saying, ‘Okay, all right, the powerful are sticking together, hanging in for the rich and that’s who they are so we have to accept that for who they are and they’re really out to harm the middle class.’
CALLER: Right. It’s just like the same thing that they’ve been saying about the economy, that they’ve inherited this from Bush. I think they’re saying, ‘Well, we’ve inherited this environment now to work —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — with all these Republicans.’
RUSH: Fine, let ’em.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Let ’em say it. If they want to say they inherited this environment from the Republicans, what they’re admitting is that what everybody voted for was to stop this. So fine and dandy. We want to parse his words that way, fine. I think that they’re probably shell-shocked. In fact, I know they’re shell-shocked. I know for a fact, the people on the Obama side of things thought he was the messiah. This is not what was supposed to happen, folks. It’s not that big a roadblock, but it still wasn’t supposed to happen. Now, we’ve had stories all week about how there’s discord within the Democrat Party over what Obama has done. On MSNBC, on Scarborough’s show, one day this week Scarborough himself claimed that all the top Democrats in the Senate have been complaining about Obama’s job performance, and especially his treatment of Republican Senators. And that claim has been backed up.
So The Politico piece on Monday, the Scarborough revelation during the week on MSNBC, there are serious hits taking place on Obama this week, and they’re coming from the Democrat Party, and they’re coming from unnamed sources, and they are being printed, published, and talked about in the State-Controlled Media. I know the temptation is to say, ‘Okay, how are we being set up here? They want us to think the Democrats are unhappy with Obama. They’re sucking us in.’ I know it’s a natural reaction to think that way, but the reality is this. The Democrats in the Senate, there are a lot of them up for reelection 2012. They saw what just happened. They saw a wipeout. They are in trouble. If they continue to talk and vote the way they all did that led to the election last Tuesday, the same thing is gonna happen to them in bigger droves, bigger numbers in 2012. They know what’s coming their way and they don’t, unlike the Blue Dogs, they don’t want to follow Obama off the cliff and they know that’s where Obama would take them. Now, I think that the circumstances here, I think the reality is that they are shell-shocked and they’re doing everything they can to avoid admitting this publicly.
Here’s Dwight in Springfield, Virginia. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: This Alan Simpson commission report thing, this is like imposing heavy fines on the homeowner because the burglar didn’t steal enough.
RUSH: (laughing.)
CALLER: I mean can you believe this? These are the guys that caused the problem —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — they’re the ones that put us in the situation and now they’re doing us a big favor by raising our gas taxes, taking away deductions. What a load.
RUSH: It is a load. They’re cementing as policy the growth of government like we’ve never seen other than at temporary stages in our history during emergencies, world wars and that kind of thing.
CALLER: Yeah, and they’re couching it on terms like, ‘Well, we’re really doing you guys a favor out there.’
RUSH: Well, they couch it in conservative terms, like it’s true if you read the preamble to this thing or the introductory page, it sounds like Ronald Reagan is talking and this is designed to suck our guys in to think there may be something to compromise with here.