RUSH: I think it was a week ago today I spent a lot of time opening the program talking about the fissures that were beginning to open up in the Democrat Party in the White House up on Capitol Hill, the realization that Obama’s not the answer, that Obama’s actually a one-man wrecking crew, that there were people plotting, trying to figure out how to get him out of the way, make him a one-termer. And none of this, as you recall, I knew. It was a Politico story with unnamed sources, and they were saying quite a lot, and it was almost as though it was part of a plan. And then these similar things started appearing elsewhere, and then later in the week more and more people started citing unnamed Democrat sources giving credence to my instinctive theory as expressed a week ago today.
Something is going on. You look at The Politico, ‘Pelosi Scrambles to Thwart Rebellion.’ She’s thinking about axing George Miller, Rosa DeLauro and other Pelosi cronies… Or, no, she’s not — there’s a push on to get rid of them since they can’t stop her from retaking the throne. A bunch of Democrats do not want Pelosi being the leader of the Democrats in the House and realizing they don’t have the votes to knock her from the top perch, the moderate Blue Dog Democrats have set their sights a little lower, targeting George Miller, Rosa DeLauro, and Louise Slaughter, all of whom hold influential jobs because Pelosi has installed them.
And then there’s this. ‘The Congressional Black Caucus has decided to withhold its approval for the House Democrat leadership team, denying Speaker Nancy Pelosi full support of the 42-member organization as she campaigns to remain leader. After a nearly two hour long meeting [last] night, chairwoman Barbara Lee of California said the group only will endorse caucus member James Clyburn of South Carolina for a leadership position. The caucus first wants to know what his role will be in the Democratic leadership before backing the full slate.’ Barbara Lee said, ‘We fully support our current Whip, Mr. Clyburn, for the number three position and we are currently reserving judgment on the entire package until we see what the actual portfolio entails[.]’
Can I translate this for you? They want to make sure that Clyburn’s not a token position. Remember, it’s a created position. Steny Hoyer got the job Clyburn wants. Steny Hoyer got number two. Steny Hoyer got the car. Steny Hoyer got the driver. Steny Hoyer got the perks. And to avoid all kinds of gee-I-don’t-even-want-to-go-there kind of problems, a new leadership position was created for Clyburn, and he gets a car, and he gets a driver and the perks. But now the Congressional Black Caucus is withholding support for all this ’cause they want to make sure that this is actually a substantive leadership position that Clyburn has been given and not something that’s just token. ‘We want to make sure’ — this is Representative Yvette Clarke of New York of the Congressional Black Caucus — ‘that there is a substantive weight given to that position.’ She stressed that she ‘did not want it to be a ‘marginal’ or ‘ceremonial’ type of position. ‘Right now it is just the beginning of the discussion[.]” So Pelosi thought she had fought off the, you know, the little chihuahuas here nipping at her heels by creating this position for Clyburn and the Congressional Black Caucus. ‘Wait a minute. We’re not gonna just sign onto this unless this gig has some substance to it.’
And then back to the White House, Richard Wolffe, insider, NBC, has a new book: Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House, and he’s starting to dish on how much the Clintons hate the Obamas and vice-versa, and have from the get-go — which I knew way back even during the primaries; it’s one of the reasons for Operation Chaos. Those sound bites are coming up.
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RUSH: What is the Congressional Black Caucus supposed to do here? On the one hand, they’re worried that Pelosi’s created a token position for James Clyburn. On the other hand, the ethics committee has just found Rangel, who’s a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, guilty on 11 of 13 counts, and they said it was slam dunk. I mean, before the decision was announced, practically as this program began, it was hopeless, whether he gets a lawyer or not. So what a day for the Congressional Black Caucus: Is Clyburn getting a token position and Rangel’s guilty on 11 of 13. Now they’re deciding the sentence that Rangel is gonna get. I’ll tell you, folks, all this talk about the infighting in the Republican Party, I don’t see it. I see the Tea Party winning the day on earmarks. I mean the elite GOP, the establishment caved pretty quickly on the whole earmarks thing, and that’s clearly a Tea Party victory. Meanwhile, the Democrats are falling apart and the president can’t even stay in town.
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RUSH: Here is Richard Wolffe. Back to the serious part of the program. Last night on MSNBC, Richard Wolffe, who’s in the tank for Obama, NBC has all kinds of access, has written now his second book about Obama. This latest book is Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House. Question: ‘The reason that you did this was to discover what, if anything, had changed the entire Obama team inside the West Wing during this first 20-plus month. What was the answer, and was it a surprise?’
WOLFFE: I tell the story about how John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff, who is running the transition, gets into in a heated exchange with the campaign people, before election day, saying, ‘You know, this promise you made about not having lobbyists in the administration — well, we’ve got to get around that.’ Now the campaign people said this wasn’t a minor thing. You know, this is what the candidate, the president-elect, really believes in. And, of course, they watered it down one way or another. Podesta says, ‘Well, he was really just hedging where the president wanted to hedge.’ But that debate about whether you should stick to the revivalist spirit of the campaign or govern and mold yourself to Washington, that has been the fault line running through this White House for the last two years.
RUSH: Wolffe is basically an Obama apologist attempting to spin and then blame some of the — like this lobbying business, on the Clintons. So if Richard Wolffe is saying it’s Podesta, you gotta have lobbyists in there, this is the administration through Richard Wolffe saying it’s the Clintons that came in here and corrupted me. That’s what this means. ‘Cause Wolffe is not gonna go in there and take the side of the Clintons, I guarantee you. Wolffe has access granted by the Obamas and Rahm Emanuel. So this book, I’ll tell you, folks, there’s more going on inside this White House, there is tumult, there is friction, you’ve got apparently a president who is detached. One report, I heard Sean Hannity yesterday say — and this I have trouble believing — Hannity said that they hate taking bad economic news to Obama ’cause he just freaks out. He can’t handle it. And I’ve always thought that’s what he wants is bad economic news. Maybe what that means is they’re failing to spin the bad economic news as something good for the country.
But, for crying out loud, if you are Barack Obama and you are expecting your policies to create an economic boom, holy cow, my friends, we’re in worse trouble than we thought. You’d almost prefer this to be intentional than to have somebody so ignorant and a whole team that would be that way. So I was a little suspect of that. Obama gets upset at bad economic news, doesn’t want to hear it? He seems to smile every time he talks about it. The guy seems happy about presiding over a country in decline. Every time he talks about this on the world stage or the domestic stage, he seems totally content. He says he’s accomplished 70% of what he wanted to get done. Maybe he gets mad when unemployment goes down, maybe when they come in and say, ‘Hey, guess what, unexpected 50,000 new jobs created,’ maybe he gets mad at that. I know it sounds preposterous. But clearly this is an administration and a party in utter disarray. And we asked ourselves throughout the first two years of this regime, ‘Why are they so unhappy? They’re getting everything they want.’
They’re getting health care. Obama said, (paraphrasing) ‘If I can’t get cap and trade legislatively then I’ll bring it about on my own with oil drilling moratoriums,’ and what have you. He got his stimulus bill. He’s getting tax increases. The reason they’re unhappy is ’cause it’s not bringing about the panacea that the rank-and-file of the left think will result from all this. It’s not bringing about utopia. They’re looking at practically 70% of what they want done being done, and they’re miserable. And as I pointed out yesterday, there are more and more people on the left now saying the problem is they didn’t go far left enough, which is hilarious. Next question to Richard Wolffe: ‘If it’s Obama loyalists, revivalists, Valerie Jarrett, that crowd, the veterans with him from the beginning, versus the old-hand Clintonists, if the president had repeatedly rejected this Clinton model for his presidency –‘ this is the lobbying thing, ‘– why were there any survivalists? Why were they seemingly in charge?’ Why did any Clinton person have any power in there at all?
WOLFFE: That framework from the primaries really does set up what happens after. Remember, in the final stretch in Iowa, he goes up and gives a speech crystallizing the debate between the two, where he says you cannot at once say you’re the master of the broken system in Washington and offer yourself out as the person to change it. My argument is, based on my research, my sources, he’s got a foot in both camps. He wanted to try to do both. And it was just as untenable for him in year one and year two as it was for Clinton in the primaries.
RUSH: So it was the effort of the Clintonistas in the White House to make Obama do things like Clinton did that somehow hurt Obama. This is what they’re trying to say now. Believe me, this is a total dump on the Clintons. Total, total dump. That’s what Wolffe is being used for here. And now we’re hearing the Clintons don’t like Obama. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? This was Hillary’s, folks. This White House was hers. This was ordained. It was axiomatic, it was automatic until the articulate black guy showed up and then everything fell apart. And then the press abandoned Hillary and picked up Obama. Human nature is what it is. These people are good at putting up unified fronts during campaigns. I have always suspected that there are daggers out in both directions, and we know full well the Clintons both want to be back in the White House someday.
Now we’re getting all these stories about — and Doug Schoen, nothing against Doug Schoen. I don’t know Doug Schoen. I’m sure he’s a fine man, and I’m sure that he’s entirely legit and credible with his polling work. But he was part of the team that came out, Pat Caddell, Sunday in the Washington Post suggesting Obama be a one-termer. Now, Schoen worked for the Clintons. He was a very high-ranking Clintonista pollster, and now Schoen is all over Fox News, and he is not particularly high on the Democrat Party as it stands today. I mean he’s out there saying the Democrat Party doesn’t get it. Politico has a couple polls out today, the Washington elites see a totally different America and reason for the midterm election results than anybody else. And Doug Schoen’s on TV today saying the Democrat Party does not get it. They don’t understand that what’s happened here is a total repudiation of the Democrat Party and President Obama. You got a former Clinton pollster out saying this, on Fox.
So I have always trusted my instincts with this stuff, and I know that the Democrat Party is a far-left bunch, and I know that they want to institute, implement, impose as much liberalism on the country as possible, but they do not want to get shellacked like they did on November 2nd. They don’t want to lose over 600 state legislative seats. They don’t want to lose all these governorships. They didn’t want to lose 60-plus seats in the House to get this done. Some were willing to make that sacrifice. But the Democrat Party at large, which envisions themselves in perpetual power, was not willing to pay this kind of price, I don’t care what anybody tells you. Now, they know they still have the bureaucracy populated with their people and they’ve got the judiciary populated with their people. And they’re confident that that alone will keep this leftist tilt going. But they themselves want a taste of the power themselves that’s been denied them. You contrast where they all thought they were headed two years ago with where they are now, and there’s one guy who’s failed to keep up his end of the bargain, and that’s the president.
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RUSH: David in Washington, DC, great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush, for taking my call.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I gotta tell you Rush, before I get to my point, you’re putting pressure on my marriage.
RUSH: Uh-oh.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: How?
CALLER: Ever since I took my buyout in April from my company, my life revolves around noon to three p.m., and my wife makes Rachel Maddow look like a moderate.
RUSH: Oh, no!
CALLER: Yeah, and her job requires her to spend time out of town two months at a time, and she knows that she cannot call me between 12 and three. And it sends her up the wall. It’s not helping me, Rush. She calls me at 11:55, I say, ‘You got 11 minutes.’
RUSH: Did you just tell me that your wife’s job takes her out of town for two months at a time?
CALLER: Yes. She handles rental property on Nantucket.
RUSH: And did you also tell me she makes Rachel Maddow look like a moderate angel?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Well, then I would be happy.
CALLER: I’m sorry, Rush?
RUSH: I’d be happy if she’s gone for two months.
CALLER: (laughing) She’s not gonna like that.
RUSH: I mean, if she calls at 11:55 and you can say, ‘You’ve got five minutes babe,’ that’s the way to deal with it.
CALLER: She has a heart of gold, Rush. She may be the biggest liberal in the world but her heart is wonderful.
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: And that’s why I love her, but we just don’t agree on politics.
RUSH: Yeah, well those are serious disagreements, though.
CALLER: You’re putting pressure on my marriage.
RUSH: Those are core beliefs.
CALLER: Well, yes, they are, sir, and I can tell you, it’s tough. It’s tough. But she no longer calls me between 12 and three.
RUSH: Well, you take these little signs of progress any way you can get ’em.
CALLER: (laughing.) Well, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
CALLER: You bet.
RUSH: And what I wanted to talk to you about today was the Jim Clyburn situation.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I want to put it into some historical perspective. How did Jim Clyburn become majority whip? Remember in 2006 when Rahm Emanuel was heading the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: He won 31 seats for the Democrats. Rahm Emanuel’s ambition, like Newt Gingrich’s when he was minority whip in 1994, was to become Speaker of the House. Emanuel had just put the Democrats in the majority for the first time in 12 years.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: As head of the DCCC.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: He was the odds-on choice to become the majority whip. But he couldn’t get it. Why? Because it had to go to Jim Clyburn.
RUSH: Why?
CALLER: Well, it may be politically incorrect to say, Rush, but the only reason that Jim Clyburn superseded superstar Rahm Emanuel was because he was black.
RUSH: How do you know that?
CALLER: Well, because I read and I was a reporter at the time —
RUSH: Oh.
CALLER: — countless stories and confirmed them myself —
RUSH: Well, who was it that made the appointment? Was it Pelosi?
CALLER: Yeah, of course.
RUSH: Okay, so Pelosi, she didn’t want Rahm Emanuel to go any higher than he was, she wanted to be Speaker, so she had to get rid of Rahm, and she wanted the Black Caucus on her side, so hello Jim Clyburn?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: A-ha. And now we find out why there’s some contretemps because Clyburn now, when she already got the gig and it’s time she’s in the minority, she wants to stay the leader, she wants the rich white guy Hoyer to be her number two and Clyburn, thanks while it lasted.
CALLER: Well, I’m not so sure she wanted Steny Hoyer to be number two. Do you remember Pelosi backed John Murtha to be majority leader against Steny Hoyer?
RUSH: Yeah, but Murtha has assumed room-temperature now. He’s not in the game.
CALLER: Right. But at the time of the leadership election, Pelosi was backing maturity Murtha over Hoyer —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — and Hoyer was not gonna go meekly into the night when it came time when Nancy was going from Speaker to minority leader —
RUSH: Well, have you heard what’s going on over in the Senate side? Harry Reid has just made a special appointment for the rich Jewish guy, Chuck Schumer. Schumer wanted Reid’s gig if Reid didn’t get elected. So Reid’s got a potential enemy out there so he’s created a new position for the rich Jewish guy, Chuck Schumer over in the House. There’s all kinds of interesting things going on here. But Driving Miss Nancy, thank you for the call. We would have had no idea it was such a complicated route. You almost need GPS to follow this.
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RUSH: Now, the reason that Dingy Harry gave for creating a special leadership position for Chuck Schumer is hilarious. It’s just literally hilarious. It’s in a letter, Politico got a copy of it. We get back I’ll read some of the letter to you. It continues the theme from yesterday, this abject hilarity on the Democrat side.
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RUSH: This is from Politico: ‘Harry Reid Creates Special Leadership Job for Chuck Schumer.’ First it was Pelosi creating a special leadership job for Jim Clyburn over in the House, and now Dingy Harry ‘plans to overhaul the Senate Democratic leadership next year, handing New York Sen. Chuck Schumer an expanded role spearheading the party’s messaging efforts.’ Listen to this. ‘In a letter obtained by Politico –‘ which means that Reid sent it to ’em ‘– Reid tells his colleagues that the party needs to ‘better integrate our legislative- and message-crafting functions into a coordinated nucleus managing policy, press and politics.” Let me read that to you again. In his letter to Politico which Politico obtained, Harry Reid said that the Democrat Party needs to ‘better integrate our legislative- and message-crafting functions into a coordinated nucleus managing policy, press and politics.’ Now, if that’s not a perfectly emblematic sentence, I don’t know what is.
What’s happening up there? Obama is giving away a Medal of Honor. That’s gotta be tough. You know he doesn’t believe in it. He’s at the Medal of Honor ceremony for a military guy. The last thing Obama thinks is anything honorable is the military. It’s gotta be one of the toughest parts of the job for him I would think.
Anyway, how could the Democrat Party possibly improve on its message crafting function? Well, how could they lie better? They got a president elected with their message crafting function. How in the world can they improve on it? But that’s what it means. We need somebody here who can tell our lies better than we have been telling them ourselves, and we have tapped Chuck-U Schumer to lie to you better than we’ve been lying to you. Now, if there’s anybody that could top Dingy Harry at messaging, i.e., lying, it would be the always charismatic and charming Chuck Schumer. ‘As a result,’ The Politico says, ‘the Senate leadership will unite its policy arm with its communications center into a ‘joint operation’ run by Schumer.’ For those of you in California, they’re not selling Doobies. Again, it’s messaging here they’re talking about. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up out there.
‘As a result, he said, the Senate leadership will unite its policy arm with its communications center into a ‘joint operation’ run by Schumer. ‘I have asked Senator Schumer, whose communications abilities and tactical skills we all greatly respect, to lead this effort as chairman of the new office.” Isn’t it funny how the Democrats always reward loyalty? I mean it’s almost as funny as the Democrats’ idea of loyalty. But what’s really — (laughing) — I mean look at this, seriously. The Democrats from top to bottom think there is absolutely nothing wrong with their politics, nothing wrong with their issues, nothing wrong with their agenda. They really seem to believe all they have to do is improve the propaganda. We need new liars. We need a new, more creative way of lying. ‘Rush, don’t you think you’re being a little harsh with this?’ I can imagine some of you are saying this to me. No. If you have spent any time here you know that I believe liberalism is a lie and that liberalism can only win when it lies. Liberals don’t dare tell you the truth.
If Obama had said during his campaign: ‘Elect me, I want unemployment to be permanently 10%. I want people losing their homes to foreclosure. I want national health care where everybody’s insurance premiums are going to go up, their health care coverage will be less, elderly people will be rationed,’ do you think he would have gotten elected? There’s no way. Other than in San Francisco or New York, there’s no way in this country a liberal can be honest about his agenda and get elected. It won’t happen. That’s why it’s a lie. That’s why they need now a new messaging center. Now, yeah, and I also think this is a way for Dingy Harry to kinda keep Schumer’s knife out of his back but I don’t think that’s gonna work. Schumer and Durbin were maneuvering for Dingy Harry’s gig as majority leader if Dingy Harry were to loose his reelection. I’m sure they were hoping, they believed the early polling data that Dingy Harry was gonna lose, so Durbin and Schumer wanted the gig, and I think that this means that Dingy Harry thinks of the two, he’s gotta be more concerned about Schumer.
So it’s the old keep your enemies closer thing here. Create a new leadership position for the rich white guy, Jewish guy, put Schumer in there, and that way you can keep an eye on Schumer’s propaganda as he tries to get your job. I mean Dingy Harry has to figure that one thing Schumer might want to do to get the job is make Democrats look even worse with Dingy Harry running them. This could get exciting out there. Or you could say Schumer has to toe Reid’s line now. I mean that’s another aspect of this. You defang Chuck-U Schumer by putting him on the leadership team, he’s gotta be loyal now, he has to be loyal to Dingy Harry. Because Schumer and Durbin did not believe that the union thugs would be able to steal as many votes as they did for Dingy Harry. Say what you want about Dingy Harry, he knew the long knives were out for him, so now this is sort of a payback. And Schumer can’t turn it down. ‘Hey, Chuck, I got a new leadership position here for you, I want you to join my team.’ Schumer has to say yes and now Schumer has to toe Dingy Harry’s line. There’s nothing amateurish about these people when they’re talking about their power and their leadership.