RUSH: Some audio sound bites. John McCain, on Meet the Press, was asked by David Gregory: “You’re worried about tone of the campaign. You’ve been in some nasty fights yourself politically. Do you think this is having a toll, this Republican primary?”
MCCAIN: This is the nastiest I have ever seen. It’s a result of the worst decision the United States Supreme Court has made in many years, the Citizens United decision where you have naivete and sheer ignorance, uh, the majority, uh, of the Supreme Court, uh, just unloosened all mo — released all money now.
RUSH: That’s absurd. With all due respect.
Oh, folks, by the way, you gotta remind me tomorrow. On Saturday night, we watched Game Change. This movie… This movie is a joke! I’ve read the reviews of this movie by Republican conservative media people. They should have excoriated this movie. This movie is an outright embarrassment. It is so over the top! It’s a cartoon that pretends to reflect reality! It was horrible. Kathryn walked out of it after an hour. It’s a two-hour movie. She got up and left the room! This McCain sound bite made me think of that because it’s about him and Palin and their campaign. This Citizens United Supreme Court decision, that’s not the problem here. Money is not the problem in politics. Anyway, Santorum responded to this. He was on CBS This Morning today, and Charlie Rose said, “Senator McCain said that this the dirtiest campaign he’s ever seen.”
SANTORUM: Yeah, he should tell the guy, uh, that he’s supporting to stop spending tens and tens of millions of dollars running negative ads. It’s not Rick Santorum who’s been running all the negative ads or even Newt Gingrich. It’s Mitt Romney who’s systematically just gone out there and run a negative campaign, has had no positive vision for this country, and spends billionaire dollars, uhh, to tear down every single opponent that’s in his path.
RUSH: That happened in ’08, too. And that’s why there was the animosity for Romney back then. So that’s Santorum’s answer to McCain. “Hey, it’s not the money; it’s the guy spending it,” is Santorum’s point. “It’s not the money. It’s not the gun. It’s the guy pulling the trigger.” It’s the same thing. But McCain has to say this. McCain-Feingold, campaign finance reform, all of that. But it’s an absurd premise that the money is the problem. Then this morning on Scarborough’s show on MSNBC, Santorum was again the guest, and Scarborough said, “Rick, just so you know, I’ve been critical of the focus on this issue of contraception. I brought it up to you today because we’ve talked about it a lot, and certainly now that we have you here, we want you to respond to it. Let’s move beyond the issue of contraception. Rick, what are you doing?”
SANTORUM: Hold on one second. Go and come to any of my now almost thousand town hall meetings and let me assure you: I don’t think the word “contraception” has ever come up. Let’s just deal with reality instead of what the media trying to do which is to pigeonhole you and tell a narrative. We are losing our freedom. We have a government that is getting bigger and bigger. We have a group of elites who think they can run our lives better than we can run it ourselves. And unfortunately we have another candidate in the Republican Party, uh, who believes the same things as Barack Obama when it comes to the big issues of the day of government control of your life. And in specific, the biggest overreach of government and be that is in the area of health care —
SCARBOROUGH: All right.
SANTORUM: — and on that score, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are the same. And that’s what we can’t have in this election.
RUSH: Scarborough was not pleased with that answer.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, I have certainly talked about your focus on this in the past, and you’ve known me for a long time. Do you think I’m trying to pigeonhole you and stereotype you?
SANTORUM: Well, I mean, the fact that you continue to bring it up? Yeah! Sure!
SCARBOROUGH: Why would I? I think my record on this in — in Congress is the same as yours. All I’m saying is, it is a legitimate issue.
SANTORUM: Joe, the only reason I talk about this issue, as I said, is with respect to government mandates on people of faith. That’s why this issue continues to be talked about and should continue to be talked about in the context of government forcing people of faith to do things that are against the religious beliefs — something the federal government has never done and should never do when it comes to whether it’s the Catholic Church or any other legitimate religion.
RUSH: Right on. Exactly right.
This is an issue because of Barack Obama violating the Constitution, acting without the authority to mandate that people who conscientiously object to these things must provide them. That’s why it’s in the news. It’s in the news because Obama wants it in the news because Obama wants to be able to construct this phony Republican “war on women.” Nobody was talking about contraception until one of Obama’s operatives, George Stephanopoulos at ABC News, brought it up in a question to Romney. It was in a Republican primary debate on January 7th in Manchester, New Hampshire.
It was not being discussed until then, and Stephanopoulos’ question came literally out of the blue. And Romney said (paraphrased), “I don’t know what you’re talking about, George. This is silly. Nobody wants to ban contraception.” Well, it turns out that Obama wanted to mandate that the Catholic Church buy it for everybody. If you want your own contraception, go down to Walmart and get it. It’s five bucks or nine bucks. Going to do it? Why does everybody else have to pay for it? And where’s Obama get the authority to tell the Catholic Church or any other church or religious school to buy it for somebody?
That’s what this is about.
And Santorum is dead-on right about it.