RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number three and maybe grab sound bite number four. David “Rodham” Gergen was on Face the Nation, and during the political panel — this is the show that Bob Schieffer said that what Weiner did is sickening. Anyway, Schieffer was talking to David “Rodham” Gergen about Obama’s speeches last week on the economy. Schieffer said, “All of a sudden we’re talking about the economy again, Mr. Gergen. The president’s going out to make these speeches about jobs and all of that, and apparently is going to sort of deemphasize deficit reduction now and move back towards jobs. David (exaggerated yawning) — David, what do you make of that?”
GERGEN: What I objected to in the speech was him saying Washington has taken its eye off the ball. He said that repeatedly the last few days. He has the biggest spotlight in Washington. As president, he’s the one who can set the agenda. You know, the president speaks on something, we talk about it, right? We’re followers in that sense and so I don’t think Washington — I think he took his eye off the ball. I’m glad he’s getting back to it. He didn’t have much fresh to say, but he’s lining up his forces, and that’s smart.
RUSH: Lining up his forces? Anyway, Mr. “Rodham” Gergen here basically is aghast by the Limbaugh Theorem. He quite rightly says, Obama is Washington, and to run out and say that Washington took its eye off the ball on the economy? Not even “Rodham” Gergen could swallow that one. So, you know, none of ’em will say it. They’re all describing the Limbaugh Theorem here. But none of them will say it. (interruption) The kids don’t know why I call him “Rodham” Gergen? What kids? Oh, Snerdley went to a conservative retreat in Denver over the weekend. Did you need a visa to get in there ’cause that’s a very liberal state. There were a lot of young people there, and they were all Rush Babies. He came in this morning going on and on and on about how they all are profoundly, hugely conservative because of this program. They grew up as Rush Babies.
Now he’s saying that some of those people he spoke to may not know why we call David Gergen David “Rodham” Gergen. Doesn’t it sort of speak for itself? I mean, Hillary’s middle name is Rodham, and she was Hillary Clinton until Clinton was elected. Then she became Hillary Rodham Clinton so as not to be confused with Bill. Didn’t want to be lumped in. And David Gergen is… if you want to know what Washington conventional wisdom is, listen to David Gergen. We just affectionately call him David “Rodham” Gergen ’cause he’s in the club. Sometimes we call Hillary “Hillary Rodham Rodham,” you know, just to make the point of what she’s trying to do.
Anyway, Mark “Maxi” Shields is next, and he’s a little confused here about Obama building an economy from the middle-out. He just doesn’t quite understand that. He was on The NewsHour formerly with Jim Lehrer on Friday night, and Judy Woodruff said, “Okay, so Obama’s out kicking off a campaign to refocus attention on the economy, talking about how many people still don’t have jobs. Republicans immediately jumped on it, said it isn’t real. How do you interpret what he’s trying to do?”
SHIELDS: There wasn’t anything as fresh and new and cosmic, perhaps, as you would have hoped. Now, we have to be honest. From the middle-out is as uninspiring a slogan. I mean, Power to the People, the people versus privilege, common ground for common sense. There’s a lot of things, you keep the big boys honest, but building from the middle-out sounded like a personal trainer.
RUSH: Building from the middle-out. See, I know what Obama’s trying to do. He’s trying to do. He’s trying to forge a commonality or common ground with the middle class and making them think that they make it all happen, making them think that it all starts with them. It’s a cheap solidarity ploy, and “Maxi” Shields here realizes that’s not how it happens. But that doesn’t matter. Obama’s never about how it really happens. He is simply about myth making.
I’ve got a pull quote from the Obama New York Times interview, but it’s not even worth it. It might dovetail with this, though. This AP story: “Four out of 5 US adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized US economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.”
No, those are not reasons for the trend. The reason for the trend is Barack Obama. The sole reason for the plight of the middle class is Barack Obama. Nine million fewer jobs, an assault on the private sector where jobs are created, the downsizing of the private sector. It has to get downsized; he’s claiming more and more of it and putting it under government control. He’s increasing the costs and the regulations and the taxes on business, so they have less discretionary income to pay people with, or to hire people with. The value of people’s homes have plummeted. Wages aren’t going up, discretionary income is shrinking. Reliance on some sort of government welfare is on the rise at a rapid rate. All of this is the result of focused policies the last four and a half years, authored by Barack Obama and the Democrats.
Now, this is a long story. There’s much more to it than just the two paragraphs I read there. And I think if you read the whole story, you would conclude that there is a real attempt in this story to widen the divide between rich and poor and to widen the resentment, and to widen the divide between whites and blacks. If you read the story one of the reasons four out of five face near poverty, it is poor whites and blacks. And it is said that this is going to create even more friction.
Here’s pull quote. “By race, nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent. But compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty.”
Given what I just shared with you, here is a pull quote. Obama did an interview with the New York Times. And in this interview — now, we’ve just read the AP story where the gap between people in poverty and not is widening, the gap between black and white is widening. I think the purpose of the story is to enhance that. And here’s the pull quote from Obama. He said to the New York Times over the weekend, “And racial tensions won’t get any better. Racial tensions may get worse, in fact,” the president said, “Because people will feel as if they’ve gotta compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot.”
Can I define that for you? He’s talking about welfare here. He’s talking about scraps from government. He’s talking about the racial tensions may get worse because people will feel as if they’ve gotta compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot. I’m gonna define this for you exactly how he means it. What this means is that up ’til now African-Americans have had almost an exclusive hold on the word “minority” and everything that comes with it. Minority, being discriminated against, minority being outnumbered big time by the majority, and therefore they have been the primary recipients of government benefits.
Now Obama is saying racial tensions might get worse because whites are moving in now ’cause they’re getting poorer, and they’re gonna be making a play for federal benefits, whereas the old minorities used to have what they thought was an exclusive claim on it, now the whites are moving in there. And this is gonna exacerbate tensions. This is what he’s saying. From a shrinking pot. Now, the shrinking pot that he’s talking about is not the private sector, although it is shrinking. He’s talking about the universe of benefits. We’ve got debt out the wazoo, the benefits, they can’t get appreciably bigger. More people are making a claim on the benefits pie, so pieces of the benefits pie are gonna get smaller. And the people who used to have an exclusive claim on it are gonna get mad now. That’s African-Americans. It’s stunning that he would say this.
And there’s something else incumbent here. For 25 years on this program, I’ve been pointing out that when liberals see inequity in society, they don’t ever try to elevate those at the bottom and improve their lives. They punish people at the top. They like to bring people down to a certain level so that everybody is so-called equal or fair. They never elevate. They never come up with policies designed to help people out of dire consequences. They come up with policies to help people subsist in those consequences and then punish people so that more people will be in those consequences. They want to bring people at the top down so that everybody is equally miserable.
Obama is just confirming it here: racial tensions won’t get better, they may get worse. Can you imagine a president of the United States predicting worsening racial tensions because the benefits pie is gonna cut up into smaller pieces? Then he said this. “But if the economy is growing, everybody feels invested, everybody feels as if we’re rolling in the same direction, and so a lot of the other issues that we are talking about, whether it’s climate change or immigration, or how we manage or trade relations, all of those are eased if we’ve got our economic act together.” Really, climate change, immigration, trade relations, that’s relevant to what we’re talking about here, the benefits pie? You get the economy rolling, we get everything growing, everybody rolling in the same direction, with climate change. This is bad, folks. This is not good.