RUSH: You want to hear the TIME Magazine headline on Scott Walker? If you missed the first hour, I don’t have time to read you every detail, but what we’re talking about is that partisan Democrat prosecutors in Wisconsin filed bogus subpoenas and allegations against Scott Walker (he’s the governor of Wisconsin) and conservative groups
During one of his recall elections, they tried to claim that he was illegally colluding with outside fundraising groups. The case was thrown out at the subpoena stage. The judge would not even grant the subpoenas because they violated First Amendment rights of the targets and witnesses. There’s no case here, and it happened months ago. The case is long gone. It’s over.
The partisan Democrat prosecutors were humiliated and sent slinking out of court. TIME Magazine headline: “‘Criminal Scheme’ Will Haunt Scott Walker.” See, this is the precedent, and I’m sitting here during the break trying to remember something. This is not the first example of this. It’s also not what we learned during the Clarence Thomas hearings. Remember, we learned something very key.
A Democrat let the cat out of the bag back then. When it became clear that it was not conclusive that Anita Hill was telling the truth… No! I take that back. This goes back even farther. This goes back to 1990. Do you remember that history professor at Columbia, Gary Sick? He wrote the piece accusing George H.W. Bush, Bush 41, of secretly flying to Paris when he was vice president for Reagan to meet with the Iranians.
And the book alleged that George Bush made a deal with the Iranians that they would keep our embassy hostages captive until after the election so as to make it look like they were afraid of Reagan and not afraid of Jimmy Carter. There was no evidence. It didn’t happen. It was nowhere near true. It was totally made up out of whole cloth. Literally made up!
A guy from Columbia wrote a whole book about it. The book was the hoax. The Speaker of the House, Tom Foley — who we later learned stole airline meals when he was de-planning. He would ask passengers, “Are you going to eat that?” and most said no, because it’s yucko. So he would take as many passenger meals as possible and walk off the plane with them. He was speaker of the House, so he could do what he wanted.
Tom Foley said, “The seriousness of the charge mandates that we investigate this.” “Even though there is no evidence,” he said, “the seriousness of the charge is what matters,” and of course, that’s when I started learning quite a bit about how Democrats act. The seriousness of the charge opens up the possibility that it might be true and therefore the seriousness of the charge is the story. Whether there’s any evidence or not.
So you’ve got a precedent here. Make an allegation. It doesn’t have to be true. There doesn’t even have to be a snowball’s chance in hell of approving it. Then you leak the allegation to the media, and the target gets smeared. They could have said as part of this investigation that he beats his wife, they could have put anything in there, and today the headlines would read, “‘Criminal Scheme’ and Wife Beating Will Haunt Scott Walker.”
They could have put that in there. Here’s the TIME piece. It ends this way: “As the e-mails make clear, Walker was quite proud and deeply involved in monitoring the money being spent on his behalf by outside groups.” Yeah, because he follows the law. (chuckles) “The money helped his cause, and was directed by a close aide.
“Will Americans choose to believe that politicians in his position cannot be influenced by the donors who paid the bills?” What, is he the only politician ever to accept money? Somebody needs to ask Obama about this. How about the Clintons and all the “coffees” that they had? No, no, that’s the wrong way to talk about this. “Well, the Democrats…”
That’s the wrong way to go about it. You’re not going to persuade anybody with that. The point here is to get people as educated as possible on the technique that was used. This Walker thing, I was trying to think during the break. There’s another example. It’s staring me right in the face and I just can’t remember it, that is something almost just like this. Meanwhile, when you have evidence on somebody like Jon Corzine, he walks totally free.
You could say they tried to do this with Chris Christie and Bridgegate, but the Bridgegate case was never really thrown out. This was. The two different judges threw out the Scott Walker case. There is no fraud! There was no scheme! They looked at the evidence and threw out the charges. There wasn’t any scheme, and there was no fraud. But by gosh, if you look at Democrat Party media today, you will never know that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Starting on the phones, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. This is Greg, thank you, sir, for waiting. You’re up first. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Major dittos from the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan, here.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You’re absolutely right. I’ve been following the Walker thing and you’ve been absolutely right on the governor here from top to bottom. The part that’s not been reported anywhere except maybe in the local papers here. Over 27,000 emails were turned in by the Walker administration. And if there was ever a time when I wanted to see a hard drive crash, it would have been right smack in the middle of that one, but of course things like that aren’t going to happen.
RUSH: What do you mean 27,000 emails turned in by the Walker administration?
CALLER: Well, that’s what the story was. When they were sifting through all the communications back and forth, it was over 27,000 emails that they poured over and still found nothing to connect him.
RUSH: Okay, okay. You said something nobody else is talking about so I thought I might have missed somebody.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Well, you know, Walker has written an op-ed in response.
CALLER: Did he?
RUSH: I’m holding it here in my formerly nicotine stained fingers. It’s a whole page. I’m not going to read the whole thing. Here’s the money in it.
“Still, many in the media proceed as though the opinion of the partisan prosecutors is new information and ignore the truths I have stated above. It is not. It is old news that has already been discounted by two judges. No charges. No case. In reaction to the information that was released to the public and seized on by the media, the federal judge just this week sharply criticized the prosecutors. He said that they are now seeking ‘refuge in the Court of Public Opinion, having lost in this Court on the law.’
“Watching the media frenzy, it is clear that this is what happens when someone takes on the big government special interests. They push back. No wonder so many politicians are afraid to make tough decisions. I will not back down. We will continue to fight using the truth to keep the hard-working taxpayers of Wisconsin in charge of their state and local governments. We will continue to fight to make life better for the good people of Wisconsin.”
He nails it here. It is clear this is what happens when somebody takes on the big government special interests, Obama, the Democrat Party, you name it, media, they push back. And Scott Walker, by the way, taking on big government special interests was not going away during the recall. Scott Walker trying to win his election and implement his agenda was considered pushback. And so they pushed back and he says, “No wonder so many politicians are afraid to make tough decisions.” But does that not nail it? They’re just afraid. Nobody wants to go through what Scott Walker is going through. But he’s found a way to deal with it.
Here’s John in Yorktown, Virginia. You’re next on Open Line Friday. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Hey, this all started with the New York Times saying Scott Walker is “suspected.” And you were looking for another example that was staring you in the face. I got it. Here’s a headline: “New York Times is Suspected of Lying in Every Article it Prints.” As a matter of fact, I think they could call themselves the New York Times and Daily Democrat, would be a lot more accurate. Because they’ve really fallen.
RUSH: Except that everybody that reads them in their target demographic believes them.
CALLER: Well, hopefully they’ve got a neighbor who will point out the problems. I’ll tell you, my folks used to get the New York Times on a regular basis, especially Sunday. It was important. It was informative. It was a newspaper. It used to be a newspaper. It isn’t any more. There is a way they can redeem themselves, however.
RUSH: I remember way back in the early 90’s when I met William F. Buckley, I had read a quote of him before I met him. And I asked him about it. I said, “Did you really at one time say the greatest newspaper in the world is the New York Times.” He said, “Yes. It certainly was.” My grandfather thought it was the Bible. James Reston, some of those — R.W. Apple. They were all libs. It’s just that back then, there was no me.
Folks, I really am convinced that what is happening in media today is the result of the birth of conservative media and its rapid growth and ascension. It has destroyed the left’s monopoly in media. When they had the monopoly, they could pretend that they were not what they are and get away with it. They could pretend to be objective. You know, the power of a monopoly is not just determining what stories you are going to cover, but what you don’t cover is just as powerful.
They’re discombobulated having lost that monopoly. And part and parcel of what they do every day is engage in schemes, if you will, to prove to themselves that they still hold sway and still have the power that they used to have. The press got their highest ratings in approval in late ’78 and ’79 and it has been downhill ever since Ronaldus Magnus. And then something happened in 1988 and Fox news in 1996.
It just has had them discombobulated and it’s converted them now into obvious — not just competitors, but they’ve just cast aside all the camouflage and the masking and they are full-fledged activists now, not hiding it. I mean, the New Republic cover on this Scott Walker story was how he was guilty of latent racism or some such thing. It was just hideous. It’s all just hideous.