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RUSH: Now let’s talk, ladies and gentlemen, about this woman, Alison Lundergan Grimes. Lundergan Grimes. She appeared before the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper editorial board yesterday to make her pitch for their endorsement. She’s running for the Senate against Mitch McConnell. She’s a lifelong Democrat. Her family has been in politics at various levels for quite a while. Her father represented Kentucky for the Democrat Party, in the state House of Representatives

She has been on the ballot in the state on the Democrat ticket previous times. She was asked a simple question: Did she vote for President Obama in 2008 and in 2012? Now, I first heard about this doing show up last night. It’s a Washington Post story, written by a guy named Philip Bump, and I’m telling you: This story, it is it is most… Well, I can’t say most incredible thing. But this writer is so in the tank for Alison Lundergan Grimes. He desperately wants to speak to her. He desperately wants to advise her what to do here.


The headline to his story is, “40 Painful Seconds of Alison Lund began Grimes Refusing to say Whether She Voted for Obama,” and he’s wringing had seen hands! Why did she do this? Why couldn’t she have said, yes but she regrets it now and she’s looking forward to Hillary? It’s filled with advice and it is clear that that that this guy has written this piece in pain over her performance.

Oh, he wants her to beat McConnell so bad and she really thinks she stepped in, and it’s the faster thing from a news story that you could see, that is presented as one. Anyway we have a tape of how it sounded. This is yesterday at the Louisville Courier-Journal website. The newspaper’s editorial board interviewed the candidate Allison Lundergan Grimes and during the Q&A one of the members of the editorial board said, Did you vote for Obama in 2008-2012?”

GRIMES: You know, this election isn’t about the president. It’s about making sure we put Kentuckians back to work, and —

REPORTER: Did you vote for him?

GRIMES: I was actually in ’08 a delegate for Hillary Clinton and I think Kentuckians know I’m a Clinton Democrat, uhh, through and through. I respect the sanctity of the ballot box and I know that the members of this editorial board do as well.

REPORTER: So you’re not gonna answer?

GRIMES: Again, I don’t think that the president is on the ballot, uh, as much as Mitch McConnell might want him to be. It’s my name, and it’s gonna be me who’s holding him accountable for the failed decisions and votes that he has made against the people of Kentucky.

RUSH: Now, you might be saying, “Why does it matter?” It matters because of Obama’s approval numbers. He’s never won the state. His approval numbers there are in the tank. I mean, they’re as low there as you’ll find them anywhere. In some cases, some polls high twenties, in the thirties. So she’s not gonna say she voted for him. She did. She won’t say so because the Senate candidates, both incumbent and challengers, are doing everything they can to distance themselves from Obama, and the message has gone out to do so.

So she won’t go anywhere near it. Of course this guy named Philip Bump (he wrote the Washington Post piece) and a lot of others are saying, “How hard would it have been to answer? I mean, can this woman not think on her feet? How hard would it have been to simply say, ‘Yeah, I did, and I’m feeling disappointed by. Yeah, I did I’m a little let down. Yeah, I did and I had hoped for more and that’s why I’m gonna be supporting Hillary Clinton.”


Yeah, she could have said this, too. She could have said, “Yeah, I did but I voted for Hillary in the primaries in 2008.” She could have said anything, but she stuck to the script. She wouldn’t veer off the script. There is what you call “consultant prep,” and she was prepped and obviously had it drilled into her head: “If they ask you if you voted for Obama, no matter else you do, you do not say ‘yes,’ no matter what! Because that is the only thing anybody’s gonna remember about this interview with the editorial board.

“And they’re gonna use that to crucify your judgment and to criticize you all over the place. Don’t!” So she dutifully followed consultant advice. I know that’s what happened. She followed consultants’ instructions. Well, I guess it’s possible she could have devised this strategy on her own, too. It’s not that hard to figure out Obama’s not popular where she’s running. But people are looking at this saying, “It would have been so easy to answer that and then move it off the table.”

Yeah, I voted for Obama, after I voted for Hillary in the primary.


That’s all she would have had to say. But you know what she sounded like here? Remember the first congressional hearing with all those ballplayers up there about steroids, and Mark McGwire? “I’m not here to talk about the past. I only want to talk about the future.” All these congressmen from St. Louis and from Missouri were going batty ’cause McGwire had been such a hero, such a role model, and here he wouldn’t answer their questions.

He wouldn’t talk about it. He said, “I don’t want to talk about the past. I’m not here to talk about the past.” That’s exactly what she sounded like. “Well, you know, I was actually delegate for Hillary. I don’t want to talk about the past. I’m looking forward. I’m looking forward. It’s my opponent. He’s worried about my vote.” Not at all. I think it’s kind of fascinating. You compare today to 2008 where everybody wanted to be around Barack Obama.

Everybody wanted to be in that light. Everybody wanted to be in that group. Everybody wanted to be part of that happening. Everybody wanted to be in that story. Everybody wanted to think they mattered in that story. Everybody wanted to think everybody knew they knew Obama. Everybody was hoping that they thought that they were intimately involved in the Obama campaign, and were somehow involved in making it all happen.

Everybody in the Democrat Party (except for the Hillary camp) was doing everything they could to get close, and to have some of that positive vibe bounce off on them. It’s human nature. Everybody gravitates to the big news story, and Obama was the, and now look at it six years later: None of ’em wants anywhere near the guy. That’s the story. Jay Carney was on CNN last night. Don Lemon says, “The midterms are coming up. What does it do to Democrats who are really keeping the president at arm’s length right now,” like this babe in Kentucky? “What does this do for the Democratic Party, Jay?”


CARNEY: I think the Democratic candidates, uh, have to sort of thread this needle very carefully, because, uh, it is true that when you have an unpopular president of your party, you don’t want to be associated with him. You know, your opponents are probably running ads linking him to you and you want to keep your distance. But the fact is president like incoming presidents usually are remains very popular with his base, uh, and with the base of the Democratic Party so in some states and in some places those candidates have to be careful about going too far in distancing themselves.

RUSH: That’s a bunch of gobbledygook, but basically he’s doing what he can to stay loyal to Obama. He saying, “You know, they better be careful. They better not go too far from Obama. It’s not gonna stand ’em in good stead,” and all that kind of stuff.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It was only moments ago that we played the audio sound bite of Alison Lundergan Grimes at the Louisville Courier-Journal refusing to answer a question from the editorial board to the newspaper, “Did you vote for Obama in 2008-2012?” She would not answer. She said she wasn’t there to talk about the past. She said that she had been a delegate for Hillary in ’08, but she wanted to look to the future, and she said Mitch McConnell doesn’t care about that. Mitch McConnell only cares about my name. They kept asking her and she wouldn’t answer, four or five times.

Well, this has not gone over well in the Drive-By Media. I’m holding here in my hands a story from F. Chuck Todd, who claims that Alison Lundergan Grimes has disqualified herself. He said this on MSNBC today. He said, “The idea of — I’m sorry even to say you regret your vote that would almost seem as disingenuous. But that is — can Kentuckyians expect her to cast a tough vote on anything?” If she won’t admit that she voted for Obama?

So F. Chuck, this didn’t sit well. If you can’t admit that you voted for the president. If you’re Democrat and you’re seeking the Senate, and he’s gonna be the president the next two years and you can’t admit that you voted for him? In F. Chuck Todd’s world you have disqualified yourself. This is, I think, chump change, because clearly this is transparent.

I’ll tell you what I think nails Alison Lundergan Grimes. I don’t know how many people are gonna see it. It’s Internet video, and it just depends on how widely it gets distributed, but there’s this big fundraiser for her with a bunch of liberal New York fat cats, people like Harvey Weinstein and James Dolan of Cablevision or what have you, a bunch of ’em. And somebody at Alison Lundergan Grimes’ campaign told these big donors (paraphrasing), “Don’t sweat it, she has say good things about the coal industry in order to get elected. But when she gets to the Senate, she’s gonna F-bomb ’em.” That’s what one of her aides said. It’s all over this video that she’s gonna screw the coal industry.

Now, that’s the kind of thing I think ought to disqualify her. And I don’t mean disqualify, but that’s the kind of thing you let the voters of Kentucky find out and she’s finished. But why make a big deal? Okay, she won’t admit she voted for Obama. Okay, so she doesn’t have any courage. Okay, well, big deal. Speaks for itself. I think that’s secondary compared to this other thing. I mean, here’s a woman who is lying to her constituents or her would-be constituents. She’s lying in her campaign.

She knows Kentucky’s a coal state. They depend on it. But she’s a big liberal Democrat and coal’s the enemy. Coal is climate change. Coal is pollution. Coal is global warming. Coal is capitalism. Coal is horrible. She is gonna owe a lot of donors a lot of payback. A lot of her donors are global warming fruitcakes, and they’re gonna want payback. And the payback is gonna be her help in socking it to the coal industry. And these big donors are being assured that she will. It’s like Obama telling Dmitry Medvedev (imitating Obama), “Look, tell Putin that I’ll have a lot more flexibility in getting rid of America’s nukes after the election. You tell Vlad not to pay attention to what I’m saying in the campaign.” He said that on an open mic.

The American low-information voter never heard about it. If the American low-information voter had heard about it, by definition, wouldn’t have known what he was talking about. “Tell Vlad I’ll have more flexibility after the election.” You know, without George Clooney in the frame, they wouldn’t have had any idea what that was about. But this, when you tell donors, and it’s on tape, that the candidate’s gonna screw the coal industry if she wins, that, to me, is dynamite.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 24 because I mentioned earlier that this guy at the Washington Post was just, “Oh, no,” about Alison Lundergan Grimes, “It’s just so bad, 40 seconds of silence when she couldn’t say that she had voted for Obama.” And then F. Chuck Todd said, “Oh, no, that she’s just disqualified herself.”

Well, it’s now spread through the rest of the media. This afternoon CNN on Wolf Blitzer’s show, he spoke with Gloria Borger about Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Wolf said, “Alison Lundergan Grimes, she was asked who she voted for in the last presidential election. Why can’t she simply say she voted for Obama, or if she didn’t, say she voted for McCain, or Mitt Romney, why can’t she say?” Wolf’s upset, and Gloria Borger is in pain trying to explain what Grimes should have said.

BORGER: Grimes, it’s inexplicable to me, why she would not just say who she voted for, and if she voted for President Obama, she could then go on to say, “But, you know what, he’s disappointed me. These are the mistakes he’s made. ‘I’m not Barack Obama,'” as she said in her ads, over and over again. I don’t understand why she won’t answer a direct question, because it makes her look evasive, and it makes her look hypocritical unless she can say, “Yes, I voted for Barack Obama, and here’s why that was wrong.”

RUSH: Well, I tell you what it is, it’s like I told you, it’s consultants. Somebody has drilled into her that you cannot be seen associated with Obama. He’s apparently an albatross. The polling data’s driving this. You know polling data’s driving this. And Drive-Bys are offended by it. “Hey, he’s our guy. He’s our president. Why can’t you say you voted for the guy? Come on. Or say that you voted for Hillary in the primaries or whatever.” Ah, they’re besides themselves.

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