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June 4, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
June 4, 2008, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, as we all know, ladies and gentlemen, Operation Chaos continues.
Mrs. Clinton did not quit.
Everybody assumed that she was going to quit.
She spoke at APAC this morning after that speech last night, and she gave a campaign speech at APAC.
Everybody's saying she's getting closer to quitting.
They're trying to figure out what it is she wants and so forth.
All this means is that Operation Chaos continues.
Greetings, my friend, and welcome.
It's great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, the fastest week in media.
It's already Wednesday.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
The email address is Elrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Lots of audio soundbites from last night and this morning.
By the way, we scheduled this last week.
Mitch McConnell, who is the Republican leader in the Senate, wanted to come on and discuss this cap and trade bill, this massive tax increase.
And we scheduled Senator McConnell for the first hour today.
He'll be with us in about a half hour, 25 minutes or so, to give us an update on what's happening with this bill and what the prospects for it are.
A good part of the program is going to be devoted here to the presidential campaign.
It is off and running.
And the drive-bys and the Democrats, some of them are just beside themselves that Mrs. Clinton won't get to hint and won't get out that she will not quit.
And I think this is perfectly understandable that Clintons are behaving this way.
I mean, Hillary can take this all the way to the convention if she wants.
She knows that the superdelegates can say whatever they say now, but until they actually vote at the convention, it doesn't matter until that happens.
Ted Kennedy gave his concession speech in 1980 to Jimmy Carter at the convention.
He didn't concede until then.
She's obviously holding out for something.
I also said yesterday, you know, about this supposed Michelle Obama tape that Bob Beckel is worried about, that he said yesterday would pop today.
It has not popped today.
But I said last night, we would have a good indication of whether or not there's something to this by watching Mrs. Clinton's speech last night.
And if she doesn't concede and if she shows no signs of conceding, I said it might be an indication that she thinks or knows that there's something to the Michelle Obama tape.
Let's start with the audio sound bites.
Mrs. Clinton, this is last night in New York, speaking to her supporters.
I want to start tonight by congratulating Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run.
Senator Obama has inspired so many Americans to care about politics and empowered so many more to get involved.
And our party and our democracy is stronger and more vibrant as a result.
So we are grateful.
I was getting emails from people last night.
Boy, Rush, doesn't she look sexy?
Doesn't she look pretty?
Doesn't this, she's gotten better looking as the campaign has gone on.
Most candidates in the campaign end up looking bedraggled and tired and worn out.
She seems, this is other people sending me these notes.
She looks better.
Rush, she actually looks kind of pretty, and she's getting much, much better at these speeches.
Then she said this.
The question is, where do we go from here?
And given how far we've come and where we need to go as a party, it's a question I don't take lightly.
This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight.
Burning down the house.
Watch burning down the house.
It's always been your campaign.
So to the 18 million people who voted for me and to our many other supporters out there of all ages, I want to hear from you.
I hope you'll go to my website at HillaryClinton.com and share your thoughts with me and help in any way that you can.
And in the coming days, I'll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding my way.
Oh, I was watching this last night and I was going nuts.
She's burning down the house.
Unity schmunity.
Divided we are.
This was Mrs. Clinton's message last night.
So she says she wants everybody to go to her website, HillaryClinton.com and share your thoughts.
Let me tell you what this is about.
What she wants, she wants to grab as many people on her website urging her to keep going, to stay in this, so she can show that to the Obama people.
She's talking about her 18 million votes, which she thinks is, I mean, it's as much, if not a little more, than he got.
She's still talking about the electoral college states that she won that put her in a mythical tally of 267 when you need 270.
So clearly she's angling for something and she needs public support in order to get it.
Vice president, Supreme Court nomination, something along these lines.
It's going to be a real interesting thing to watch Obama deal with this.
So as the commander-in-chief of U.S. Operation Chaos, I would like to urge all of you who want to to go to HillaryClinton.com and tell her what you think she ought to do.
Now, I want you to be polite.
I don't want any snide comments.
I don't want any, and I know that a good people have already done that, but I want those of you who are part of this audience to say whatever's in your heart to Mrs. Clinton about her effort to continue here within the spirit of Operation Chaos, keeping chaos alive.
Mrs. Clinton basically extended it.
She did everything last night, but thank me for helping to make this current situation possible.
Look at what happened.
She won South Dakota last night.
This is a Puff Daschell state.
And Puff Daschell, by the way, lost in his home state, as you know.
But Puff Daschell's a big Obama guy.
And yet Obama lost in South Dakota.
He did win in Montana.
The drive-by's out there proclaiming him the victor.
He's got all of the delegates that he needs now and so forth.
Something else is troubling me, ladies and gentlemen.
Many things are troubling me today.
A little quick perusal, if you will, of the, oh, oh, one more Hillary bite.
I want to go back and let's review Mrs. Clinton when she was inevitable.
November 26th, 2007, the CBS Evening News with the perky Katie Couric.
And the perky Katie said to Hillary, if it's not you, the nominee, if it's not you, how disappointed will you be?
Well, it will be me.
I know that you're confident it's going to be you, but there is a possibility it won't be.
And clearly, you have considered that possibility.
No, I haven't.
No, I haven't.
There was no cackle.
There was no laughter.
There was an icy, no, I haven't.
And it's quite likely that Mrs. Clinton is still not considering it.
Full-fledged.
These are the Clintons.
They're never going away, folks, no matter what happens here.
They aren't going away.
She's going to get something.
She's going to get the vice presidency.
She is going to get a Supreme Court nomination.
She is going to get appointed to head up the Department of Health and Human Services to run Obama's health care plan.
She's going to get something.
She might even in her mind still think she can get the nomination because of some unknown things that might pop out there.
But that's why she hasn't conceded.
She's not going to concede.
I saw Lanny Davis, who was on TV today, and he assured everybody he was operating independently with no permission.
But he has started a website encouraging Hillary supporters to get hold of that website to urge Obama to make Hillary the vice president and give her the spot on the ticket.
And I forget what the name of his website is going to change anyway, but the name of the website right now has got the word fairness in it, the fairness of the vote or some says a typical Clinton ploy.
She's been treated unfairly.
And this is about being fair because she's been screwed here politically.
And this is about making it right.
This is Lanny Davids' effort.
And he says that he's doing this independently.
Nobody's asked him to do it.
Nobody's told him not to do it.
Also, the Republican National Committee is reporting today.
Matt Burns, spokesman for the Republican convention in St. Paul, sent an email to Mark Ambinder at theatlantic.com blog saying that the RNC's convention office in St. Paul has received numerous phone calls in the last few hours from people who identify themselves as Clinton supporters asking how they can help Senator McCain.
They're getting a lot of these.
I have nothing but anecdotal reference to this, and I can tell you that I myself have heard and have talked to a lot of Democrat women who are fed up with all that.
They really think they have been shafted.
They are mad, and they have no intention of unifying behind Obama.
And they're openly talking about voting for McCain.
They would never do so otherwise.
They're doing this to screw the Democrats.
They are just mad as they can be.
I don't know what number of emails that Matt Burns, the spokesman for the GOP convention in St. Paul, I don't know what number he's getting, but it is enough for him to send out a little blurb about this.
When we come back, we'll get started with Obama's speech.
By that time, it'll be time to join Senator McConnell for a couple minutes, and we'll get to McCain's speech last night.
I could have done McCain first.
I could have put McCain in the middle.
I decided to put McCain last.
It's the EIB Network, and we'll be back after this.
Hi, we're back.
Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, America's truth detector, America's Doctor of Democracy.
Now, before we get to the Obama speech and the soundbites from the speech, fabulous speech.
It was just oratorically fabulous.
The energy in the room.
There was something like 17,000 people in the room, 15,000 people outside.
The line of people extending outside who wanted to get in and couldn't, according to officials in St. Paul, was a mile and a half.
The energy inside that room was electric.
He gives a great speech.
Tremendous orator.
In most instances of the speech, he said nothing again, but he said it better than anybody else is saying it.
This has got a lot of Republicans worried because McCain's speech last night was, well, it was a bomb.
I mean, if you read the speech, it looked pretty good.
If you just read what he was going to say, wow, okay, there's some potential here.
Then he gave the speech and it was, oh, it was just, it was, it was because we know that there's this great orator on the other side.
Now, this, my friend, has caused a lot of Republican commentators to say, yeah, Obama gives a great speech, but Americans don't elect presidents on the basis of great speeches and great oratory.
And some of them are using examples from great orators of our history, from our history, who have lost elections.
In many of these examples, they're citing great orators who existed before there was radio or TV, pointing out, by the way, both Bushes, Bush 41, Bush 43, they both won without being great orators, so forth.
And all that's true, I mean, in a historical sense.
There's no question it's true.
However, this circumstance is different.
I think the oratory of Obama is going to matter.
In addition to running into, and this is, by the way, over a number of years, these anecdotes, and I, again, I make nothing scientific about this, but I've talked to enough people over the years, both sides of the political aisle, who have just been frustrated as they can be that the president of the United States doesn't seem to be able to communicate.
He's not a flashy orator, is not a riveting, spellbinding speaker, is not inspirational and so forth, mispronounces the word nuclear and so forth.
And I've heard more than one bunch of Democrats say, I just want somebody that sounds smart.
I'm embarrassed as an American of a president who can't talk.
Well, they've got Obama.
And in this stage, when you come off the comparative, this flashy oratory, I think, is going to have more impact on voters than some of the McCain people who think, nah, that'll be going to wash itself out at the end of the day.
It might.
But I think there's a greater chance that the oratory is going to be a factor here for one simple reason.
If Obama's charisma on television hasn't gotten him where he is, then what has?
All Obama has is his oratory.
All he has is his charisma.
He does not have substance.
He doesn't have anything that you can really grab onto and say, yeah, that's America.
He's not talking about the greatness of America.
I mean, it's, you know, somebody in this election needs to defend that which is great about this country and that which needs to be conserved in this country.
This doesn't mean that we oppose change.
It means we support our society.
You know, McCain's out there trying to make a big deal.
He's the reform candidate.
And I've had a number of people ask me, reform what, Rush?
Well, let me let you in on the dirty little secret.
Senator McCain talks about reform.
He's talking about reforming the conservative movement.
He's talking about reforming the Republican Party as much as he is talking about reforming the country.
He's talking about reforming the political system.
Like he had a town hall meeting today, and he says he wants a whole bunch of town hall meetings with Obama because this is a special election and we need to have these issues out.
He wants Obama to fly with him on the same plane to these town hall meetings in order to save energy and so forth.
So his reform is not so much reforming the country, it's reforming our politics and reforming the Republican Party's politics specifically.
All right.
We'll have more on McCain here in just a moment.
Let's get started with Obama.
Remember back in the race speech in Philadelphia, Obama, and by the way, we will have a segment coming up in the next half hour from our official Obama criticizer, Bo Snurdley, reacting to Obama's speech.
You don't want to miss that.
But Obama threw his grandmother under the bus in the race speech.
Last night, he brought his mother, grandmother, back on board the bus.
Thank you to my grandmother who helped raise me and is sitting in Hawaii somewhere right now because she can't travel, but who poured everything she had into me and Who helped to make me the man I am today?
That's Obama bringing his grandmother, who used to be a typical white person.
Now she is the woman who poured everything she had into him.
Does that mean he's a typical white person now?
Let's go back.
This is how he described his beloved, ignorant, racist grandmother, March 20th of this year.
The point I was making was not that my grandmother harpers any racial animosity.
She doesn't, but she is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way.
All right, so typical white person, but now she's back on the bus because she poured everything she had into Obama.
Here's the next excerpt from his speech.
Because you decided the change must come to Washington.
Because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest.
Because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears, but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations.
Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another.
A journey that will bring a new and better day to America.
Because of you.
Tonight, I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for the president of the...
I told Cookie to leave the applause in on some of these bites today, just to give you an example of some of the energy in the room last night.
If you, if you...
Not room, it was an arena, in case you didn't see the speech.
So we've marked the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another.
And if you go through the newspapers today, you will find reference after reference after reference after reference after reference in the drive-by media to his race.
Washington Post, black president this century, black president, black president, black president.
That is how four consecutive paragraphs begin.
Also in the Washington Post, a moment of triumph with a little disbelief, focusing on his race.
I thought, well, I'm not going to have time to develop this because I got a break coming up.
So a lot more to go here, plus the balance of the speech from Obama.
But as I said, we'll be talking to Mitch McConnell for a couple minutes.
We come back from the break.
Don't go away, folks.
Lots more.
Straight ahead right here on the EIB network.
We're back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's always a pleasure.
They have on the program Mitch McConnell, Senator from Kentucky, who is the Republican leader in the Senate.
Senator, welcome back.
Great to have you here.
Good afternoon, Rush.
Played to be with you.
All right, I'm looking here at the oil price.
Today's oil price right now, oil futures at $122.53 a barrel.
That's down about $9 since last Wednesday.
It looks like this whole thing was a bubble.
Everybody panics.
Gasoline prices and energy prices rise like they did.
They have to come down at some point.
As part of the panic, we get Warner Lieberman debated this week.
I'm hearing the conventional wisdom is this bill doesn't have a prayer of getting out of the Senate, much less through the House.
Is that true?
Well, I certainly hope not.
Can you imagine a worst proposal to be bringing up with gas prices sky-high like they are?
I mean, the Wall Street Journal called this bill the most extensive reorganization of the American economy since the New Deal, and they're absolutely right.
I mean, this thing is a $6.7 trillion tax increase on the American people.
And we know at a minimum it'll drive up gas prices 53 cents a gallon.
This is a very, very comprehensive and awful proposal.
And we're certainly going to do everything we can in the Senate to see to it that it doesn't become law.
How long has Warner Lieberman been around it?
How many tries have its supporters given it?
Well, there's been a lot of talk about the so-called cap-and-trade approach to climate change.
This is the first time we've actually had a debate on the Senate floor on it.
This is the kind of bill that ought to have an extensive debate.
My assumption is that a majority leader will try to shut us down, try to file closure prematurely, try to control the flow of the amendments.
You can't do that without, you know, unless you have a passive minority in the Senate, and we don't intend to cooperate.
Well, now, I've speaking of the amendments, this bill's 500 pages, right?
I mean, does anybody know what's in it, fully and totally?
Well, they just produced a substitute they're going to offer here in the next 30 minutes or so about 40 minutes ago.
So I guarantee you, Rush, we're going to make sure that this is fully and extensively debated, read, and amended before we have any prospect of letting it out of the Senate.
I think it's not fixable, frankly.
Somebody called it Hillary Care for Climate.
It does.
It is reminiscent of the Hillary Clinton tax health care proposal back in 1993, 1994, in terms of its complexity, in terms of the impact it has on our whole economy.
I mean, heck, this thing would turn us into Western Europe very quickly.
Senator, it's an abomination.
It's one of the greatest power grabs of the federal government over private industry, the private sector.
And it's based on a hoax, the hoax of man-made global warming.
And the Boxer amendments have ⁇ they're just outrageous and that have added to the complexity of this whole thing.
Well, you know, Rush, even if you agreed that the problem existed, let's just grant that for the sake of discussion.
The American way to get out of problem like that is with technology and innovation, not clamping down on the economy.
Precisely using energy.
That's the lifeblood of our democracy.
Oil is the fuel of the engine of freedom here.
Using energy creates more and creates the need, which creates the mother of invention.
It all is a cycle that improves everybody's quality of life, and this would shut that down tremendously.
Absolutely.
I mean, we're convinced this is a problem, and just for the sake of discussion, let's grant that for a moment.
The way to fix it is with technology and innovation, develop the techniques to do it, and then sell it to people overseas.
Because if this is a global problem, it can't be solved by the United States unilaterally anyway.
You don't think the Chinese and the Indians are going to shut down their economy while we're shutting down ours?
Of course not.
Now, there are a lot of Democrats that are not in favor of this, correct?
Well, we're going to find out.
There are some who are squirming.
It's been called by a number of nameless staffers on the Democratic side a monumental blunder, which I certainly concur with, to bring this subject up at a time when U.S. gas prices are sky high.
This is only going to make them higher.
Well, what's this new series of amendments that you just mentioned?
Do these amendments are they actually amendments?
Are they substitutes for these?
What Boxer is going to do here shortly is offer a big substitute, which we haven't even had a chance to read yet.
All of this, I guarantee you, Rush, means that we will not be speedily acting on this bill.
This is the kind of bill, if it were to ever pass at all.
To give you an example, the Clean Air Act amendments back in 1990 were on the Senate floor for five weeks.
We had 180 amendments.
If Reed tries to jam us, he will not get anywhere.
And frankly, I don't think this bill is fixable anyway.
We have lots of amendments that deal with what we think are the real problems with regard to oil prices.
We need to open up ANWAR.
We need to allow deep-sea exploration.
We need to construct new refineries.
We need to get rid of the moratorium on oil shale development.
We have basically shut down or tried to shut down the number three oil producer in the world, which is us.
And the Democratic plan is to go beg the Saudis, the number one producer, or the Russians, the number two producer, to increase production.
Why don't we increase our production right here at home?
But here's the front.
Well, everybody's asking that question, and we know why.
We know why it's not happening.
We've got a holy alliance or unholy alliance between the extreme environmentalists of this country, which I have been saying for years is the new home for displaced communists since the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall fell, and extremists in the Democrat Party.
And it's all about destroying the American capitalist system and remaking this country in a new image.
I think that's what the Obama campaign is all about.
And, Senator, this may be the first time this bill has actually come to the floor for discussion and debate.
But even if it loses, you know they're going to bring it back, aren't they?
They will bring it back.
And this is going to be a big war over whether or not you want to hand over to the government the total control of the American economy.
I mean, this will turn us into Western Europe, turn us into France and Germany quicker than anything you could conceive of, Rush.
You know, they look to Western Europe with envy.
The new majority that took over Congress, gas is $1.65 a gallon more than it was when the new majority was sworn in in January of 2007.
They think we're on the right track.
These are people who in the past have thought that expensive gasoline was a good idea.
So it doesn't surprise me that they come up with a proposal like this that would drive gas prices even higher.
Well, the American people are, I think, the more they're informed and educated on this, and believe me, a lot of them are.
The conventional wisdom is that a sizable percentage of the American public, even close to 50%, has bought into the global warming hoax.
But I don't see it.
I see polling data that suggests that people do not want another penny spent, taxed, or made more expensive on gasoline if the result is to fight global warming.
I don't think that there is a worldwide or even a nationwide consensus on this.
It just appears that there is because of media coverage on the whole concept.
But let me ask you about the politics of the future.
I mean, I'm hearing, and who knows until the actual votes are counted, but we're hearing here that the Democrats think they're going to have either a 7 to 10, the worst case scenario, 12-seat majority in the Senate, much more seats in the House, if they get the White House as well.
Well, even if they don't, because Senator McCain supports this bill, which is he does.
What's the future look like when you face this battle next year with a whole different political circumstance?
Well, first of all, I don't think we're going to have that many fewer Republican senators.
You know, you and I have discussed this on the air before.
It takes 60 votes to do almost everything in the Senate.
I've now got 49.
Reed's got 51.
Even if you're only modestly proficient at math, everybody can figure this out.
He's got to come over on our side to get nine votes to do almost anything.
I think we've got a good chance of staying roughly where we are.
The United States Senate is the only legislative body in the world where a majority is not enough.
And I think we've got a good chance of coming out of this election with a robust minority fully attuned to trying to keep any new administration from enacting this kind of legislation.
Not to mention, we just had a vote a few minutes ago on their budget plan for the next five years.
If left to their own devices, they would increase taxes three times greater than the previous largest tax increase in history.
That's the kind of thing that a robust Republican minority in the Senate can prevent in the future, no matter which administration we end up with.
Well, it's clear, you know, while their presidential candidate is talking about change and future and all these platitudinous things, when you listen to what he advocates, it's nothing but old liberalism straight out of their playbook from 60 and 30 years ago.
Sure, we need to ask what kind of change.
You know, do most Americans think that the kind of change we need is more taxation, more regulation, and more litigation?
I don't think that's what they have in mind.
And we have five months here before the election to make sure that the American people understand fully what Senator Obama and his team advocate for the future.
And it's quite different than what Senator McCain would support and what Senate and House Republicans would support.
Well, it's all failed.
Everything that he's talking about, Obama, every problem that he says he wants to solve has been tried around the world, from the Soviet Union to the former Eastern Bloc countries to Cuba.
It doesn't work.
You're absolutely right.
That's why I said they want to turn us into France when even the French are having second wave.
Yeah, hell no.
The French are becoming more conservative than we are.
Yeah, I mean, you know, in France, 50% of the gross domestic product is government spending.
In this country, it's about 20%.
If you look at the Democratic agenda advocated by Senator Obama, they basically want to turn us into France.
More taxes, more regulation.
Of course, the Europeans don't have our litigation problem, but they want more of taxation, regulation, and litigation.
This is what they're for.
Nothing's new about this.
This is not the kind of change I think the American people have in mind.
We'll see.
Senator, thanks for your time.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, Rush.
Keep us posted on this legislation that's progressing, we hope, slowly through your building.
You can guarantee it'll be slowly.
Thank you.
See you later.
Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky will be back right after this.
And we are back, Rush Limbaugh, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
You heard me correctly, ladies and gentlemen.
Oil futures, $122.53 a barrel as of 20 minutes ago.
That's down about $9 since last Wednesday.
I called this.
I told you that those high prices could not be supported by the market.
And of course, Jordan Soros probably out there selling short on this stuff.
Who knows, as I also said yesterday.
Back to the Obama soundbites from last night's speech.
Now, this is a guy very gracious, right?
He represents something new.
And I was just discussing with Senator McConnell, there's nothing new about what he's proposing.
It's all been tried.
It's been tried in this country.
It's all failed.
It's been tried all over the world.
It's all failed.
There's not one thing new from Barack Obama.
There is no change unless you want to go backwards.
His foreign policy is 60 years ago.
His, well, from the 1930s, 40s, and his domestic policy is right out of the 1960s.
There's nothing new about the guy.
For a guy who's supposed to be so gracious, he takes a little shot here at Senator McCain in just a few short months.
The Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda.
They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically.
I honor.
We honor the service of John McCain.
And I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine.
I saw that last night, and I said, that's a good point, Obama.
What are your accomplishments?
What are your achievements?
What are they?
He's been in the Senate less than three years, or maybe four, something like that, whatever it is.
He hasn't done anything.
He's not distinguished himself.
He was a community organizer, whoopee-doo.
Harvard Law Review, whoopee-doo.
Let's see, runs around with terrorists, whoopee-doo.
Has a mentor in spiritual relationship with a wacko preacher, whoopee-doo.
What are his achievements?
He doesn't have any.
I mean, not in the sense of a presidential resume.
This is another reason why I say his oratory is going to be a factor, because that's why he's where he is.
Plus, his name isn't Clinton.
But his oratory is why he's drawing these crowds.
Not his achievements.
He doesn't have a resume.
I don't know that McCain is denying Obama's achievements.
He just doesn't know what they are.
Here's another little excerpt.
Now, this one's interesting.
While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.
It's not changed when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95% of the time as he did in the Senate last year.
All right, now this is a fascinating bite to me, and I'll tell you why.
While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, this whole statement is rooted in typical liberal arrogance.
McCain has, and in his own speech last night, the theme of his speech last night was, I'm not George Bush.
Don't you call me Bush.
I'm not Bush.
Got it?
It was very defensive.
He wanted to make it plain to everybody he wasn't George W. Bush.
It's a mistake to run around and be critical of the president, his own party.
He can do it in different ways than he's doing it.
But he touted his independence last night.
And what does independence mean in this context?
Independence in this context means he abandoned his own party and walked across the aisle and sat down with Democrats and did deals.
And he's touting that.
And you will hear him expressly say so in a soundbite I have coming up in the next hour when we get to the McCain soundbites.
And Obama acknowledges it.
Oh yeah, that's true.
While John McCain has legitimately and can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party, such independence has not been the hallmark of his campaign.
Barack Obama can tout Zilch Zero Nada independence.
Barack Obama has not crossed the way on meaningful legislation.
These are symbolic things.
Barack Obama has the most left-leaning liberal voting record of all senators, and that's saying something in his short time there in the United States Senate as at present constituted.
So here's McCain, who's making a big deal out of his independence, a big deal out of the fact that he has abandoned his own party, a big deal, that while we are Republicans and Democrats, we're all still Americans.
A big deal out of making deals with Democrats.
You see how it counts?
You see where it's getting him?
Obama's mocking him.
Obama's saying, hey, you want to be fully independent?
Quit the Republican Party.
Your independence isn't counting anything from me, dude.
You say you're independent and you've crossed down, you've worked with us, fine, but not enough.
It's typical.
No matter what you do for the libs, no matter what you give them, it's never enough.
McCain would have to switch parties in order to show his independence.
So here's Senator McCain trying to score all these points with Democrats and independents by touting his independence.
And the Democrats are saying, well, that doesn't count for anything.
He hasn't even been independent enough from Bush.
So the point is the whole thing gets you nowhere, and it gets you mocked.
And at points of the Democrats never waver like this, and they never scram from their own side.
So McCain attacks his own party to establish his credentials with non-Republicans.
Obama does no such thing.
Does Obama criticize his own party?
No.
We should demand that, shouldn't we?
I want to develop this further when we get back.
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