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Sept. 26, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:10
September 26, 2008, Friday, Hour #2
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And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
Rushlimbawdy Excellence in Broadcasting Network on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Here's the telephone number, 800-282-2882, the email address.
Hellrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Open line Friday when we go to the phones, and we will.
I make that pledge to you.
We will go to the phones.
And when we do, you own the content of the program.
You talk about whatever you want.
We got a full board.
And we'll get there.
Okay, so we just played a series of Harry Reid soundbites.
I actually think, by the way, I just had a friend send me a 10-minute YouTube video.
I don't have time to watch a 10-minute YouTube video, of course.
But apparently, it's a joint press conference between Reed and Chris Countrywide Dodd, and Reed just loses it.
He says things like get drunk and vote for McCain and such things.
I've got to send this up to Cookie so she can start parsing this thing.
But regardless, I listened to Harry Reid just lie through his teeth.
Here's a guy.
They go to the White House meeting yesterday.
He comes out and lies about what happens in there.
What happened in that meeting was the Democrats arranged for Obama to chair the thing on their behalf, and he blew it up with his incompetence and his inability.
And he has admitted as such, if you know what goes on or what went on in there, and if you listen to his soundbites later in the night, then you know that he knows he blew it up in there.
He caused the whole thing to fall apart.
The great unifier, the great Messiah, the great community organizer couldn't organize, diddly squat in the cabinet room yesterday.
It fell totally apart.
And he ends up admitting it by saying, you know, sometimes I work better on the phone talking to the principals from afar.
What we learned, the insertion of presidential politics.
Meanwhile, Harry Reid lying that McCain blew it up.
I think Reid's unstable is where I'm headed here.
I think Harry Reid is unstable.
Among all the other things that he is.
Now, here's Harry Reid.
We got a deal.
We don't need the president involved.
We don't need anybody involved.
We can handle this.
This is September 26th.
On September 17th, Bloomberg News reported, this is nine days ago.
The U.S. Congress is unlikely to pass new legislation to overhaul financial regulations this year because, quote, no one knows what to do, unquote, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
We are in new territory.
This is a different game.
He said at a briefing in Washington, he said neither Ben Bernanke nor Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, know what to do, but they're trying to come up with ideas.
So nine days ago, nobody knew what to do.
Today, we supposedly yesterday had a deal that the Republicans in the House won't sign on to.
I don't want to repeat the whole first hour, but it really is crucial.
The House Republicans, God bless them.
If this deal is so wonderful, the Democrats have the votes to pass it on their own and leave the Republicans out of getting any credit for it.
But they want Republicans on this bill.
They want their votes because they want them on the hook.
The Democrats don't want to be on the hook alone for this.
They want the Republicans there.
They want the Republicans to cave on their conservative principles.
They want the Republicans to cave on their conservative ideas.
This is all politics.
This, whatever you've been told about the imminent danger, we didn't get a deal by today.
Why we're headed for depression, why we're headed for recession.
Why, if we don't get this done, we're in big, big trouble.
Oh, it's going to be horrible.
The banks aren't going to be able to loan any money.
The banks are, and by the way, how about Washington Mutual?
The Fed just walked in and seized it under cover of darkness and sold the assets to J.P. Morgan.
And in Seattle, they're all upset that they thought they were a banking center until today.
And now Washington Mutual is just another branch office of J.P. Morgan.
They went in there and they took the, well, the bank was failing.
It was failure.
Their assets are at the seventh.
It had been a slow but quiet run on that bank for a long time.
So that bank's gone under.
Penny Pritzker ran a bank in 2001 that went, Obama's chief economic advisor, Penny Pritzker of the Hyatt Hotel Fortune, ran a bank that just went under, failed miserably big time.
Got the details coming up here.
She's Obama's, one of his fundraisers and financial advisors.
Here is Harry, excuse me.
Harry Reid, nine days ago on the Senate floor, he was asked what new regulatory actions Congress can take to help this problem.
And he said.
No one knows what to do.
We are in new territory here.
Nobody knows what to do.
We are in new territory.
Nine days ago, Harry Reid, the viciousness and the attempt to position this as a failure today because of John McCain continued on the Senate floor, Senator Charles Schumer of New York.
We need the president to respectfully tell Senator McCain to get out of town.
He is not helping.
He is harming.
Before McCain made his announcement, we were making great progress.
Now, after his announcement, we are behind the eight ball.
Get the House Republicans to be more constructive.
Get Senator McCain to leave town and not throw fire on these flames.
These are his best friends, the Democrats and the Senate, dumping all over Senator McCain, lying through their teeth at the same time.
Don't forget it was Treasury Secretary Paulson that asked Gramnesty to call McCain to say, get back here.
We need you here to help with the House Republicans.
And to his credit, McCain didn't go in and make him sell out.
McCain did not go to the House Republicans.
He didn't go to Boehner and say, look at my campaign's at stake here.
You can really make me look like the winner.
He didn't apparently, well, I don't know if he tried it, but if he did, it didn't work.
But I don't think he did.
I don't think he made that effort.
I mean, this is, this is, you think this is about a bailout now?
You think this is about some rescue?
You think these quotes from Schumer and Harry Reid are about anything to do with your mortgage or your bank?
Listen to Schumer again.
You tell me if you think this is really about a financial crisis in the country today.
We need the president to respectfully tell Senator McCain to get out of town.
He is not helping.
He is harming.
Before McCain made his announcement, we were making great progress.
No, you weren't.
Now after his announcement, we are behind the eight ball.
You always have been.
Get the House Republicans to be more constructive.
Get Senator McCain to leave town and not throw fire on these flames.
Yeah.
And Claire McCaskill from Missouri got into the Act II on MSNBC Live this morning.
The question, do you share President Bush's optimism that you're going to be able to reach a deal?
Well, frankly, we had a deal until John McCain came to town to play politics.
We had it done.
And then John McCain came in, and frankly, it blew up.
So the talking points have gone out among the Democrat conference and the Senate.
They're lying through their teeth.
There was never a deal.
Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, admitted, he slipped up this morning, but he admitted that there wasn't a deal.
And he admitted that he wasn't even part of the deal.
Here, grab somebody number 30.
Sherrod Brown, a Democrat senator from Ohio, slips here and admits that there wasn't any kind of a deal.
Before Senator McCain went to the White House, there was general agreement among Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, House Democrats on the broad outlines of a package.
Not unanimous.
I mean, I'm not there yet because of several things, but generally broad consensus.
And the House Republicans and Senator McCain kind of blew it up.
Yeah, but he went off the talking points.
He needs prompter too.
Because, well, wait a minute.
We had it.
He wasn't unanimous.
I'm not there yet myself.
Well, then, how can you say you got a deal?
If you weren't there, Sheridan, how can you say that you have a deal?
Back to Claire McCaskill, question from the anchorette.
We spoke earlier with Congresswoman Heather Wilson, who said that the Democrats have the votes to get this through the House.
So if that's the case, why not just push it on through?
The markets and the world need to see that our government has come together to do the right thing, not for these jerks on Wall Street, but rather for the people we represent, for the essence of our financial institutions and how they impact the people in Missouri that need a loan, a student loan, a small business loan.
And it's not going to work if we have this be about politics.
Throw your hands up.
You just.
Now she's a rookie senator.
She's a rookie senator, but I mean, this, this is the markets and the world need to see that our governments come together to do the right thing.
So the markets, the world is waiting to see what the House Republicans do.
So the onus is on the House Republicans.
See, this is what they want to do.
This is the pressure that they're trying.
That's why I say, God bless the House Republicans.
I think I hope they remember what happened to some of them in 2006 when they stopped acting like conservative Republicans.
At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, one final thought here before we go to the break.
We come back, but we'll get some of your phone calls.
What if?
What if the House Republican plan is better?
This is a question that no pundit raises.
So obviously, as most of the time it is true, the truth falls to my shoulders.
What if the Republican plan is actually the best plan?
What if the House Republican plan is best for the taxpayers?
What if the House Republican plan is best for the free market working?
What if the Republican plan is best for the economy?
The news reports are so busy building up the Democrats and tearing down the Republicans that they don't dare ask themselves.
So I will.
What if the Republican plan's the one to do?
What if the Republican plan's the better plan?
All right.
Brief timeout.
Oh, you got to hear this.
This is nothing to do with the bailout plan.
But since I just aired some Claire McCaskill soundbites, you might be interested in this.
Got this from Gateway Pundit by virtue of KMOV TV in St. Louis.
St. Louis and Missouri Democrat sheriffs and top prosecutors are planning to go after anyone who makes false statements against Obama during his campaign.
This is, I don't recall this kind of threat being made outside of Chicago before.
KMOV-TV has a video report on the Obama truth squad.
St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCullough are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama.
KMOV-TV St. Louis aired a story last night that stated that these two, Bob McCullough and Jennifer Joyce, both Obama supporters, are threatening to bring criminal libel charges against anybody who levels what turns out to be false criticisms of their chosen candidate for president.
Can you say First Amendment?
Can you say political free speech?
Just a second here.
For the St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and the St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCullough, what are you going to do to Obama when he lies?
Obama's run an ads line about me, you two.
He's got five ads right now that running that are 100% lies about Senator McCain and one of them about me.
Now, are you guys going to go after Obama for lying?
Where'd you guys graduate?
University of Stalin?
Back in just a second.
Stay with us.
27.
Somebody 27 here.
Hang on there just a second.
Isn't it amazing, ladies and gentlemen?
It is amazing to me how suddenly the House Republicans are so all-powerful when we know they don't have the parliamentary ability to stop this.
This, ladies and gentlemen, I'm telling you the politics of this.
This is what this is now.
And frankly, it's what it's been all through, the whole get-go, this has been politics, but it's now naked.
And we can all see it.
The House Republicans cannot stop this in the House.
They cannot stop it.
Parliamentary manner.
They cannot stop it.
Yet look how powerful they are.
They don't have the parliamentary power to stop any of the Democrats want this to pass out of the House.
It can happen today.
So what this actually shows is we don't need a Democrat majority in Congress.
A Democrat majority in Congress refuses to act on something they claim we need, on something they claim was a national emergency, on something they claim we have to do now or else.
And we got a Democrat majority and they won't act.
They want Republicans along with them for the cover because they know it stinks.
Well, I don't know if it stinks, but they know the American people think it stinks, and they know the American people don't want any part of it, as evidenced by all the feedback that they are getting.
Lindsey Gramnesty was on, let's see, Greta Van Susserin last night, and she said, I only have three seconds left.
Senator McCain tonight working on the deal or pushing or working the phones.
What's going on behind the scenes?
He is working the phones, trying to find a way forward that would protect the taxpayer.
And this deal that's on the table now is not a very good deal.
20% of the money that should go to retire debt that will be created to solve this problem winds up in a housing organization called Acorn that is an absolute ill-run enterprise.
It's not a housing organization.
They're a community organization.
They worked with Obama.
It's where Obama got his experience.
And they're a vote fraud organization.
He said this further on CNN.
He added more detail.
He said, let me tell you what happened because I was here.
We were meeting with House Republicans to try to get them into the mix.
And you had, I think, six members of Congress meet by themselves in the morning yesterday morning to go to the press, announce an agreement they never told their colleagues about.
At lunch, when this agreement was discussed in the Republican Senate conference, two-thirds of our conference could never sign on to it because 20% of the money could be billions of dollars instead of retiring debt that'll be created to get us out of the mess.
20% of it will be directed to housing programs like Acorn that are under investigation.
This was uncovered in the Senate Republican meeting.
So he said, no Republican is going to take 20% of the money that goes to debt retirement and put it in an inefficient program.
There never was a deal.
If there had been a deal, we'd be voting and I wouldn't be talking to you.
Said Senator Lindsey Gramnisty.
All right.
Let us go to the phones, ladies and gentlemen.
Headphone time in there, Dawn.
We're going to start in Woodbury, Minnesota.
This is Linda.
Linda, thank you for calling.
Thank you for waiting.
You're up.
Hey, Rush.
I'm so happy to talk to you.
I have never been so angry in my entire life after watching that press conference.
I didn't even know I was capable of being so mad.
He had the audacity, Reed, to stand up there and whine about the insertion of presidential politics by McCain when I believe that entire press conference was an insertion of presidential politics and to prop up Obama.
And did you hear him say, this is, I'm quoting, Senate Democrats, House Democrats, and Senate Republicans agree those principles laid out by Senator Obama are the ones that must be implanted with regards to the issue.
How dare he?
They're trying to prop up a little man-child.
They're trying to prop up their presidential candidate.
Their presidential candidate is the one who blew up the White House meeting with his inability to run it.
I'll tell you this: how is it not the insertion of presidential politics when the Democrats try to engineer the White House meeting so that it becomes Obama's meeting?
Absolutely.
And they're trying to give him credit for what they were agreeing on and McCain for wrecking the whole deal.
And that entire press conference was presidential politics played on the part of the Democrats.
And I'm sick of it.
And I sent him an email and told him he was a despicable human being.
Well, I'm proud of you.
I am proud of myself.
Let me tell you, I understand your rage.
I understand you're just infuriated.
We're rational people trying to understand irrational, demented, unstable, partisan political hacks.
Yes, and he is the greatest of them all, Harry Reid.
And all he does is whine.
And his whole press conference was called for that sole purpose.
They gave us no other information.
No, that whole press conference was called to cover up for the fact, to spin the fact that Obama blew up and destroyed the White House meeting.
I think it's 31.31, the five-second bit.
Anyway, greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program, where, of course, we serve humanity simply by showing up.
I need to set it up.
We need to go back and re-air some Dingy Harry soundbites.
This morning at a press conference with Chris Countrywide Dodd, Dingy Harry said this.
The insertion of presidential politics has not been helpful.
I repeat, the insertion of presidential politics has not been helpful.
It's been harmful.
A few days ago, I called on Senator McCain to take a stand.
Let us know where he stands on the issue on this bailout.
But all he has done is stand in front of the cameras.
Okay.
A few days ago, I called on Senator McCain to take a stand.
Let us know where he stands on the issue on this bailout.
But all he's done is stand in front of the cameras.
He then continued.
We have Senator Bennett, who is a high-ranking Republican senator, standing before all of you saying, We've got a deal in principle.
All we have to do is put it down in writing, and this is almost over with.
And then, guess who came to town?
And that completely fell apart.
The vehicle came off the tracks.
Now, the Republican House has to decide what they want to do.
Are they serious about one of the issues that has to be taken care of is lowering the capital gains tax?
Is that part of what this is all about?
Okay.
They're going to have to become realistic.
Okay.
All we have to do is put it down in writing, and this is almost over with.
And guess who came to town?
And it completely fell apart.
Guess who came to town and it completely fell apart?
Senator McCain, Chuck Schumer carried the same theme in a press conference.
I guess this was this morning.
Oh, no, not press conference, this morning on the Senate floor.
We need the president to respectfully tell Senator McCain to get out of town.
Stop tonight.
Here is Harry Reid earlier this week.
Oh, you don't have number 32 loaded?
Harry Reid said earlier this week, we need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands.
Today they're saying, get out of town, you blew it up.
Get out of town, you blew this thing up.
I'm just, I'm doing all this to illustrate the politics of this, which is what this is.
We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands.
That's earlier this week.
Today, get out of town.
Bush, tell McCain to get out of town.
Here's Sandy in Chicago.
Sandy, glad you waited.
You're next on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hello, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet.
If you think your head is exploding, Rush, what do you think?
I mean, how do you think we fail out here?
Last night, I thought that McCain had outmaneuvered Obama totally on this.
And then when the Democrats started putting out their talking points, that McCain is causing nothing but problems.
And then, of course, the mainstream media runs with that.
I mean, they are not going, they're just going to run with their talking points on this.
And where are the friggin Republicans and the McCain campaign to beat back on this stuff?
I called the McCain campaign, I don't know how many times over the last 12 hours, and all I get from them, we've suspended our campaign.
Let them say what they want out there.
I mean, you know, now the premise is out there.
The Democrats have their talking points that everyone is repeating.
The media is repeating.
You know, the New York Times, the LA Times are repeating.
You know, it's just, I mean, you're ahead.
I mean, you have a vent.
You can vent.
We can't vent out here other than calling like, you know, the Senator McCain and anybody else that we can't.
You're venting, home.
Hey, don't give me that.
You're venting, Sandy.
How does it feel?
Well, it feels good.
But I'm still so frustrated, Rush.
All the polls are like trending towards Obama now.
He's, you know, he's in danger of losing Virginia.
You have a big jump in the Gallup poll from yesterday today.
That means basically the people did not look well on McCain's quote stunt.
You know, they're viewing it how the Democrats have put it out there as a talking point.
Let me ask me.
Let me ask you.
Sandy, let me ask you a question.
Yeah.
Seriously now.
The election is 39 days for me.
I know.
I wasn't finished.
Okay, sorry.
35 days.
I was setting up the question.
Election 35 days, 39 days, a little over five weeks.
Honestly, now, five weeks from now, how much of what transpired this week will they remember, do you think?
The voters?
Well, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure how it's going to go.
If the economy is still in the top issues, which it will, of course, but of course, the Democrats are going to continue to hammer stuff like this.
It could go poorly for McCain.
I mean, if, you know, I'm just not sure how it's going to go.
I mean, it looks like he.
And that's the intelligent answer.
Right.
Nobody knows.
So it's not, you know, we don't want to get defeatist.
I think it's a dangerous cycle to get caught up in daily tracking polls.
I understand that the media, the media is trying to cause us to, you know, be desperate and despair and all this with their playing with the party affiliation and all that.
I know that they do that.
But I remember a long time ago you said that Obama is unelectable.
Do you still believe that?
Yeah.
No?
Yes, I do.
Oh, you do?
Yes.
Cheer me up, brother.
Cheer me up.
Can I remind you of, you're talking polls.
Can I remind you of something that happened earlier this week and late last week?
We've got a three or four day barrage of national and local media in blue states lamenting the sad fact that one-third of white blue-collar Democrats just won't vote for black guy.
I know.
I know.
And some of the blue states are trending towards McCain, like Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin, even Michigan is fairly close.
It's yeah, and it's look at now.
There's still a huge spread of 14 points in Rhode Island, Rhode Island, you know, Vermont Jr., but it's it's down from 20 or something like that.
I mean, it's you, the point is with polls, you can find, if you go deeply enough into the internals, you can find whatever you want.
All I know is this: the bloom is off the Obama rose.
The aura, whatever he was to people, however he was exciting people, that's gone.
Now it's just pure standard old Democrat Party hack politics.
And I guarantee you, you probably thought that Kerry was going to win this time back in 2004 because the media was carrying his water and the media was carrying his luncheons.
Media always tries to elect Democrats, but they don't always succeed.
But you know, they're going to try to continue on the economy, you know, pounding it into the ground for the benefit of Obama.
You know, they're going to do that all the way up until the election.
Now, if something doesn't happen with this bailout and the economy really tanks, the Republicans are going to be blamed for that and McCain.
The Democrats will make sure of that, and so will the media, because, quote, they had a deal.
Look at it.
They did.
Look, I am not going to sit here and just let them get away with that.
I'm going to be pounding here, and I've got TV requests coming out, you know, both ears, and I hate doing them.
I despise it, but everybody says you need to get out there on television because it raises a different way.
You do.
You do, right?
Why should I go on a TV show with a million viewers?
What I've got when I'm sitting here with 22 of them.
I would love to see you debate one of these kooks on the left.
I know they won't.
I have to go on solo.
But anyway, if this economy is in such peril, if there is an imminent disaster, like we've been told the last two to three days, if we don't get something done by Friday, it's Depression City.
You're going to see people jumping out of the windows on the buildings that remain on Wall Street.
You're going to see all this horrible stuff, and you're going to have all these tarots.
Nobody's going to be able to get credit card debt.
Credit cards are going to get canceled because the credit card companies can't extend debt.
Blah, Wait a minute now.
If it's that urgent, the Democrats have the votes to pass this, Sandy.
I know.
I have one more question for you.
If the economy is on the brink, do you think that the electorate is going to put in the White House an absolute neophyte?
I mean, I don't necessarily see it.
It won't be that.
That's not how it's looked at.
And I don't know.
I don't really know.
The economy's on the brink.
You have to understand that as far as press Democrat spin being reality, the economy is on the brink and it's going to be on the brink through the election, even if this bailout happens.
I want to warn you what's going to happen.
If this bailout happens, something next week's going to happen.
We're going to hear, oh, it wasn't enough.
You had $150 billion over here, $200 billion over there.
Or we have people say, well, this is a good start, but this is nowhere near getting us out of the fire.
You're going to have the effort continued to make people as miserable, fearful, and crisis-oriented as they can.
Crisis is the greatest power elected officials have to control a population.
And they're going to continue that.
The Democrats, with their media buddies, will try it all the way through the election.
Now, why?
The traditional conventional wisdom is that it is change in a bad economy that forces people to vote the opposite party, not so much what's Obama's plan.
Obama's plan to make it all worse, tax increases, all these various things.
But right now, with the negative numbers that Bush has, the assumption is that the voters will blame whatever economic melees is on.
And people are running a show now.
And the people running the show right now are not the Democrats in Congress.
It's Bush.
President gets all the blame, all the credit.
And even though, but there's a mitigating factor here that nobody's talking about.
Congressional approval is so low they are hated.
It's 9%.
It's 9%.
I know.
There are also polls.
There are also polls.
Normally, when you go talk to people about their congressmen and Congress, they tell you they hate Congress, but they love their guy, and they always re-elect him.
There's some polling data that suggests that's not as firm this year as last.
There's a lot up in the air.
I know.
And the polls are all over the place.
Even the tracking polls are all over the place.
That's right.
That's right.
That's what they are.
But this thing about McCain, I mean, I thought it would help him because I thought he had cornered Obama, you know, Obama following in his trail all the way up to Washington when he just dismissed debt.
No, you saw it that way.
I saw it that way, but that's not the way it was portrayed.
I know.
In the drive-bys.
Let's see what happens in a debate tonight.
Let's see.
Can you just tell me one more time that you still think, truly, that you still think that Obama is unelectable?
Unelectable may be too strong a word, but in the sense you mean it.
But I don't think anywhere near the slam dunk.
There's nothing that argues he's a slam dunk for this.
Well, he cannot get over 50% in the polls.
I mean, he is stuck around 46 to 49.
Sometimes.
Let me tell you something.
If he's not up 56, I know these are state-wide state electoral polls that really matter, but if his national number, if he's still tied or even leading in the margin of error going on to Election Day, Obama and Axelrod have problems.
And Rush, can you tell these Republicans in Congress and his surrogates and even McCain himself, they need to get a lot more aggressive with beating back these Democrat lies and scares.
I've been hearing this for 20 years, Sandy.
Oh, Christ.
But I mean, you know, I called him campaign, and all they have to say is we've suspended our campaign.
I'm like, what?
Look, how old is your father?
My father is passed away.
How old was he before he passed away?
61.
You're going to get him to change his mind about things at age 61.
Probably not.
No.
I mean, that's why beer advertisers advertise to 16 and 17-year-olds to try to get them to make their choice for the rest of their life.
You don't see beer advertisers, some 61 or 73-year-olds sitting around watching hee-haw.
So they're setting their ways.
McCain's got his own honorable idea of how to run a campaign here.
Now, the House Republicans did come out at 1 o'clock with a press conference to explain things.
I did not able to hear what they said, but they can get coverage.
They can force all kinds of coverage on this now because they're the focus.
Thanks, Sandy.
I'm way long here.
But I got to go.
I really do.
I'm in trouble.
All right.
Here are a couple sound bites from John Boehner and Roy Blunt, Republican leaders at a little press conference when they came out of a meeting of their conference, Boehner First.
I don't know what games were being played at the White House yesterday.
I gang up on Boehner, but they thought they were rolling me.
They were kidding themselves.
I know exactly what happened, so does he.
He's respecting the request not to talk about it, but he was the focus of this.
Look at Boehner shows up along with the Republicans, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and so forth.
If you're just hearing this for the first time, Obama shows up after having been briefed by friends of the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson at Goldman Sachs.
Obama did not know what the Republican position on this was.
He had to be briefed.
All the Democrats at the White House meeting deferred to Obama, letting him speak for them.
The objective was to set this up as Obama walked in, took over the meeting, got it all done, was dynamic, blah, The first thing Obama did was repeat the talking points he'd been sent.
The Republicans in the House are the problem here, right?
He asked Paulson.
And that's what Boehner means by being ganged up on, because everybody knows what conservatives believe and what they are.
And there's no surprise here.
And there was never any deal.
So Obama, that caused the meeting to go south.
The meeting was lost.
Obama blew it up.
His incompetence.
Here's Roy Blunt.
Clearly, the Democrats have a majority in both houses of the Congress.
If they want to do this by themselves, they can do this by themselves any minute they want to.
If they want to do this with us, we're prepared to have that negotiation.
Apparently, they're not even talking to him.
Apparently, they're not even talking to him.
That's Roy Blunt from Missouri.
It's his son that's the governor.
He hadn't Missouri Matt Blunt.
So that's fascinating.
Well, he's agreeing with my sentiments here.
Hey, they can do this all by themselves.
They could drill for oil all by themselves.
There's a whole bunch of stuff they could do by themselves that they're not doing.
All right.
Ras Musson daily tracking poll.
Sandy in Chicago.
You're not going to like this, but it's the news.
Daily Ras Musson tracking poll Friday today shows Barack Obama attracting 50% of the vote.
McCain earns 45.
This is Obama's biggest lead since his convention bounce peaked with a six-point advantage.
New data shows McCain's lead is down to a single percentage point in Ohio and Florida.
Leads by eight in West Virginia.
Obama with a modest advantage in Pennsylvania.
Virginia update released later.
Obama now leads by five among unaffiliated voters.
Last week, the unaffiliated voters were leaning in McCain's direction.
Stunning, says Rass Musson, to note how rapidly the dynamics of the campaign have changed.
Two weeks ago, just before the Wall Street financial crunch became visible, McCain was up by three points.
In the aftermath of his convention a week ago today, candidates were even.
Now Obama's lead is approaching new highs.
You prosecutors in St. Louis, Obama running five.
It's the New York Times, five lies right now, five different ads lying.
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