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Oct. 16, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:15
October 16, 2008, Thursday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program resonate and reverberate all across the fruited plain.
Rush Limbaugh, your guiding light, America's real trusted anchorman, America's truth detector, and a doctor of democracy here at the prestigious and distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I don't know if you've noticed this, folks.
I don't know if you've heard about this.
The barrel price for oil is now below $70.
At least it was five minutes ago.
Let me check it here.
I got a chart.
$70.82.
$70.82.
That's its high was $147.
So it has dropped.
It has dropped more than 100%.
Well, 50%, however you want to calculate it.
Gasoline prices and, of course, jet fuel, very important here.
Well, that's because the price of pump's still based on oil bought when it's $100, $120.
Give it time.
Give it to the gasoline price is going to come.
It's already below $3 in a lot of places in Massachusetts where there aren't a lot of transportation costs.
You saw it for $2.99 in Lake Worth.
Brian chiming in here to help out.
Everybody wants to get into the act.
$2.99 in Lake Worth, Florida, which is just down the road.
We only go there if we have to, but it's there.
$2.99.
The price is going to come down, Dawn.
It will make it down.
But I want to remind you people what I said mere days ago, probably weeks ago, and that is that after the election, if Obama wins, right now the story on the oil price is, oh, no.
Oh, no.
What's happening?
The oil price.
The markets are roiled and the producers are having trouble and blah, blah, blah.
And by the way, where are the investigations?
When the price was going up, Congress held investigations.
The big oil chieftains were brought in and then the speculators were targeted.
And when the speculators were exonerated, the big oil chiefs were brought back in.
Where are the investigations to find out why the hell this price drop is coming and happening right before an election?
Now, if this holds and if Obama is victorious on election night, I just want you to remember that starting the next day, the drive-bys will be filled with reports about the economy is straightening out and people are feeling much more confident.
The oil price is down.
Gasoline price is pummeting.
Birds are singing and chirping louder.
The blue in the sky is bluer.
The ocean is bluer.
The grass is greener.
The earth is warming not as much.
All because Obama was elected.
You watch, there's going to be such a turnaround in the way the economy is reported.
Dawn, you taking the girls out for trick-or-treating?
Are they going out this year?
Do you let them go out?
The younger one.
I remember when I was a kid going out trick-or-treating.
We'd dress up in our little costumes.
Sometimes, I remember I once won a prize when I was, I don't know, 10 or 11.
My mom dressed me up as a girl in high heels.
And I won the prize at this Halloween costume party.
And mine was not the most outrageous.
Oh, yeah.
And I was not cross-dressing.
This was a costume, Snerdley.
It was not cross-dressing.
And I'll never forget my mother and her friends.
This happened the big time.
Big is putting the wig on me and all this stuff.
Padded bra.
And anyway, we'd go out trick-or-treating, go all through the neighborhood.
My parents wouldn't care, didn't go with us.
Everything was safe.
Nobody was worried about razor blades and the apples.
Of course, I was never, even if that had been the case when I was a kid, I hate fruit.
And so an apple loaded with razor blades would have never posed a threat to me because I wouldn't have eaten one anyway.
My how things have changed in my own state of Missouri from the Associated Press.
Oh, I'm sorry, this is a local story from my hometown newspaper, the Southeast Minorian.
Missourian.
Faux Paul.
That's like, that's like, what was it, Obama, McCain last night calling Obama senator government?
He should have stuck with it.
Senator government.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Missouri authorities seeking relief on behalf of several registered sex offenders over certain restrictions new state law registration places on their Halloween activities.
The lawsuit challenges a statute that became effective in June requiring registered sex offenders to avoid all Halloween-related contact with kids, stay inside their residences between 5 and 10.30 p.m. on Halloween, and post a sign saying, no candy or treats at this residence.
All four of the plaintiffs in the suit, which includes one woman who lives in Cape Girardeau, have either custody of their children or regular contact with child relatives.
We believe confining someone to their house is punishment like house arrest, said the ACLU lawyer Anthony Rothert.
So sex offenders want to have freedom on Halloween night.
Registered sex offenders.
I remember when Halloween was fun and it was safe.
And you read about this stuff and you just, you just get sick.
Just get sick of it.
I mentioned this story.
Actually, it's an article.
It's from the Wilson Quarterly, the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, the Irrational Electorate.
It's by Larry Bartles, who directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
He is the author of Unequal Democracy, The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.
It was published earlier this year by the Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University.
Now, when you print it out, it runs to four or five pages.
And I'm not a scholar, and Mr. Bartles is.
And to me, the first part, I had to read this a bunch of times.
It reads like gobbledygook.
And what it is, is an analysis of a whole bunch of studies worldwide over many, many decades of the electorates, the electorates in democracies.
And let me just give you some excerpts.
One sentence in this piece says, and this is about how people determine who they're going to vote for.
People are very short-term in their focus.
They tend to vote based on how the economy is going, rewarding or throwing the bums out regardless of party.
But here's some interesting bits for you.
A team of psychologists led by Alex Todorov established that candidates for governor, senator, or representative who are rated as competent by people judging them solely on the basis of photographs are considerably more likely to win real-world elections than those who look less competent.
Brief exposure to the photographs, as little as one tenth of a second, is sufficient to produce a significant correlation with actual election outcomes.
A follow-up study showed that the electoral advantage of competent-looking candidates is strongest among less informed voters and those most heavily exposed to political advertising.
So, the follow-up study said the electoral advantage of competent-looking candidates is strongest among less informed voters.
One-tenth of a second, somebody looking at a picture will form more of a lasting impression on how somebody's going to vote than what their issues are.
I know it's how a lot of people get married.
Well, it is.
You know, people make jokes about this, but a lot of people get married on the base of one-tenth of a second on how somebody looks.
And if you're going to make a decision on who you're going to marry on a base of one-tenth of a second of looking at them or a picture of them, well, then imagine it's far less of a commitment to vote for somebody than to get married to them.
But it's the least informed, the less informed you are, the more powerful the visual impression of somebody you think looks competent.
A team from UCLA found that most of the effect of any given TV ad on voters' preferences evaporated in one week, and that only the most politically aware voters exhibited long-term effects.
In another study, a major ad buy produced a seven-point increase in voter support for the featured candidate a day after the ads aired.
Two days later, the lead was gone.
So, we can assume that, again, most people are not politically aware round the clock 24-7, and those who aren't can be moved by an ad for a day.
And the ad's effect vanishes after one day.
Another paragraph here: issues matter less than they seem.
People attribute their views to the candidate they like and adopt their candidates' views.
This one explains, this and one more, explain Obama.
Voters consistently misperceived where candidates stood on the important issues of the day, seeing their favorite candidate stands as closer to their own and opposing candidate stands as more dissimilar than they actually were.
They likewise exaggerated the extent of support for their favorite candidates among members of social groups they felt close to.
Political scientist Gabriel Lenz found very little evidence that people actually changed their vote because of the Social Security debate.
What happened mostly was that people who learned the candidate's view on privatization from the blizzard of ads and news coverage simply adopted the position of the candidate they already supported for other reasons.
The resulting appearance of issue voting was almost wholly, totally illusory.
So, if your candidate has one issue that you like and you've seen one-tenth of a second of an audio or a picture of the guy, and you've determined you like him, and then he runs an ad that you really, really dig, you'll forget the ad in one day, but it'll make your support for him go way, way up.
You won't remember why you support him.
The support will be even more profound and deep.
And then the candidate comes out and voices something you totally disagree with.
You'll reject that because you like the guy.
No, that doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
I don't care about that.
He's right on whatever issue that is most important to the person.
Everything else is irrelevant, plus the likability factor.
A couple of good voter behavior stories.
Woodrow Wilson and shark attacks.
In the summer of 1916, a dramatic week-long series of shark attacks along New Jersey beaches left four people dead.
Tourists fled, leaving some resorts with 75% vacancy rates in the midst of their high season.
Letters poured into congressional offices demanding federal action.
Now, we're talking, again, 1916.
Letters poured into congressional offices demanding federal action.
But what action would be effective in such circumstances?
Voters probably didn't even know, but neither did they care.
When President Woodrow Wilson, a former governor of New Jersey with strong local ties, ran for re-election a few months later, he was punished at the polls because he didn't do anything about the sharks.
He lost as much as 10% of his expected vote in towns where the shark attacks had occurred because he hadn't done anything about them.
The 1936 election has become the most celebrated textbook case of ideological realignment in American history.
However, a careful look at state-by-state voting patterns suggests that this resounding ratification of Roosevelt's policies was strongly concentrated in the states that happened to enjoy robust income growth in the months leading up to the vote.
Indeed, the apparent impact of short-term economic conditions was so powerful that if the recession of 1938 had occurred in 1936, Roosevelt probably would have been a one-term president.
And it's not only in the U.S. that the Depression-era tendency to throw the bums out looks like something less than a rational policy judgment.
In the U.S., voters replaced Republicans with Democrats in 1932 and the economy improved.
In Britain and Australia, voters replaced labor governments with conservatives and the economy improved.
This is all 32.
In Sweden, voters replaced conservatives with liberals, then with Social Democrats.
The economy improved.
In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced conservatives with socialists.
The economy improved.
In the adjacent agriculture province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-wing party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher peddling a shared wealth scheme, and the economy improved.
In Weimar, Germany, where economic distress was deeper and longer-lasting, voters rejected all the mainstream parties.
The Nazis seized power.
The economy improved.
In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased went on to dominate politics for a decade or more thereafter.
It seems far-fetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions.
Ideology and issues had nothing to do with it.
Whoever was in charge when the thing went south got punished.
Whoever was in charge when it came back got rewarded.
This is a longer piece from the Wilson Quartet.
It's a much longer piece of what I shared with you here by Larry Bartles, The Irrational Electorate.
And it's a scholarly work trying to explain why voters do what they do when they do it.
In Democracy, back after this.
Stay with us.
People have been waiting patiently as they always do on this program.
So we will reward them by returning the phones.
They go to Miami.
Jack, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello, sir.
Hey, how are you doing?
Just fine, sir.
Great.
Long-term listener, first-time caller.
Great to have you with us.
Great.
I wanted to ask you a question.
I've been listening all week, and then you mentioned that we would have to drag McCain to the finish line.
The way the polls are going, and I'm looking at the electoral map, and everything is pointing out to a landslide for the Democratic Party.
No, Everything is not pointing to a landslide.
What do you define as a landslide?
I'm looking at the polls, and I'm looking at the electoral map.
And it seems like, I mean, McCain is not meaning any gain.
Instead, he's losing ground on certain states that he should be winning.
No, this actually is not true.
Carl Rove has a piece today in the Wall Street Journal.
I know this is not your primary point, but in the latest Gallup poll that came out, Obama lost two points, and twice as many undecideds exist today as last presidential year.
There are more undecideds in the Gallup poll this time.
Yeah, go ahead.
But, Rush, let me ask you this.
With all honesty, do you think that McCain do have a chance, especially from what you just read here regarding the scholar about the economy?
Do you think that he has a chance?
Yeah, I do.
It's not over.
There are 20 days left, and anything can happen in these 20 days.
And I don't, you know, I'm of a frame of mind here that you don't give up even after you lose.
Yeah, I was about to ask you that also, because after, if let's say that we were to lose, he will have the Congress, the president, and he will also have the media supporting him.
Don't you think it would be harder for us at that point to really come back?
Yeah, but see, here's my optimism, Jack.
This is what I think is going to happen.
I think one of the first things, if your scenario happens, if the Democrats pick up enough seats to have a filibuster-proof Senate, and they're going to have a lot of seats of majority in the House, and they're going to have Obama.
If we have basically a one-party apparatus here government with no way to stop it, the Democrats are going to overreach.
They are going to take this country into directions that people voting for them have no idea.
They are going to reject it.
I reject the notion that the people of this country want socialism.
I think the people of this country voting for Obama have no idea who is going to be able to do it.
Yeah, but they're going to have a big support.
The media is going to try to portray it.
It's just a moderate thing.
It won't matter.
Their lives are going to be affected in profound ways that they won't care what the media is saying.
Now, about the media, Jack, this is crucial because you're talking about the media.
One of the first things, and this is going to be an epic fight.
One of the first things that's going to happen is the Democrats will move to get rid of people like me and Hannity and every other conservative talk show host on radio by reimposing the fairness doctrine.
And we're going to litigate it, of course, but litigation takes a long time.
But that's going to be one of the first things they do.
Obama's philosophy is you clear the playing field.
You don't just get people out of the way.
The Democrats do not like criticism.
They don't like the fact that they can't succeed in this medium, so they want to wipe this medium out, and they can do it by reimposing the fairness doctrine.
That's going to be an epic battle.
And the American people on our side are not going to put up with that.
It really is going to be epic.
But even if they succeed in doing that, and if they have a total dictatorship, there are still elections.
And I know Acorn's going to still be cheating and so forth, but the American people in two years are going to find out if these people do what they claim they're going to do, they're going to so negatively affect people's lives that the midterm elections in 2010 will get rid of a lot of Democrats in the House and the Senate.
Now, I've got to take a break.
I want to get your thoughts on what I just said, so hold on to the break.
We'll be right back to you.
And we're back to Jack in Miami.
Okay, Jack, it's your turn now to react to what I said.
I agree with you, but at the same time, I have to question it because remember, I remember doing the 2006 congressional election, you were that optimistic, but then it went south.
And then you told us that, well, you want to hold in the oppression that we probably will be able to recover by the end of 2008.
But nothing has never happened.
Well, but see, the difference there is, and this is the challenge McCain has, by the way.
You asked, is it over?
You know, you just heard me read this business, The Irrational Electorate from the Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
What that piece basically says is: people vote the economy.
When they think times are bad, they throw the people in charge out.
Right now, that's not the Democrats in their minds.
It's Bush.
Bush had been the president for eight years.
So it's incumbent.
McCain has to do this.
The McCain campaign must, in the remaining 20 days, tie this economic mess, this mortgage crisis, and all the things that spring from it to the Democrats because it can be done because they are responsible.
It's not saying it's going to be easy because McCain doesn't like hitting Democrats, but it's got to be done.
This is one thing that happened.
But I don't want to confuse you here.
My optimism is eternal, but I'm not unrealistic at the same time.
Jack, if your scenario eventuates and they get these super majorities in the House and the Senate and Obama in the White House, we're going to be 25 years cleaning up the mess because here's something else that's going to happen.
Within six months of Obama being inaugurated, two liberal Supreme Court judges will quit.
And he will appoint them.
And he will appoint more liberal judges than are even there now.
And he's probably going to have, if he goes four years, he'll have even more than two that he might have a chance to reappoint.
In addition to the Supreme Court judges, one thing that's not very well known is that federal judges, both the appellate, the circuit courts and the district courts, you can retire on a full pension, full salary pension the rest of your life.
You might have a whole bunch of judges just quit, giving Obama the chance to appoint them, and the Republicans are not going to be able to stop the most liberal judicial appointees to the Supreme Court, the circuit courts, and the district courts in a long, long time.
And these people are there for life, and it's going to be a long time cleaning this mess up.
And those people cannot be thrown out of office.
I hope that McCain knows that he had a big task in front of him.
Well, I don't, this is the thing.
I don't.
I was talking to some friends of mine who are equally frustrated with Senator McCain's view of the campaign, the presidency.
And my way of expressing my point of view to them was: I don't know how conscious he is about the things you have asked me.
I think to him, this is a standard, ordinary, everyday, every four years presidential campaign, and that the other side is honorable and that somebody has to win and somebody has to lose.
But I don't think he sees the result of his defeat in terms of what the nation will become, as you and I do.
I hope he sees that.
I don't know that to be the case, but if he did, I think he'd be a little bit more animated about wanting to win this.
So I think you look at this when McCain's 72.
If he's elected, you know, big whoop.
Obama, I think, wants this for totally different reasons than McCain does.
Obama wants this to reshape America.
He really wants this to reshape what this country is.
McCain's motivation for this is: I'm not saying he doesn't have a great motivation, but he doesn't think this way.
He doesn't think in terms of ideology.
He doesn't think in terms of socialist, capitalist, and so forth.
He just doesn't.
So this is why I've been saying we're going to have to drag him across the finish line.
I don't mean to be insulting him that way, but somebody's going to have to spell out, like we all are doing, what we face if he loses.
I just hope that he realized that before November the 4th.
And Russia, I hope so.
A lot of people do, Jack.
A lot of people do.
We're hanging in there, buddy.
But if there's going to be a lot of dispirited people if Obama does win this, because if he wins it, it's going to mean bad things down the ballot as well.
And you talk about the media.
The media's done everything it can to depress you and every other voter out there and to make you thinking this is already over and that Obama.
Look at it.
You started out your call.
You're looking at the polls and you see a landslide.
Yeah.
And it's not there yet.
It really, it's not there yet.
Like you said, it's not time for us to panic.
I'll tell you when it's time to panic.
All right, thank you.
I'm doing okay, Jack.
Thanks for the call.
David in Friendswood, Texas.
It's great to have you with us on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, long-time listener, first-time caller.
Thank you, sir.
I want to talk about the fact that Obama last night said that people making under $250,000 would not see a tax increase.
I make under $250,000.
I took out my tax return from 2007.
I took out the tax rates from 2000.
I applied the tax rates from 2000 to the tax brackets in 2007.
I calculated what my taxes would have been.
It would have been $4,000 higher.
If Congress does nothing, if Brock does nothing, the Bush tax cuts expire.
My taxes go up $4,000.
Exactly right.
And they're going to do even more than that.
They're going to restore the Clinton-era tax brackets.
And you're in it, buddy.
You'll be up there near the 36 to 39 percent bracket.
Yep.
Interesting that you did that.
People are not talking about the expiration of the Bush tax cuts because that's just going to happen.
The Democrats will not extend them.
So that's an automatic tax increase there than with what else Obama has planned.
But what about this?
What about Obama saying 95% of the American people are going to get a tax cut?
I can't comprehend how that could be true.
Let me see.
Do we have, stick with me here.
I think we have, I've got a lot of soundbites here, and my memory is that we have David Axelrod trying to explain this, but I may be confusing it with something else that I saw.
Anyway, I'll try to try to find this at some point in the soundbite roster.
But it's what?
There is no Axelrod.
Okay.
It was, and I read it somewhere that Axelrod was being asked somewhere by somebody to explain this 95%.
How 95% of what bracket?
What brackets are going to get cut?
And Axelrod couldn't tell anybody.
And he was, well, I have to get back to you on this, but I can just assure you that 95% of Americans are going to tax cut.
What kind of taxes are you talking about?
Are you talking about income taxes?
He had no answer.
This is just a fluff number being thrown out there, just like $250,000 is the magic number, above which you get soaked, below which you supposedly don't.
But as you have just demonstrated, you're below it, you're going to get soaked.
$4,000 a year is not insignificant in an economy like this.
And Rush, one more point I'd like to make is they're probably going to say that I ignored the fact that the tax brackets are indexed for inflation.
I did not ignore that.
I applied the tax rates from 2000 to the tax brackets for 2007.
And so if you were to just take your income and go back to a 2000 tax table and calculate your taxes, that number would be invalid.
That is not what I did.
Good for you.
All right.
Excuse me, David.
Appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You bet.
Ron in Columbus, Georgia.
Nice to have you, sir, on the EIB network.
Rush?
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I heard you say I've been.
Work.
Dixie, Dittos to you, Rush.
Appreciate that.
Well, I've been listening since about 91, so we go way back together, and you're doing a great job.
Thank you.
17 big years.
That's amazing.
Yep.
Listen, I wanted to contrast Obama with Jimmy Carter here a minute.
If we can, there's no contrast.
See, that's the thing.
You're going to tell us the differences?
Well, I'm sorry.
I should say the similarity.
Yes.
That was wrong.
You know, in 76, I was in the Navy, and Ms. Carter came on the state.
Now, I'm from Georgia, and he's our governor, and so forth, so on.
And if you look at what happened back then, we had some economy down.
We had the case of water.
It was still all over the place.
People, I think, were just tired of the status quo in Washington, the same old faces.
And here comes Mr. Carter with his fresh face and fresh outlook and promising this and going to do that.
And he's very smart.
They said he was very cool, calm.
And they even talked about what a great religious man he was.
Exactly.
And he appealed to minorities being from the South.
And, you know, and he's good at all that.
He went through there and got himself elected and stayed one term.
And we all know what happened during that term.
I hope.
And your listeners, I hope we'll look back and see about the double-digit inflation, the crazy mortgage rates.
I mean, when I was talking about it.
They know about it.
It was called a misery index.
We had to create a misery index to tell us how miserable we were because it was rough.
12% interest rates, inflation, or maybe even higher.
Inflation was 18 or not, maybe interest rates were whatever.
Unemployment was sky high.
It was a mess.
It was absolutely horrible.
And that, by the way, is one of the central factors that gave us Rinaldus Magnus.
So you might say, well, okay, Obama's going to come in if he wins.
He's going to destroy everything and give us a new Republican in 2012.
Can't count on that.
You know, this guy has got to be defeated now.
This is just, we can't afford this guy in any number of ways, ladies and gentlemen.
Have you taken my advice and backed up your computer?
I'm getting blue in the face reminding you about this because each time I mention this, I do get emails from people who say, I did it and I did have a problem and it was easy to restore what I backed up.
It was easy to back it up.
Carbonite is how you do this.
Carbonite, hundreds of thousands of customers, 105 countries.
They've backed up over 11 billion files.
They've restored over 600 million.
Now, every year, 43% of PC users lose irreplaceable files.
And it's going to happen.
It happens to everybody at some point.
You're either backed up or you're not backed up.
And you want to be backed up when you lose things that are irreplaceable.
Imagine losing your whole photo library.
Imagine losing important documents that you're keeping on your computer.
Imagine losing them.
Same thing as having a fire in your house and not having them stored somewhere in a safe deposit box.
This is just simple.
You back it up automatically from your house offline.
It's secure.
Nobody can get to it.
And anytime you want something from it, just go get it.
Carbonite.com.
Offer code Rush.
You'll be amazed.
Back after this.
And we're back.
Hell, folks, it's so bad out there.
Now, imagine this.
Even Acorn is saying that Obama lied about them last night.
It's in the San Francisco Chronicle today.
Acorn comes out swinging.
It's one of their blogs.
Acorn organizers this morning said that Senator Barack Obama, as a local elected official in Chicago, participated in two training sessions for 50 volunteer leaders.
He said he lied through his teeth, but he was a rock.
He was a mountain.
He was elegant.
He was cool.
He was calm.
He was unflappable.
But he lied through his teeth.
And even Acorn's out calling him a liar today.
But nobody will care.
It won't matter.
Maybe you'll be interested in this.
Kofi Annan, the corrupt former General Secretary of the United Nations, said that a win for Obama would be phenomenal.
When asked if the U.S. and the world was ready for a black president, he said, I think it would be a phenomenal change for the U.S. and for the world.
It would introduce a new dynamics and a new relationship between the U.S. and the world.
Whoever wins this presidency will have to come out prepared to work in partnership with the rest of the world.
Meaning, give up some of our sovereignty.
Kofi Annan can't wait for that to happen with Barack Obama.
Audio soundbites, Sam Donaldson.
Good morning, America, today.
It's over, he says.
I think he's headed for a loss.
With all the people out there saying they trust the Democrats and Obama more than the Republicans to fix this, I think he would be headed for a loss.
I don't see anything that he can do.
Now, I'm a political reporter, as you know, Diane, and I know all we can do is watch and something could happen.
But unless it does, he's going to lose.
So that's another drive-by immunist.
It's over at Sam Donaldson.
We have a montage.
Drive-by spin after the debate was that McCain was winning.
He was winning big until he mentioned Ayers.
Senator McCain, unprompted, brought up the issue of Bill Ayers, one of his worst moments.
That Bill Ayers attacked hasn't seemed to work for him at all.
As of the Ayers thing tonight, didn't it end that conversation?
William Ayers, is that relevant?
William Ayers.
Question which we all were waiting for.
Get rid of this stuff about Bill Ayers and all this garbage that we've been going through.
Obama was on defense for the first 20 minutes of this debate.
McCain ruined it for himself, prolonged the discussion about Bill Ayers.
What are these people so afraid of?
McCain didn't lose the debate because of Bill Ayers.
McCain won the debate, pure and simple.
By the way, I just found out the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has invited Bill Ayers to come speak soon.
One of their, I forget the organization.
It's not the whole university, but he's going in there.
Academia is rallying around Bill Ayers.
Here's David Rodham Gergen.
After the debate, McCain has anger management problems.
He got over-emotional about it.
He looked angry.
It was almost like an exercise in anger management up there for him to contain himself.
And Obama maintained his cool, and I thought that changed the tone of the debate.
And Obama won the last half hour.
He was so cool.
Obama's so, so cool.
Obama's cold.
He's cold.
Now, here's David Brooks.
This is one of the guys that couldn't wait, couldn't wait for McCain.
McCain was the guy.
McCain was going to go get Democrats into, but McCain was the savior of the Republican Party.
McCain was the only guy that gave us a chance last night on Charlie Rose last night.
David Brooks had this to say.
What struck me is how incredibly even he is and how frankly reassuring he is.
It's like you're camping and you wake up one morning and there's a mountain and then the next morning there's a mountain and there's the next morning there's a mountain.
Obama's just the mountain.
He's just there.
He's always the same.
He doesn't hurt himself.
McCain can sometimes lob a cannonball into the mountain, but the mountain doesn't move and the mountain doesn't care.
And so I think his steadiness, his temperament, has been the dramatic theme of this campaign, dramatic and being undramatic.
And it was on display tonight.
And the good part of the mountain is that he's reassuring and reliable.
Well, there you have it.
David Brooks, the conservative columnist for the New York Times, reassured by the steadiness, reliability, mountain-like stature of Obama.
Is this drooling or what?
Does he want to marry the guy?
Does he want to have kids with the guy?
What is this?
He's a mountain.
He's a rock.
That's exactly right.
What he is, is a load.
But this is the conservative columnist for the New York Times who wants the era of Reagan to be over, and the conservatism needs to be redefined and so forth.
And I guess Brooks and his buddies, conservatism has been redefined.
The Republican Party's found its rock and it's Barack Obama.
Hey, folks, a question.
One day after Joe the Plumber talked to Obama on the rope line, Joe has been all over the media.
Drive-bys will not leave him alone.
Interviewed by all comers.
Where are the drive-by interviews of William Ayers?
Where are they?
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