El Rushbo behind the golden EIB microphone here at the distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Goodie, goody gun drops.
One of our favorite days of the week.
Some weeks.
Mr. Snerdley is standing by eagerly waiting to scream your call.
Well, the lines are jammed now, but as we take calls, the lines open up.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
And remember, Open Line Friday, you can discuss whatever you want, unlike Monday through Thursday.
We go to the phones.
The program is all yours.
Just watching former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, he was talking with Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, about the choice of Rah Emmanuel.
By the way, I am not obsessed on Emmanuel today.
Don't misunderstand this.
In fact, I'm hoping I just heard something else.
John Kerry is on the shortlist here for Secretary of State, and I am praying, just like I prayed that they would give us Joe Biden as the VEEP nominee.
I am praying that they name the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam Secretary of State.
I know I'm getting greedy, but this is the time for greed.
The Obama administration, I want, I want lurch.
I want Lurch going all over the world, stepping in it every place he goes.
You put a bag of manure in front of John Kerry.
He'll step in it, folks.
I can't.
Please, Obama, please, please name the haughty John Kerry as Secretary of State.
While you're at it, bring back Jocelyn Elders.
Put her in charge of first-grade masturbation instruction or some such thing.
What was she, the Surgeon General?
Please, bring.
Paul Bagala has described, the forehead has described Emmanuel this way.
Listening to Ram Emmanuel is like a cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothcake, a toothache.
Now, that's a compliment.
The forehead is jealous.
No, he's jealous of the elbow.
The elbow and the forehead.
No, the forehead admires Emmanuel.
This is from the forehead.
This is a compliment.
Emmanuel's like a cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache.
Leon Panetta, the former chief of staff for Clinton, said, well, this is just, this is laughable.
He said, well, the great thing about Rahm Emmanuel is, what was it he said?
What was the exact quote?
He said, they can work with both sides.
He can work with both sides.
He understands the arguments both sides make.
There's nobody better to be chief of staff because he works with both sides, meaning conservatives love him.
Both sides trust him.
Right.
They're doing everything they can, even on the Obama side, to make this sound like it's going to be a centrist administration.
Rob Emmanuel can work with both sides.
Both sides try.
The chief of staff doesn't work with both sides.
The chief of staff runs the White House.
The chief of staff's in charge of the West Wing.
And if there's any liaison to do it, I just love this.
Sorry, my friends.
I'm doing my best to maintain my composure.
I want to go back.
Audio Subway 25 first, Mike.
I want to go back the first hour.
I'm not going to play the soundbites, but the CNN did a whole story last night on right-wing rage aimed at me for my criticism of Emmanuel as choice.
There was no rage in the soundbite that they played, but this is what the left does.
Any dissent is called hate, is called rage.
This is how they attempt to discredit it.
But let's remember Mrs. Clinton back in a couple of years ago.
She got all mad and upset because she was ripping Bush every day, and people were saying it sounded a little bit unseemly, and this was her reaction.
I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.
Okay, so the Hillary definition of patriotism is standing up and screeching and shouting your disagreement with the administration.
I think I'm a new patriot here.
According to Hillary Clinton, the Democrat Party, I am exhibiting the new patriotism that they have defined.
69%, this is Rasmussen.
69% of Republican voters say that Sarah Palin helped John McCain's bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.
Only 20% of Republican voters say that Palin hurt the party's ticket, according to Rasmussen's national survey.
6% said she had no impact.
5% were undecided.
91% of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is very favorable.
Only 8% have an unfavorable view.
So all of you wizards of SMART on our side, all of you intellectualoids who think that Palin was a drag, the party loves Sarah Palin.
The vast majority of conservative Republicans love Sarah Palin.
20% of Republicans who say she hurt the ticket, you are probably the ones that need to go and walk and join across the aisle with the others that you find so much more palatable because they're able to communicate and they are writers and they are intellectual.
Among Republicans, 66% of men, 61% of women say Palin is their choice for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
66% of GOP women have a very favorable view of her, as do 64% of men.
The party loves her.
Republican Party loves Sarah Palin.
We're going to go back to yesterday's audio soundbite roster.
Remember now, Charlie Rose and Tom Brocco a week ago today.
We don't know anything about him.
It's an interesting question.
He's written two books, largely autobiographical.
We really don't know what his views on China are, Charlie.
They're really Obama.
So they didn't know anything about him.
And here, Wednesday night, again on a Charlie Rose show, we had a couple of clowns from Newsweek, Evan Thomas and John Meekum.
And they're talking about Obama and how Saul Olinski is now in, and Saul Olinsky, the big community organizer, dedicated his book to Satan, the first real conscientious objector to power.
Here's their conversation.
Saul Olinski really was a model from this famous community organizer in Chicago.
And this whole idea that Olinski had that it's not going to work if you offend large groups of people.
You know, we think of community organizers having their fist out and, you know.
No, You have to win over the majority by being peaceful and non-threatening.
Saul Olinski used the word non-threatening.
This is key to Obama.
There's no militancy involved.
This is very important.
And his chief strategist, Axelrod, really understood this, especially if you're running a black guy for president, you cannot threaten the whites.
All right, this is just an indication of what all they knew that they didn't report about Obama and his associations and his alliances and how Obama was playing the game.
Now, these next two, these are the PAs of his distance.
John Meekum and Evan Thomas of Newsweek admit and discuss there's something creepy about Obama.
He is very elusive, Obama, which is fascinating for a man who's written two memoirs.
In Grant Park, he walks out with the family, and then they go away.
Biden's back, you know, locked in the bar or something.
You know, they'll let him out.
And have you ever seen a victory speech where there was no one else on stage?
No adoring wife, no cute kid?
He is the message.
There is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all this.
I mean, he's such an absolute.
Slightly creepy cult of personality.
Yes.
What's slightly creepy about it?
It just makes me a little uneasy that he's so singular.
He's clearly managing his own spectacle.
He's a deeply manipulative guy.
Okay.
Sorry, I can't stop laughing at this stuff.
I know it should outrage me, but I just have to laugh.
These guys, they've been bugged by Obama all this time.
They buried it.
Only now are they starting to slightly creepy cult of personality about this.
It just makes me a little uneasy, so singular.
He's clearly managing his own spectacle.
He's a deeply manipulative guy.
Now, what they're saying, folks, we have seen this before, and we don't like it.
You are hearing fear expressed here.
We have seen this before.
It's a slightly creepy cult of personality just swipes the wife and the kids off the stage.
Does it all himself?
Just manipulative, managing his own spectacle.
So singular.
It's creepy.
We've seen this before.
These are the Newsweek guys, and here you go, the finale.
Watching him last night in that speech.
He finishes, and he's sort of, it's almost like he then ascends to look at this circumstance.
He watches us watching him.
Exactly.
He does amazing.
It is amazing.
He writes about this metaphor being a screen upon which Americans will project.
He said they want Barack Obama.
I'm not sure I am Barack Obama.
He has the self-awareness to know that this creature he's designed isn't necessarily a real person.
And he's self-aware enough.
All right.
These people are nuts.
These people are just flat-out nuts.
They are now saying the Messiah ascends after his speech.
He ascends and he watches us watching him.
He has the self-awareness to know that this creature he's designed isn't necessarily a real person.
That was Evan Thomas, who, David Rodham Gergen, if you're listening, Evan Thomas just called the first black president a creature.
Creepy creature, a creepy cult of personality creature.
A little uneasy.
So singular.
He's a creepy creature.
He ascends to heights and watches us watching him.
This creature he has designed isn't necessarily a real person.
What are they calling him a phony?
Yes, indeed, they are.
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the tiny and irrelevant nation of Iran sent a congratulatory letter to President-select Obama.
And in the letter, he told him what Iran and the world expect him to do as president of the United States.
Ahmadinezad says in his letter to Obama he expects Obama to govern based on friendship and non-interference in the affairs of others.
In the letter, Ahmadinezad also expects Obama to end, quote, policies founded on war, occupation, coercion, deception, intimidation of nations, discriminatory bilateral and global relations, and policies in practice that have enraged all nations.
That's in a quote.
He expects Obama to end all those things.
Ahmadinezad expects Obama to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, abandon Israel, disregard Iran's nuclear program, ignore their support of terror all over the world.
And this came, this came in a congratulatory letter.
Shaken all over.
Quivering all over.
The guess who.
And don't anybody send me emails that is not the guess who, it's the guess who.
It's Rush Limbaugh and Open Line Friday before we get back to the phones.
And I've got, as I mentioned earlier, I've been spending some time at Obama's new website, change.gov, Office of the President-elect, and I'm going to share with you what he's got up there because it's as good an indication as anything else we have as what he's going to do, and it's pretty consistent with his campaign.
But remember, in 2004, ladies and gentlemen, after the election was over, Newsweek magazine started running in-depth stories that they had not reported during the campaign on both George W. Bush and the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam.
They have done it again.
Now, I understand that they would not get the access they get unless they agreed to keep all this stuff off the record until after the election.
But there's part of me that wonders about the journalistic malpractice of this kind of thing.
Here they are given this access.
They learn things about both candidates that they do not report.
Instead, they stick with the template that is in this election.
We got to get Obama elected.
He's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Listen to some of these excerpts.
We just had the sound bites of Meekum and Evan Thomas, who I'm sure were involved in writing this story, talking about how creepy Obama is.
He ascends and watches people watching him, and he's manipulative.
He's a creature, created something.
He's a character that doesn't really exist.
He's not real and so forth.
They're very troubled by this.
We've seen this before.
Here's some excerpts from this Newsweek story.
Obama could marshal a lawyerly set of arguments about how he could win, that the country was at a defining point, and that Obama was the best hope to change.
Quote, I actually believe my own rhetoric, Obama stammered, uncharacteristically, in an interview with Newsweek in the spring of 2008.
Also, from this story, Barack Obama can be cocky about his star power.
Here is another excerpt: Obama was growing accustomed to adulation.
At Coretta Scott King's funeral in early 2006, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, leaned over to him and whispered, The torch is being passed to you.
Obama told an aide, a chill went up my spine.
And that's when the tingle went up Chris Matthews' leg.
And this is also, this is the funeral that the Clintons crashed.
Remember that?
We put together our funeral crashers bit.
Clintons were showing up every time Democrats died.
Also, this from the Newsweek story.
Obama understood that he had become a giant screen upon which Americans projected their hopes and fears, dreams and frustrations.
Maybe such a person never really existed, couldn't exist, but people wanted a savior nonetheless.
That's not Obama.
That's Newsweek writing about Obama.
Finally, this.
As a best-selling memoirist, he had created a mythic figure, a man named Barack Obama, who had searched and quested and overcome travails, who had found an identity and a calling in public service.
Obama recalled that he often joked with his team, this Barack Obama sounds like a great guy.
Now, I'm not sure that I'm Barack Obama, right?
He added pointedly, it wasn't entirely a joke.
This is why these guys are now out there saying he's a creature.
He's not even a real person.
He's created this myth.
I hate to be never mind.
I just knew all this.
There's nothing.
Sorry.
It was always a joke.
It was always a scam.
It was always a sham.
It was, this is nothing more than Prince's die dying, and everybody wanted to be part of the story.
All these huge crowds and so forth.
That's why I'm telling you, folks, they created a myth.
They created a creature.
He's not who he is.
He's even joking about it.
Newsweek.
Lots of people are going to be disappointed.
They have to be.
I'll explain that in greater detail in a moment.
Dover, Ohio.
Kathy, welcome to the EIB Network on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I'm a first-time caller, a long-time listener, and a rank amateur for sure.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate your standing.
I was commenting on the story Carl Cameron and Fox did on Wednesday, story in quotes, revealing the background details of the McCain campaign.
And I was watching that whole bit, I just found it odd.
Like, have I got the right channel?
Is this MSNBC?
Is this Entertainment Tonight?
It just didn't fit in with Fox's usual thing.
And last night, O'Reilly said he had received mail from viewers, upset with the story, but he defended that by saying, we report news.
This is news.
And if we don't, we become like the entertainment shows.
And that comment he made right there solidified it for me.
It says, I'm thinking, watching it, that I am, it is an entertainment piece.
You're not adding any real meat to this.
I just found it a very odd story, even for Carl Cameron, to be doing.
And at the same time.
Hold your thought there right there.
I misread the clock.
I thought I had two minutes here.
I only had one minute.
Can you hold on to the break?
Yes, I can.
Don't lose your place.
I won't.
Okay.
Even though you're an amateur, I know you can remember where you left off.
We are back, ladies and gentlemen, Open Line Friday with confessed and admitted rank amateur lovable rank editor, amateur Kathy in Dover, Ohio.
Okay, we left off with, you're just looking now at Fox or the O'Reilly Show or Carl Cameron, whoever's just entertainment reporters now.
Yes.
Last night, Bill O'Reilly was defending his position to run that story because he felt if they cherry-picked their news, that they didn't run it as news, they would become like the entertainment shows.
Yeah, but you realize how much of that turned out to be not true?
Yes.
Most of those leaks were not true.
She never did answer the door in a bathrobe.
She never, All this stuff about not knowing the countries in the continent of Africa or that Africa was a continent.
None of that is true.
Exactly.
And I'm thinking, where is Senator McCain?
Senator McCain defended Barack Obama a number of times on a campaign trail.
Why is he not opening his mouth now?
Well, I asked him.
I know the campaign is over, but I asked this question yesterday.
I made the exact point.
Anytime anybody who wasn't even associated with McCain's campaign said something like Barack Hussein Obama, then old Yosemite Sam starts prancing around all angry and so forth, like after the dynamite failed to go off and start denouncing all these people, and not even part of his campaign.
Right.
And the same people who would not investigate Obama's ties in the news media, people that were not talking about his ties, his friends in the neighborhood, his ties to Acorn, his comments on tape, turn right around and take these unfounded sources, rumors, gossip, whatever you want to call it, run with it last night on television on the other channels, just running with it and such a venom.
I mean, they hate this woman, and it's like, you don't even know if this is true.
Now, now, wait.
No, I gotta, I gotta, in fact, let me find this here because I'm glad you mentioned this.
I've got a bunch of different stacks here.
Bear with me out there, Kathy, because CNN, Campbell Brown, ran a story defending Sarah Palin.
Okay.
I have it.
I didn't hear that one.
Well, that's why you have this show on.
That's right.
Here we go by Campbell Brown.
Now, this is this might only be on their website.
I don't know that it aired either.
Whatever you may have thought about McCain's running mate, try to put all that aside for just a moment because Sarah Palin's who she is.
She did not become measurably more intelligent or measurably less intelligent during this campaign.
Remember, she was only part of this campaign for a matter of nine weeks.
Sarah Palin's who she is, which is why I find it so stunning that the very people who introduced us to her, who told us that she would make a great vice president, have now turned on her with a vengeance.
They are the top advisors to John McCain's failed campaign.
They are desperate to find somebody to blame for their long, long list of mistakes.
They have been launching grenades at Palin and her supporters.
CNN has found some of their allegations to be patently false.
Having a heart attack here because CNN admits they investigated something.
Well, and then you've got, God bless Greta Van Festerin.
She says, I don't agree with the issues, a lot of the issues that Governor Palin stands for, but they're attacking her personally.
Why are they doing this?
I mean, and she called that reporter, the CNN reporter that was sucking Sarah Palin into that Newsweek article and distorted the article.
And Greta called for him to apologize to the governor.
Well, let's see.
The next day, he got on camera and did something that was supposed to be, I think, an apology.
If they hadn't told me that's what it was, I would have never guessed.
And he went on to call the man that wrote the article in National Review and apologize to him.
But no apology to the governor.
How interesting.
No, and I have here a, I guess a press release or a statement from John and Cindy McCain.
A thank you.
Cindy and I would like to take a moment to thank you for your loyal and steadfast report in the course of this campaign.
Governor Palin, her husband, our families, friends, and campaign staff extend our deep appreciation for your tireless dedication, support, and friendship.
But there's not a word in this other than the Sarah Palin, thanks you too.
Not a word in this about what's going on.
Governor Palin.
His campaign.
Now, let me explain something to you.
And I want to get your reaction to.
I think you go back, if you remember before she was chosen, there were all kinds of leaks coming out of the McCain campaign for Lieberman.
Yes.
And we now know who was pushing that.
It was Senator Lindsey Gramnisty from South Carolina who really wanted Lieberman because he thought that would shake up the race.
Now, all of these leaks on Sarah Palin, starting with Carl Cameron and everywhere else, and by the way, some of them even before the campaign was over.
So everybody starts speculating who's doing this.
And I will be honest, yesterday, I didn't mention any names yesterday because if I can't prove it, I don't want to get involved in naming, but everybody was naming Nicole Wallace.
Everybody on our side was saying, this has to be Nicole Wallace because Nicole Wallace, a good friend of Katie Couric, and Nicole Wallace set up Palin for Katie Kern India.
And this criticism has to come from a girl.
I mean, the wardrobe stuff and so forth.
This is petty girl criticism.
And Steve Schmitz, I would give both arms and legs if it was Nicole Wallace.
It wasn't Nicole Wallace.
And now Nicole Wallace, we've got audio soundbite.
She's out.
Her former name is Devonish.
She worked in the Bush White House.
She knew with the campaign.
She got married to some guy, obviously named Wallace, but she's saying, I admire Sarah Palin.
So they've written her off as the leaker.
But there's nobody, there's a lot of names that people are speculating, and I'm not going to go any further.
But the bottom line is, you're right.
There are people in that campaign, and so is Campbell Brown, trying to save their own skins for the next campaign.
They're the ones that screwed this up.
Every moderate Republican that had anything to do with the McCain campaign ought to not be on another presidential campaign.
This is how they see it.
And, you know, what is it?
CNN last night doing this story on right-wing rage.
Let me be honest with you, Kathy, and you'll probably agree with me on this, although I don't want to put words in your mouth.
If there is any right-wing rage today, it is at the moderates in the Republican Party who are responsible for taking this party down a sewer that nobody knows what it stands for anymore.
That's right.
Governor Palin ignited a dead and dry campaign.
Volunteers and contributions came out of the woodwork within hours of her being put out there in Dayton, Ohio.
And I think all of this, you know, she's tough, she's smart, she's competent, she's articulate, a doer, and she's got a proven track record to prove that.
And she just doesn't talk.
She's done the walk.
And I think that's what her attackers fear most, that she's too effective at flushing the waste where it belongs.
Exactly right.
She is a threat to the modern Republican Party, which is made up of a bunch of linguine spine moderates.
You are dead on right on the money, and they're trying to take her out now.
But the problem is that conservatives and Republicans, and I just gave you the details from a Rasmussen report, love this woman.
And it's not even arguable, and it's not even close.
Kathy, I appreciate the call.
Thank you so much.
Up next to Brian in Gilroy, California.
Great to have you, Brian.
Yeah, how's it going?
Yeah, fine, too.
Thank you very much.
I'm just concerned that her, just because one interview, her whole career is over, and how did that happen?
Just one bad interview, her whole thing, her perception was changed.
Independents liked her, women liked her, and that since those two interviews, the whole perception changed.
How can she recover?
And then why did they even let her do that right off the bat?
I don't know why they let her do it, those kind of things.
Let me tackle your other question.
Of course, she can overcome this.
This is not going to flavor her for the rest of her career whatsoever.
But it does demonstrate the power of the drive-bys.
Let me give you the answer your question in a different way.
I have here, what is this?
This is another Rasmussen report survey.
55% Of American voters say Congress is doing a poor job.
30% of Democrats do not know who Harry Reid is.
19% of Democrats say Congress is doing a good job.
Congress has consistently scored lower this year in voter approval than even President Bush.
Yet, they got reelected and expanded their numbers in both the House and the Senate.
Now, how do you explain that, Brian?
Well, I guess only Fox News is only on the channel.
No, it's the drive-by media.
That's what I was saying.
Most of the media is like totally warp.
And the only one that's fair is Fox.
But see, now look, I've got two schools of thought on this, two frames of mind.
On the one hand, the realist in me says this is the way it is.
The Democrats are going to always be promoted and made out to be lovable, successful, competent, caring people by the media.
Republicans are always going to be made out as racist, sexist, bigots, homophobes.
That's just the reality.
It doesn't mean that I like it.
It's just the way it is.
On the other hand, I am totally aware of how it unlevels the playing field and how basically unfair it is.
And I've also learned to realize that most people, when they see this kind of blatant imbalance and unfairness, are not going to recognize it as such.
They will be affected.
So you bring up Sarah Palin.
What can she do essentially to make the media like her?
Well, there's only one thing she can do to make the media like her, and that's become a Democrat.
It's something we're going to have to face here.
There's only one way a Republican can be liked and get fawning coverage, and that's either criticize your own party on television or join them with legislation that hurts your own party or become one of them.
That's the only way.
This has to be done outside the mainstream media.
And I have constantly warned people: if you're looking for validation that our ideas are right and accepted from the mainstream media applauding us, you are going to die miserable because it's never going to happen.
The mainstream media, we've got a tougher challenge than Democrats do.
They just have to run against us.
We have to run against them and the media.
And that's what she was doing.
That's what she was doing.
And that's why our side loved her.
And her image was not.
With the people that were prepared to vote for her, her image wasn't harmed at all.
It was enhanced.
She enhanced her own image.
Did you just hear me go through the Rasmussen numbers on Republicans and their views?
Yeah, I heard that.
All right.
Well, so why do you care what Democrats think of her?
I mean, when you know they're going to be threatened by her.
Hella moderate Republicans are threatened by her.
And they're both trying to take her out.
It's a testament to her effectiveness.
People are afraid of her ability.
We need someone like Ronald Reagan that can, with a conservative message, appeal to everybody.
Yep.
We need, and she's it.
Or she's not the only one.
Bobby Jindal can do it too.
These people, just these two that I've mentioned, have the ability to go on television and get over the heads of the media and communicate articulately the conservative point of view with people.
This is not a liberal country.
It's not a center-left country.
Look at the exit polls.
Look at the number of people who identified themselves as conservatives versus liberals.
This is a center-right country.
Barack Obama, now some of you are going to just not believe me on this.
Obama, in the last three weeks of this campaign, was running as a conservative.
Tell me the last liberal you ever heard promising a tax cut for 95% of the American people.
We know it's a lie, but the great unwashed out there who only started paying attention the last three, whoa, McCain, I'm going to cut your channel.
She said, I believe it.
He didn't specify a number.
People believe numbers, 95%, 250,000.
Keep hammering those two numbers.
And when you say 95% are going to get a tax cut and only people over 250, doesn't matter what about their lies.
Only 250 above are going to get a tax increase.
He's governing as a conservative or he's campaigning as a conservative.
He came out against gay marriage.
He had a caveat to it.
But in the last weeks, he was, whenever he did get specific on an issue, the only screw-up he had was with Joe the Plumber.
When he said we want to spread the wealth around, that got dicey.
Had we had somebody who could have made hay out of it, then it would have had a damaging effect on the one.
So this, that's, folks, that's why I'm sitting here in sort of a good mood.
This country has not gone far-left extremist left.
Now, there are 40 million people or 47 million who don't pay taxes, and there are 40% of the country who probably want to go socialist as far as they understand it.
But it ain't 51%.
It isn't 60%.
We're not there yet.
And Obama's going to try to move this country as far left as he can.
I will explain how.
And he's been honest about it in previous parts of the campaign from his change.gov president-elect website.
I'll give you this.
He wants to give $2 billion to an international fund for schools to train terrorists or kids that will become terrorists to love America.
$2 billion for education in the Middle East to get rid of the hate.
Just a tip of the iceberg.
I got to run.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Man, things just keep falling into my lap here.
Politicians of both parties unwittingly make me look like the genius I already am.
Christopher Shays, moderate congressman from Connecticut who was sent packing on Tuesday.
There are now no Republican members of the House from a northeastern state.
So Christopher Shays decided to go on MSNBC and tell the Republican Party how it needs to win, what it needs to do to win, after he just got wiped out.
He was on with Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.
Well, we saw what happened to Sununu, who had a lot of support, a lot of good marks in the Senate, but he couldn't go against what was going on in New England as well as on the Senate side.
Sue Collins had a terrific victory.
She got more votes than Barack Obama, and she ran against a very competent opponent.
So, I mean, I think our party's going to do fine.
Ultimately, it's going to figure it out.
It's not that they weren't conservative enough.
Maybe in some areas being fiscally conservative, I'd agree, but being socially conservative to religious right, no, you're not going to be in the majority that way.
You've got to reach out to African Americans.
You've got to reach out to Latinos.
And you've got to be an inclusive party.
And we aren't right now, but we will be, or we will be extinct.
I don't know what to say to this, except good riddance.
We just had our clocks cleaned.
Senator Shays just had his own clock cleaned.
Congressman Shays just had his own clock cleaned.
And this is, by the way, typical drive-by.
You go to a Republican who lost and ask him how to win.
He's as moderate as a Republican could get and he lost.
We didn't reach out to Hispanics.
Have you ever heard of amnesty?
Have you ever heard of comprehensive immigration reform?
Meaningful.
Meaningful.
Comprehensive immigration.
Have you ever heard of that, Mr. Shays?
We didn't reach out to blacks.
We don't reach out.
We can't win with the.
This is this typical Northeast elitist attitude.
We cannot win with the religious right.
You're not going to be in the majority that way.
How the hell do we do it in the 80s?
How the hell do we do it in 1994?
So this is just classic.
Go to a candidate who lost, ask him what the Republicans need to do to win.
This guy was, I mean, he's as moderate as you can get.
He's reaching across the aisle.
He's reaching out.
He's doing town meetings.
Swept away.
In the midst of having the party's clock cleaned, the architects of the clock cleaning are now telling us that we didn't do what we did that got the clock cleaned in the first place.
We need to do more of what we already did to get the clock cleaned.
We have one exciting hour left, a pop quiz for you coming up in the next hour, along with other exciting things.