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Oct. 23, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
October 23, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
It's the award-winning, thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, to the chagrin of many, Rush Limbaugh program here on the one and only excellence in Broadcasting Network.
And we come to you as we do each and every day from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And remember, as long as I'm here, it doesn't matter where, here is.
A telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-288 to the email address, lrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
I want to tell you what my intention is today.
I hope it happens.
I really want to try to hold myself back just a little, just a little, because I know that you are tuned in here to find out what I think and therefore what really happened last night.
But I also, I want to hear from you as well.
I really want to know what some of you think about last night because it's all over the place.
In my circle of friends, the opinions are, there's nothing that has developed as a consensus.
And so in addition to my sharing with you what really happened last night, I am curious as to your take on this.
So many observations to make.
You know, the one thing that Barack Obama has always had going for him is his likability.
The fact that everybody said and everybody thought that he was a nice guy, and he was not that last night.
He was not likable.
In spades, he was not likable last night.
He was petulant.
He was childish.
He was arrogant.
He was immature.
And I thought throughout the debate that while he might have been scoring debate points, he was eroding a lot of the positives that people have just assumed about the guy.
I've never understood the likability, but we have to admit that it's been a factor.
People thought Obama was a nice, likable guy.
Last night, he joined, I guess he graduated from the Joe Biden school because he wasn't likable last night.
I also, I've gone through the lib media.
They're despondent today.
The lib media in the newspapers are despondent because they can't say that Obama won.
They're really just because he didn't.
In the way in which they needed him to win, which was a Romney implosion, they didn't get that.
They needed Romney to do something to stop his mitmentum, and that didn't happen.
And they are despondent there also.
We got the soundbite coming up.
There was a, well, there are focus groups all over the place.
The Luntz focus group on Fox last night.
You didn't see this, Snerdley, because you were done.
Snerdley and Dawn went to the debate last night.
They got front row media seats in the media center, 3,000 people, and all the other media were ticked off that they ended up in a front row.
They didn't like that at all, folks.
Some little hack from the Miami Herald approached a radio station doesn't.
Some little local Miami media guy walks up and sees the media tags that Dawn and Snerdley are with, ah, Rush Limbaugh.
Well, it's amazing.
It's amazing he's even around after all.
And Dawn just lit into this guy, and he ended up apologizing and said he didn't mean anything about it.
And Dawn said, yes, you did.
Shut up.
Snerdley, in the meantime, apparently was hustling chicks from the reports that I got while sitting in the front row.
That's right.
The good EIB corporate image was on full display last night.
At any rate, there's something else that I find fascinating.
You know, the biggest problem, well, not the biggest problem.
One of the complaints, the biggest rap on Romney that we're hearing from the media this morning is he agreed with Obama too much.
In fact, a lot of people on our side thought he agreed with Obama too much.
A lot of people on our side didn't like that debate last night.
So I must tell you, if my circle of friends is any indication, a lot of people thought Romney got his clock clean, didn't like it at all, think the election's lost.
I'm not kidding you.
But the biggest rap on Romney that we're hearing from the media this morning is he agreed with Obama too much.
And this is from the same media that's always wringing their hands and worried about Republicans not working with Democrats and we need bipartisanship.
And so Romney decided he would be, you know, Mr. Malleable last night, and they didn't like it.
And they didn't like it because Romney did not commit suicide, did not commit political suicide last night.
That's what was going to have to happen for the momentum to be reversed.
Obama needed a knockout.
And it's debatable in certain sectors whether he even won on points.
It's that unclear.
There is no consensus on this debate.
You can find people who think Obama cleaned Romney's clock.
You can find people that think Obama blew it.
The opinions are all over the place.
And there really isn't a consensus.
There's not one analysis that anybody could give that everybody would agree with.
They're all over the ballpark.
It's fascinating.
It really is.
Which is, as it always is, is much more informative about the analysts than it is about when you learn the analysts.
You learn who people are by virtue of their reaction to this.
For myself, I'm sitting watching this.
And for the first half hour, I'm scratching my head.
Obama gave Romney at least three.
And the moderator, Bob Schieffer, actually started off.
So the first half hour, there were, as I counted them, four wide open opportunities to get into Benghazi, the four dead Americans, and Obama's incompetence.
Romney didn't even put a toe in the water.
Now, I knew throughout Romney was not having brain freezes.
He was not nervous.
He wasn't forgetful.
It wasn't that he didn't know what to say.
It took me a half hour to figure out that there's a strategy here.
And once I understood the strategy that the Romney camp was employing, then the whole thing made sense to me.
And the original disquietedness and uncomfortableness and dissatisfaction that I was sensing melted away.
And I had an entirely different view.
I thought from the get-go, Obama looked mean.
I thought he looked petulant.
I thought he did not look likable.
I thought from the get-go that Obama was not helping himself, but I was curious why Romney was not taking these openings.
And Obama was begging to.
Even in the second half of the debate, Obama was begging Romney to get in on it, mix it up on Libya.
Romney wouldn't go there.
And if you read the lib media, if you look at these focus groups that had a lunch focus group last night, there's a CBS focus group in Ohio.
I was going to mention this a moment ago when I got sidetracked describing Snirdley's activities, hustling chicks down there.
There's a focus group in Ohio.
CBS did it.
Eight people and six of them thought it was a slam dunk for Romney.
Every focus group did.
Every focus group that I have read about or seen thought that Obama did better in the sense of debate performance, but that Romney cleaned up.
Because what mattered overall to everybody, these were all independents and undecided, was the economy.
And Obama still has nothing there, folks.
He's got no record.
He's got nothing to defend.
He has no retort.
He has no comeback.
He has no explanation whatsoever.
All he has is what we saw Obama the community organizer last night.
We saw a panicked, I think, Barack Obama.
We saw a guy who I think knows he's in trouble in Ohio.
I think we saw an Obama who was, and other people had this observation too, an Obama who appeared to be the challenger, not the leader and not the incumbent.
Romney owned that.
But the substance of this debate last night irritated many on our side.
And it is of great concern to many people, the substance of this debate.
Now, in terms of the debate's relevance to the campaign, this debate last night mattered the least in terms of substance.
The substance, in terms of the campaign and affecting votes, mattered hardly at all.
Appearances are what mattered.
But to people who paid attention to the substance, there were red flags galore on our side about this.
Not from me.
I was not troubled by any of it.
Once I understood the strategy, and I know Romney, I know who he is, and I know who he isn't.
I'm not having any problems with the substance of last night.
Krauthammer said it last night, I would have loved to take a baseball bet to Obama on Libya, but I'm not running.
I'm not a candidate, and I've never done it.
This is what Krauthammer said.
The emotions from last night run the gamut.
Well, I'll give you an example on the substance.
Let's talk about Afghanistan.
Our policy as orchestra articulated by Obama is to pull out of there in 2014.
Romney agreed with that.
Now, a lot of people on our side just had a near panic attack over that, and I'll tell you why.
Superpowers, real superpowers, do not determine when they are going to leave some place, particularly a war, by virtue of a date.
You leave after you've won.
For a superpower to decide to leave on a date, regardless, is a very big red flag to people who are very invested in this stuff.
And people have no choice but then to take Romney seriously.
I think Romney last night had an entirely different agenda than substance.
Well, that's not the correct way to say that either, because honestly, again, I thought when it came to sounding informed and knowledgeable and assured, it was Romney and Spades last night.
I thought, because I also know Obama does not have defensible positions on anything.
Obama had to lie about so much.
Sequestration, his apology tour.
All the fact-checking today is fun and interesting, but it doesn't matter because the substance was not a factor.
Of the three debates and the relevance to the campaign, the substance of last night's debate matters the least of the three.
But I've got a whole roster here of soundbites.
I just want to run through some of my random thoughts.
I want to get yours.
I want to do it all here today on the EIB network at the Limbaugh Institute.
So we'll take a brief profit time out here, obscene profit, and be back and get started with all the rest of it right after this.
After last night, folks, I suspect that Obama's solution to the Benghazi attack would be to send in more teachers.
Seems to be his solution to everything.
Greetings.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute to the audio soundbites.
This morning on CBS, this morning, I have a portion here of national correspondent Dean Reynolds' report, a panel of undecided Ohio voters who watched last night's debate and what they got from it.
Now, you can't see it, obviously, the radio, but Nora O'Donnell's face in this soundbite is priceless.
These people cannot believe what they are hearing.
And what we have here is we've got an undecided Ohio voter.
We've got Nora O'Donnell and the co-host Charlie Rose.
And they start off here with Dean Reynolds, who is the CBS correspondent in Ohio.
When it was all over, they were asked who won.
The president got two votes.
Governor Romney got six.
All said they'd made up their minds, at least for now.
Was this the deciding factor?
I mean, something can change tomorrow.
After all, they still have two weeks to really, truly decide.
Dean Reynolds, Steubenville, Ohio.
Look there, guys.
It looks like Romney won in Dean Reynolds' focus group.
And this was from Ohio, Steubenville, Ohio.
Interesting.
They were shocked.
You should have seen their face.
They could not believe it.
And Dean Reynolds said, well, it's still time.
Still time for them to make up their minds.
Still time to really truly change their minds.
So six out of eight.
The lunch focus group was much the same.
Basically, 27 people there.
25 of them thought that Obama won the debate.
But they're all voting for Romney.
You know why?
Because foreign policy didn't matter to them.
They all agreed with Romney's point that foreign policy is wonderful, but it's worthless without a strong America at home.
A strong American economy is what enables foreign policy and a great defense posture.
And we don't have a strong economy at home.
And all those people In the lunch group in Fort Lauderdale on debate points, it was hands down.
It was Obama won, but it didn't matter.
That's why I say the substance of this debate, which is foreign policy, was the least important of all three of these debates.
There was a CNN focus group after the debate.
The CNN focus group was identical.
Well, it was close to identical to the lunch group.
And the one thing noteworthy about the CNN focus group was that they were unhappy when Romney pivoted back to foreign policy from a discussion of the economy.
They wanted to hear more on the economy.
The CNN focus group, which also thought Romney won this, not won it, but was better of the two.
That's really the Obama won the debate, but that didn't matter.
Romney was far more preferable as a president to all of these focus groups.
And the media, Richard Cohen here in the Washington Post, very grumpy.
Both of them lied, but Obama might have been the more egregious.
USA Today, Melanie Eversley, horses, bayonets, and boredom characterized debate.
And the headline here is just the beginning of a less than joyous review by the media.
This was not the knockout that they were hoping for.
Let me tell you something.
The world media was hoping for blood in the water.
Romney blood in the water.
And they didn't get it.
And they are depressed today.
They can't say the mitum was reversed, not legitimately.
They're not even trying to.
From the political, Glenn Thrush, I mean, these guys are part of the Obama reelection campaign organization.
And the headline of the political piece by Glenn Thrush here, Mitt Romney, I come in peace.
And on page two, as it printed out, Romney was most effective when calmly articulating his economic vision and none from Obama on his second term.
Romney showed easy mastery of foreign policy details.
And that's what I figured the agenda was.
You almost could say it's rope and dope, but what Romney did last night, it made me think of something.
Remember back during one of the debates with Bush in 2000?
After one of the debates with Bush or a foreign policy appearance, or so they had to call Condoleezza Rice out to assure everybody that George W. Bush knew where India was, that knew what the subcontinent was.
You remember that?
I do.
I was thinking about it last night.
And I remember Condi Rice coming up, well, of course the governor is acutely aware of the problems of the subcontinent.
Subcontinent is India, for all intents and purposes.
There was a question whether Bush knew his geography.
Romney last night was showing everybody that he knows his stuff, that he is profoundly informed, that he is highly intelligent.
Remember all the criticisms of Bush and the Republic.
It's stupid, don't know anything.
Romney just blew all of those criticisms that still persist out of the water, I thought.
And I thought that was the secret to the strategy.
Back in a sec.
I have a full boat of callers here who think Romney did great last night.
A full boat, folks.
We'll start Los Angeles with Rick.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Welcome to EIB Network.
Thanks for having me on.
I'm a longtime listener, a first-time caller, and it's a privilege to be able to be on your show.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I understand.
I do think that last night was actually his best of the three debates.
I think Governor Romney took what I call the high road last night.
It would have been very easy to attack the president, and it would have come across exactly the way Romney said the president was coming across when he said attacking me is not an agenda.
And I think what we saw last night.
I like that line, by the way.
I really like that attacking me is not an agenda.
It's reminiscent of Bill Clinton to Bob Dole saying, no attack ever fed a hungry child.
Absolutely.
And I think several things came into play last night without even needing to be said in that what the governor demonstrated last night was a personality on a global stage that would be peaceable yet strong.
And undecided voters are the ones right now who are going to make the difference.
Rick, you want to hear an interesting statistic?
The word peace, this is from Jim Garrity, our old buddy at the Campaign Spot blog at Nashville Review.
The word peace was uttered 12 times last night, every time by Mitt Romney.
That's not surprising.
And he demonstrated especially to undecideds, because what undecideds are looking for, and that was obvious by these groups afterwards, the lunch group, that undecided voters, it's obvious that the economy is in the state that it's in.
Libya is going to be what it is.
No one needs to point it out.
It's going to come out in the news as what it already is, something that was either incredibly bad and being covered up or incredibly bad and communication wasn't being made.
And he didn't need to point those things out.
What he needed to do, I think he did.
He showed the American people and the global population that as our commander-in-chief, he would represent relationships with other nations in a peaceable yet strong format and pointed out his bipartisan capacity that wouldn't just work here at home, but it would work across the table.
Both of those men at the U.N., if they acted the way they did last night, which of the two would be a better representation of us and advancing peace in the world?
Interesting observations.
I appreciate it, Rick, very much.
I think Rick's right about something here, ladies and gentlemen.
That is the audience last night.
Now, let's admit something.
We're two weeks out.
I am decided.
I have made up my mind and nothing is changing it.
And the same thing for you, and the same thing for, I bet for all of you.
And on the left, their partisans, they've made up their mind that nothing could have happened last night to change the committed voters for either candidate.
Who's left?
Who's left out there?
Whoever they are, that was the objective of last night's strategy.
And I think that's why it was once I figured it out, and I will admit it took me a half hour to figure out what was going on.
I had alarm bells going off.
I had red flags raising.
But then it all made perfect sense.
Once I understood what was going on, it all made perfect sense.
Romney's riff about China didn't matter.
The specifics of the riff on China didn't matter.
What mattered was that when you watch it?
My God, this guy knows his stuff.
This guy knows his stuff.
Well, let me take that back.
One thing.
To the extent that the substance mattered, Romney spoke up for people in this country who've lost their jobs to cheap Chinese currency, labor, and so forth in a positive way.
I think Romney, The whole China thing ended up winning.
You don't?
Mm-hmm.
Well, yeah, we're already in a trade war with the TRICOMs in a sense.
Yeah, we're in the midst of an unfair trade balance.
There's a major imbalance.
And he did correct Obama on that.
But again, I think for me anyway, once he understood the strategy, who he was trying to appeal to and how he was trying to appeal to them, he wasn't stumped on anything.
He did not know anything.
Whatever came up, he knew it.
He knew the details.
He knew what he would do about it, whatever it was.
Which is a, I don't know, with foreign policy, America standing in the world.
At this stage of the campaign, those are the kinds of things I think that mattered to the audience he was attempting to reach.
George and Raleigh, North Carolina.
Hi, great to have you.
You're next.
How are you doing, Rush?
It's a pleasure to be on.
Thank you, sir.
Well, it wasn't until this morning that I realized what a genius Mitt Romney was.
After watching the debate last night, again, like everybody else, I wish he would have hit hard on Benghazi.
But when I turned on the news this morning, everybody in the media, whether it be the right or the left, all they were talking about was Benghazi.
And why?
Because Mitt Romney didn't.
And I think that was calculated, and I think it was genius.
Well, about that, it is an old story now.
And it has been hit.
And I don't, you know, you've got four dead Americans.
And you had Obama talking about how his policy in Libya has turned everything around.
It's now Libyans are all four Americans.
And we're all shouting at our TV, yeah, we got four dead Americans.
I think the conclusion or the strategy was there are just certain things people are going to be able to conclude themselves here.
It don't need to be hammered.
Yeah, they were, for a certain segment of the audience, great opportunities that were lost.
They were, it would have been really satisfying, for example, to have Obama hammered on this stuff.
But he already has been on this show and everywhere else.
Fox News over the weekend ran a one-hour special on this, on the entire Benghazi attack.
That's just, I hope you saw it.
It's just devastating to Obama.
It's just devastating to his foreign policy.
I appreciate it.
Call Jennifer somewhere in Europe.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Welcome.
Hey, Rush, it's great to talk to you.
Listen, I said my alarm clock was up at 3 in the morning and watched the debate.
And for the first half hour, just like you, maybe even 45 minutes, was like, what is going on?
And then all of a sudden it struck me and I had a big smile on my face for the rest of the time.
I believe that this man, Romney, is a leader.
I bet his strategy was just what he executed last month, last night.
I bet that was his strategy three months ago because he knew as a leader, you don't look to short term.
He knew that two weeks out, people would have decided.
And he's going to speak as though he is the president and he doesn't have a, he can't afford to be a petulant child.
He's going to be up there, the leader of the next leader of the free world, and I'm going to talk to those people that I'm going to be across the aisle from when I am president, just like I did in Massachusetts.
He said that twice last night.
I believe that this was his strategic decision three months ago, and he executed it beautifully last night.
Well, you say you're somewhere in Europe.
Are you in Eastern or Western Europe?
Western Europe.
Western Europe, okay.
Yes.
You got it at 3 a.m. working overseas.
Yeah, but since you said somewhere, you obviously don't want to specify.
I'm trying to figure out where you are.
Yeah.
You got up at 3 a.m. to see the debate, right?
Yes.
You got it at 3 a.m.
You're in Western Europe, 3 a.m. to see the debate.
I got a pretty good idea where you might be.
Yes.
Yes.
And I just, I couldn't have been more happy.
I went to sleep at 5 o'clock, slept like a baby calmly, knowing that we're going to have a Republican in the White House.
I believe it.
I appreciate that.
Jennifer, thanks very much.
I'm glad that you were able to get through all the way from Europe, have your perspective of it.
What is your line of work?
Can you say?
Yeah, I'm in the mental health profession.
Mental health profession.
Yes, sir.
Cool.
So you really like talking to intelligent people like me.
Rush, I tell you what, you have made my year.
Just being next to your brilliant.
I was just, look, I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
And I'm really, as I said, I'm glad you got through.
Okay, thanks, Rush.
You better.
Have a good day.
We'll take a brief time out and back with much more.
Don't go away here on the EIP network.
Now, she had to be in France or Spain.
Both those are six hours ahead.
And she said she got up at three.
So it had to be France or Spain where our last caller, Jennifer, called from.
And check the email.
What do you mean, Rush Obama was just unlikable?
Come on, folks.
Do you really?
That was a slam-dunk observation.
Just a split screen, just Obama's stare.
In fact, there was a point in this debate.
I think it was in the, well, it was the last half.
It might have been last 15 or 20 minutes.
There was a point in this debate where Obama was staring Romney down viciously.
You can see it on a split screen, and it did not distract Romney.
Romney was speaking.
It didn't distract him at all.
He was jumping in Obama's chili at the time, and it didn't stop him.
This attempt to intimidate didn't work at all.
Well, I don't know what you call it when you have a community organizer explaining to Mitt Romney how aircraft carriers work.
Governor Romney, we have these things called aircraft carriers.
Airplanes land on them.
And you might not know, but we got boats that go underwater.
They call submarines.
Folks, I don't care who you are.
I guarantee you the drive-by media was cringing over those things.
That's not, remember, you have to judge Obama.
So I told you last time, you have to judge Obama in the context of 2008.
Not the first debate, not the second debate, not just this campaign.
You've got to go back to who he was in 2008.
And he was Mr. Messiah.
He was unlike anything this country had ever seen, and it was all positive.
He was magic.
He was going to bring everybody together.
Old politics was going to be vanishing.
Race relations were going to heal.
Post-partisan days were ahead.
The world was going to love us.
People made of Obama whatever they wanted.
And those that made positive vibes of him created this incredible creature, this caricature of Mr. Perfect.
And chief among the things that he always had going for him was he was likable.
In addition to being the first black president, he was likable first black president.
He always had that to fall back on.
He always had that to rely.
Last night he wasn't likable.
He was last, this whole debate season, Barack Obama, without aid of a teleprompter and without, other than one instance of assistance offered by Candy Crowley, he was without media help, without his usual safeguards and comfort zones.
Obama eroded all of the positives that have built up about him.
He did it himself.
You take his prompter away, you take his supportive media away, you take a protective cocoon of supporters and strategists thrown away from him, put him out there all on his own, and the real Obama surfaces.
And that's why the media today can't proclaim him a winner.
They don't.
He wasn't likable.
He wasn't.
They can't sell.
Not with any credibility.
They can't sell the Obama they saw last night.
That's why I've been, I mean, scratch the surface with these media.
Sir, here's a Washington Post.
In the third debate, candidates agree on more than you would think.
They can't, they regret that they can't name Obama the winner.
The New York Times final debate, their editorial, a rant about Romney, but they also declined to hail Obama as the victor.
They do not say that Obama won this last night.
There was no momentum shift.
Romney didn't lose a vote last night.
Obama didn't gain any.
Carter SQ, Washington Post, technical victory for Obama, but gained little.
Despite winning a technical victory, Obama gained little tonight.
The National Journal.
Folks, this one is big, too.
National Journal, Ron Fournier.
Now, Ron Fournier used to be the AP.
Ron Fournier is as in the tank for Obama.
He is a total partisan.
I was going to say hack, but in terms of objective journalist, he's not.
Obama wins third debate, but Romney wins debate season.
The state of the race is likely unchanged, as Mitt held his own.
And on page three, Fournier finds it unfathomable.
Obama hasn't laid out a second term agenda yet.
This is somebody in his day.
This is somebody who is effectively part of his campaign.
Not meaning to offend Ron Fournier here.
I'm just illustrating to you the partisan he is.
And I'm telling you, they're disappointed.
And they're disappointed because they believe the caricature they created back in 2008.
They believe this omnipotent, greater than anyone else, smarter than anyone else, cleverer than anyone else.
They believe the picture that they painted of him.
And he's illustrated in this campaign.
It's not who he is.
He's actually petty, snarky, gets upset.
This guy can't even stand being questioned.
How dare anybody question him?
Daily Beast, Daily Beast, Tina Brown's publication.
Brett O'Donnell, Obama wins third debate, but Romney wins debate war.
This guy's echoing Ron Fournier.
Obama only won because he was the aggressor.
But he didn't win anything.
Nothing changed.
Associated Press Charles Babington.
Obama will win the debate on points, but it won't matter much.
You can't find any positive reviews of Obama.
Well, not in the mainstream left-wing press.
Here's Chris Wallace last night, Fox News coverage after the debate.
Obama was slashing, was personal, was cutting.
I thought that Romney was big picture, seemed to have much more of an agenda for the future than the president did.
And I emailed one of his top aides in the course of the debate and said, what's behind this strategy?
And clearly he was not taking the bait, not getting into fights with Barack Obama.
And this official said, this is all Mitt Romney's idea.
This is how he wants to conduct this debate.
They asked Bob Portman, Robert Portman, Rob Portman, who's been portraying Obama in Romney debate rehearsals.
They had him on Fox.
He's a great guy, by the way.
He's a little too moderate for a bunch of conservatives, but I like him.
I've met him.
He and his wife, they're hilarious.
They're great people.
And Portman was asked, well, whose strategy was this?
It was Mr. Romney's.
You know, we're here for the ride, but he makes the call on this stuff.
And Chris Wallace, right on the money.
Whatever happened last night, this was Romney's strategy.
He came up with it, executed it for whatever reasons he had.
I got a brief timeout, but we're not through.
Don't go away.
F. Chuck Todd, NBC News, said today, it's too late for Obama to disqualify Romney.
Too late.
What Obama has to do now is requalify himself.
That's Chuck Todd, NBC News.
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