http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/07/19/romney_vaults_into_lead_and_that_s_before_the_real_obama_emerged_in_roanokeRomney Vaults into Lead -- and That's Before the Real Obama Emerged in Roanoke
July 19, 2012
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Tax returns, is Romney a felon, and, you know, the interesting thing is that out there, where you live, nobody cares. Nobody cares about Romney and Bain Capital, at least in terms of whether or not he was a felon. Nobody cares about the villain in the movie Batman being named Bane. Nobody cares about Romney's tax returns. Nobody cares what Obamacare is about.
In fact, this country is standing up in outrage over what Obama said. And by the way, you Democrats are trying to tell us that we took him out of context. They're doubling down on this now. Elizabeth Warren is back doubling down on this whole notion that if you got a road in front of your business, that road and the people that built it are the reason you succeeded. You have nothing to do with it. She's back; they're doubling down on it.
The people of this country have finally seen what I've been trying to say for four years. I don't mean to make this about me. I don't have to try to make things about me. They're gonna do that anyway. This is why I said, "I hope he fails." This is who he's always been. This is who Barack Obama is. And all this about how likable Obama is, what a great guy he is, he is snarky, he's sneering, he's angry when he made those statements in Roanoke, Virginia, last Friday night. For some reason, the truth emerged. He was irritated, fed up, tired, not supposed to be here in the polls. It wasn't supposed to be this close. He was supposed to be way ahead, rocking on to a practically uncontested second term.
Romney was the guy they wanted. They wanted Romney, Occupy Wall Street, run against Wall Street, Bain Capital, they wanted Romney. Now the CBS/New York Times poll is out, registered voters, not likely voters -- this poll is amazing. You dig deep in the internals, Romney is ahead of Obama for the first time in the New York Times/CBS poll. That's a detail, by the way, that the CBS article of the poll ignores completely. In fact, according to the New York Times, 45% say they would vote for Romney if the election were now; 43% say they would vote for Obama, which means that Romney's really up by two. But the pollsters decided to throw in undecided leaners so they could cut Romney's lead by half down to 1%.
The guys over at The Politico, Mike Allen says, (paraphrasing) "Well, come on, it doesn't mean anything. Nobody's ahead and nobody's behind. This is all a margin of error." And so when the Republican launches ahead in the polls, then all of a sudden the polls don't matter. But you dig deep in some of the internals in this poll, and you find some amazing stuff. You go back and you compare the results of this poll -- and they did this at Power Line -- compare this poll to the same poll's results in April to get a trend. Handling of the economy, back in April, Obama at 44%. Today's poll, 39%. Impact of policies on respondents' own financial situation, not good for Obama. Well, 64% blame Obama's policies.
Folks, it's all in this poll, and this is registered voters, not likely. If it were likely voters, it would be even worse. Sixty-four percent blame Obama's policies for where we are. Finally, folks, you've been asking, "When are these polls gonna match up? When are all these polls that say we're going in the wrong direction, my life isn't getting better, when are they gonna match up with an accompanying decline in Obama's approval?" Looks like it's happening in this poll. Favorability rating, Obama 36%. You remember when Bush hit the thirties on CNN? It was all they talked about for three straight hours. We had that montage of Wolf Blitzer, breaking news, everything coming to a screeching halt, the president's approval numbers, a new low in the CNN poll, in the thirties.
Well, here we go to the CBS/New York Times poll, Obama, back in April, he was at 42% approval, 45% disapproval. Well, favorable and unfavorable. Thirty-six percent favorable in the New York Times/CBS poll. A plurality of voters think Obama's policies will make them worse off and that Romney's will make them better off. It's all here in this poll, and there's a couple of other interesting aspects here. Among independents, Obama's personal favorability is at 28%, not 36. Now, this is the group that the Republican establishment said, "Don't criticize Obama, no, no, no. The independents, they want to compromise, shake hands, everybody get together, cross the aisle, work together, compromise," blah, blah, blah.
Among the independents, Obama's personal favorability is 28% with 52% unfavorable. This is among independents. Romney 32% favorable, 31% unfavorable. So I guess this Bain stuff is really working, isn't it? I guess this tax return stuff's really working, isn't it? And I guess this, "You didn't build that! Somebody else made that happen" is working. I guess this stuff is really working. By the way, this poll, ladies and gentlemen, has weighted the Democrats with a 6.5-point sample advantage.
What they've done... And this is another indication. What they did in the composition of the respondents in the poll, is they basically went out and they duplicated election returns. They had a Democrat sample of about 52% or 53% in the poll. They had a Republican sample, independent sample that pretty much equaled what the election in 2008 was. Well, we all know that those numbers no longer work because a lot of Democrats have abandoned Obama. He's not gonna get 53%. Even if he wins, he's not gonna get 53%.
But they are weighting Obama by 6.5 points Democrat over Republican in the CBS/New York Times poll. Even doing that, Obama's losing by two points. Even with a 6.5-point respondent Democrat advantage, Obama is down two! Now, the media, they're gonna look at this and you're probably gonna hear this, and the standard reply is gonna be what The Politico is doing: "Weeeell, it's margin of error, and this race has always been close. It's always gonna be close.
"Every poll's gonna be like this for the remainder of the race. There's nobody ahead and there's nobody losing." So when Romney vaults ahead, all of a sudden the polls do not matter. And now the Democrats are doing everything they can to distract from the polls. But, see, as I said: People don't care about Romney's tax returns. In fact, I can't remember where I saw this, but this is a great idea for Romney to do when Obama or somebody starts ripping into him for having money in the Grand Caymans and elsewhere offshore.
Romney can say, "Yep. And if you win, I'm taking even more money out of the country and putting it offshore. Anybody who had the ability to would be wise to do the same thing." You know, be aggressive. Be on offense. You don't have to make excuses for anything. Romney is on fire. You know, even Jeb Bush has come out and criticized Obama. Do you realize how major a thing that is?
Even Jeb Bush doesn't like this!
Yeah, he doesn't like this idea that Obama's out there saying people didn't build their own businesses.
And as I say, they're doubling down on this with Elizabeth Warren now. She's doubled down on it. All this talk about being taken "out of context"? Not true. This is who he is, folks. This is what I, and you, have been trying to tell everybody for four years.
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RUSH: Now, Elizabeth Warren is running for the Senate. This is from the Boston Herald: "Elizabeth Warren yesterday came to the defense her former boss President Obama’s controversial statement that businesses’ owners can’t take credit for their success...'" They mean to say this. There's no "out of context." There was, in addition to the words, a sneering, snarky attitude about this.
Folks, I am telling you: These are full-fledged, dyed-in-the-wool Marxist-Leninists. And they have a deep-rooted dislike, resentment -- in some cases hatred -- for capitalism, for this country. And I've spent my life trying to figure out why. I've told you on this program I don't know how many times that sometimes I descend into mindless idealism. I can't intellectually understand why anybody would hate this country. The freedom, the opportunity... The freedom is such a big deal.
That's why the rest of the world still wants to get here. A guy at National Review (I forget who; Peter Kirsanow, I think) was making a point about this, "You got a road in front of your business." He said they had roads in the Soviet Union. They have roads in Cuba. They have bridges in Myanmar. But they don't have anywhere near the kind of human existence that we have in America. So what's missing? They have roads in Detroit. They have bridges everywhere.
But you listen to these people: "Roads and bridges!"
Roads and bridges are casually thrown out as cliches, almost like, "We need to invest in education," as though we haven't been. Our problem is we've been investing too much money in education and not enough in learning. "Roads and bridges! Got a road, got a bridge? The people that built that, that's why your business is successful!" Well, as he points out, there are roads throughout totalitarian countries, and the businesses on those roads are nothing. Because there's a big missing factor, and that's freedom.
Even though I intellectually don't understand people hating the country, I intellectually understand that they do. And at times I've tried to figure out why. It's a wasted exercise, other than for the fun of it to see if you can actually peg it, and I know that I have. I know that I have. It's a combination of things, and it's a devotion to collectivism. It's a devotion to a central-planning authority that they run. They don't want to be in the hoi polloi. Obama and the rest, they don't want to the subjects of their ideas.
They want to be those who implement and administer their rules. But it's not about being "fair." Those are just methods. Those are just ways to get where they want to go. It's about contempt. They have contempt for average people. "Average people" cannot do anything on their own. They're just not capable. That's probably the umbrella under which it all operates. So don't buy this out-of-context stuff. This is who they are. This is who Obama has always been, and this is what he is attempting to implement.
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RUSH: You didn't build that. You didn't make that happen. You didn't have anything to do with that. There's a lot of smart people out there. A lot of smart people that don't have anything. You've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. "You didn't build that" captures the split of the left and right in America today, 2012. I speculate on these people that hate the country. One of the things they do -- Obama's a classic illustration -- they start with the kids. Cartoon shows, classroom, day-to-day life, communist parents, leftist parents start maligning the country, how unfair it is, how unjust, all the horror stories of our nation's past.
They get these kids literally hating this country, and the kids grow up to become Occupy Wall Street members or they want to go into journalism and change the world. They want to take down a presidency. I read a fascinating piece. Conrad Black reviewed Douglas Brinkley's book on Walter Cronkite. And in the review, Conrad Black makes a point some of you might think is a little narrow in its scope. He said the place that we can trace the current sharp ideological, cultural rot divide is two things: the Vietnam War and Watergate. He blames Cronkite for both of 'em, but the left in general. His point essentially is that when journalists discovered they could secure defeat of the United States in a war and take out a president, it forever changed the way they look at their job.
And, of course, the Democrat Party and the media are one and the same. They don't even stop to consider that we could have won in Vietnam. They don't stop to consider that Watergate was basically a fraud. Conrad Black writes Watergate was a fraud. To this day nobody can really tell you what Watergate was. But the sense of power that the Democrat Party and the media felt and achieved, losing a war, securing the defeat of a war they thought was unjust and we had no business winning and then ridding the White House of a president they despise, he said that forever changed the nature of journalism, and in fact Congress'. And he says until -- and this is never gonna happen -- until liberals admit their culpability by securing defeat in Vietnam and ridding the country of a president, until that happens, every presidency is gonna be a failed presidency because the objective of a media is going to be to either get rid of a Republican president or artificially prop up a liberal president who's doing horrible, rotten things, all for the express purpose of seeing the power unfold.
I think he's on to something with this. The media monopoly is not what it was during Vietnam and Watergate. They don't have a monopoly anymore. They long for the days of their monopoly. And I think much of what they do is now designed to show themselves and everybody else they've still got the power to shape opinion, majority opinion amongst the population.
That is what motivates them, excites them, prove to themselves they can still do it. If it takes six years, we're gonna destroy George W. Bush, because we destroyed Nixon. We showed it can be done, so that's now the objective. In fact, Woodward, Bernstein, getting rid of a president, it's why so many people wanted to go into journalism. They wanted to take truth to power. They wanted to wipe the powerful out, unless they're liberal Democrats, of course.
So you start with the kids. They go to journalism school. They go into movies, entertainment, what have you. They go into pop culture. They are taught from the moment they can understand the language that this country is horribly rotten. I think it's exactly who Obama is. Every influence he's had. Every formative influence, from his father on down to his stepfather, to his mother, to his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, to his professors, it's all been how rotten this country is. And now he's president. Now, they can't be honest. They still haven't got to the point where they can be honest about it. That's what amazing about this slip up. For some reason Obama was really frustrated on Friday and he just let fly with what he has been covering up. He let fly with what they've been trying to mask, and that is their distaste, their literal dislike for this country.
Well, the mask is gone. And now people who were having trouble getting their arms around the idea that we'd elected somebody that doesn't really like the country, now they're seeing it. And they're not happy about it. Six pages, when you print it out. The New York Post went around and talked to business people. This is happening all over the country. Chicago Tribune, business owners, people that voted for Obama are livid with this. And they're writing, and they're talking about their hardscrabble stories. Their parents, their grandparents, the hard work establishing and maintaining a business and all that went with it. No vacations. No extra money. No movies.
Many of these people voted for Obama, and now they hear him say, "You didn't do that. You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Finally people are getting their arms around this now, and it's helping to put all this other stuff in perspective. What do you mean, Romney's tax returns? Who cares? They're not talking about Romney's tax returns anywhere. Ask yourself, wherever you live, if you still read your local paper. How much attention in the local news is there about Romney's taxes? You might see on the front page a wire service story from the New York Times about it, but is anybody in your local town talking about whether or not Romney's tax returns, he needs to release more or whether Romney's got offshore money.
You know what they're talking about: 386,000 unemployment applications, just out today. You remember last week the media was excitedly and breathlessly reporting the plunge in applications for unemployment. Well, now Reuters today is despondent over this news. We're inching dangerously close to 400,000, that magic number of unemployment compensation applications, 386,000. We have a country in a tailspin, and this is what people care about, and this is what people are talking about. They're not talking about what Obama wants everybody to talk about. Oh, the media is, but the media is not succeeding in distracting people.
And this CBS/New York Times poll today with Romney ahead by two? Yes, it's margin of error, but still, it's a first. Trust me, in the White House they're not saying, "Eh, it's margin of error. You know it's gonna be like this the rest of the way." They're not saying that. Because the trend, which is easy to see, is not good news for Barack Hussein Obama. So we have weekly unemployment claims up now to 386,000. Next week that's gonna be revised up and it's gonna be at least 390,000.
Foreclosures. People are still losing their houses. (interruption) What do you mean, "How is it possible?" (interruption) We have not "turned the corner." We have not done that. We have not gone in a positive direction in this economy in 3-1/2 years. Everybody knows it. That's what people are talking about. "Factory activity contracted for a second month in a row." US manufacturing, therefore, is on a downward trend. "Home sales dropped 5.4% -- the biggest decline in home sales in nine months. Retail sales dropped for the third straight month. Consumer confidence is down to 84.7.
"US business inventories increased by 0.3%." That's replacement. "Retail sales nationwide are down 0.1%. Food prices are skyrocketing" because of the drought. And where's Obama on that, by the way? He was gonna lower the sea levels; why not make it rain? And last week we learned that more people are signing up for disability than are signing up for unemployment. Now, this is what people are talking about. John Nolte assembled this list at Breitbart.com. This is what real people are living, what real people are talking about.
And what real people are starting to understand is Obama doesn't care about them. And even if he did, they're starting to realize there's nothing he could do about it 'cause he doesn't know how and he doesn't really care. And a precious few people are beginning to understand that all of this news actually facilitates what Obama wants to happen. That is a bigger government to come in and "fix" all these problems that, of course, will not be fixed. But the government will get bigger. The government will have more power.
But all of these things... Ah, they may be reported, but that's it. After the unemployment news today from Reuters that's all they'll say about it 'til next Thursday. If it were a Republican president, it would be the only news of the day and it would carry over to the Sunday shows with a job expert here and a job expert there trying to explain what it all meant. Obama, whatever he wants, he gets. If he wants this to be a one-day story, that's it. They can try as hard as they want to try make people care about Romney's tax returns, but they don't.
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RUSH: Even the New York Times is admitting that nobody cares about Romney's taxes. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times polling story today. Obama's class warfare has been a failure. The New York Times says, quote, "Despite months of negative advertising from Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies seeking to further define Mr. Romney as out of touch with the middle class and representative of wealthy interests, the poll shows little evidence of any substantial nationwide shift in attitudes about Mr. Romney."
Because try as you might, New York Times, this election isn't about Romney. This election is about Obama. You can try all day to make it about Romney, and what you're admitting is everything you've tried to do is not working. He's a tax cheat? Not working. He's got money in the Caymans? Not working. Make fun of his wife's horse? Didn't work. In fact, they're even apologizing for those attacks. Do you know that? The Democrat National Committee is pulling back. They're announcing they're pulling back on criticism of Ann Romney's horse and apologizing for doing that.
Yep, yep, yep. I have it right here in the Stack.
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RUSH: It's a question that I raised at the end of the first hour. Snerdley looked at me like I was an idiot. When most people look at you like you're an idiot, does it make you feel like maybe you are an idiot? That's not how it affects me. When somebody looks at me like they think I'm an idiot, I think, "How thick are they not to understand what I'm saying?" So Obama goes out there Friday night in Roanoke and says this, the sound bite that has aired a million times, that everybody's reporting, that Obama says clearly. They made a day-long attempt to say it was out of context, that people were taking it out of context, but that didn't work, and so what survives is Obama saying to business owners, "You got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made it happen."
That is active. Everybody is acting on the assumption Obama said it, and he meant it. It's inflicting great damage. They're doing nothing to walk this back. They're doing nothing to tell people, "No, no, no, no, that's not what he meant." He is not going out and saying, "Now, look, I misspoke the other day." He's not doing that. You might think if he did it would be a futile effort. But to let something like this stand -- clearly he did not mean to say this. Let the guard down, finally we got a dead on look at who he really is. I've always said that at some point these liberals are gonna give themselves away. You can't survive in a mask and a costume your whole life. Well, the fact that they haven't tried to walk this back in any way is telling, is it not? It must mean that they don't want to even try to walk it back.
So could it mean that Obama, "Okay, well, that's out there," and he really thinks that this is how he's gonna win reelection? That there are more people who will agree with him on this and support him on this because they will interpret this as Obama saying, "I'm gonna go get 'em. They have gotten where they are by walking all over you, and I am your defender, I am your protector. You're just as smart as they are. You work just as hard as they do, and you build a road and you build a bridge, and they used it, and you got nothing. Well, I'm here to take it back for you." He must think that if he puts all the people together who think that way plus all the other campaign groups that he's targeting, that he's got a winning coalition. He must think that.
I don't know why they're not trying to walk it back. Do you? It's living, it's breathing. Romney is getting mileage out of it. It has brought Romney to life. There is a new Mitt Romney. Now, we need more than two days out of this. This needs to be the real new Mitt Romney for the rest of the campaign. This message needs to penetrate small business owners who are still open and small business employees who are still working because they could be next. This unemployment situation is not getting any better. I'm a little curious that there hasn't been one effort, not one serious effort to walk this back.
Instead, what have we gotten? We've gotten Romney, Bain, by the way, I think they're letting that go. This New York Times poll that's out today factors all of that, the Bain Capital, the Cayman Islands. It doesn't, this poll does not include what Obama said in Roanoke on Friday. That is too recent to have shown up. So Romney being up by two and big among independents in the latest CBS/New York Times poll does not include Obama at Roanoke saying, "You got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." The next poll that includes that, that's gonna be interesting.
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