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June 27, 2008

Dick Morris on the Week in Politics

Hannity & Colmes

HANNITY: And welcome to HANNITY & COLMES, and yes, happy Friday, as get to you "Top Story" tonight.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned together for the very first time today. Now there was smiling, waving, hand-holding, and even kissing. But did it all seem a little too much? Is this unity really just the name of a town in New Hampshire?

Joining us now former Clinton advisor, author of the brand-new book -- by the way, four days in a row, number one on Amazon.com -- please, Dick Morris.

I got to tell you, I've read all your books. The best one you've written, the stuff on Obama is phenomenal. Let's get right to this issue, though.

DICK MORRIS, FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR: Sure.

HANNITY: This unity.

MORRIS: By the way, people can get a signed copy at DickMorris.com.

HANNITY: Yes. You didn't sign mine.

MORRIS: You didn't go to DickMorris.com. You just went to Dick Morris.

HANNITY: All right. There you go. Well, I'm bringing my copy to get it signed.

All right. So we've got this so called unity rally. They hate each other.

MORRIS: Your cameraman wasn't really good in that shot.

HANNITY: Why?

MORRIS: They shot the two of them together.

HANNITY: Yes.

MORRIS: He shot it frontally. What he needed to do is go back.

HANNITY: Oh well, wait a minute. Oh here we go.

MORRIS: . and take the knife in the back as they were posing together in the front.

HANNITY: Well, that raises a question here. Is Barack Obama -- and I would argue probably cleverly so -- I mean because he's going to pay off Hillary's $20 million campaign debt.

MORRIS: No, he's not. No, he's not.

HANNITY: Well, he's -- I bet there's.

MORRIS: He's going to pay off $2300 of it, and him and Michelle will pay off $2300.

HANNITY: That's it? Well, then.

MORRIS: He can't legally give her the money.

HANNITY: But he can go out and fundraise for her?

MORRIS: No. What he can -- yes, he can. But what he can do is to ask his donors to give Hillary money. Fat chance.

HANNITY: All right. I want you to watch something here. Now, all right, this was the unity, the hugging, the kissing, the getting along, but this was during the nominating process.

Watch this tape.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's what I expect from you. It's just very difficult to get a straight answer, and that's what we are probing for.

I could stand up here and say let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified. The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: I've got to admit, that was actually pretty good.

MORRIS: That was very good.

HANNITY: All right. So what's real? Is it what I just played or what happened today?

MORRIS: Obviously, what you just played. The -- nothing's real with Hillary. There are each contrivances for each situation. That was one when she had to feign anger and this is one where she has to feign affection.

What's going on now is that Hillary has a huge task, not paying off her debt. She'll write a book about the campaign, and that will take care of it. What's going on now is that Hillary has to repair her relationship with the African-American community.

If she doesn't, she could get a primary fight for senator in New York and could lose it.

HANNITY: All right. But that aside, any chance these two team up, any chance at all?

MORRIS: None. None.

HANNITY: Zero?

MORRIS: Zero.

HANNITY: All right. Who would be the best choice, then, for VP for Barack?

MORRIS: Somebody who is a Democratic equivalent to Dick Cheney. Kind of a -- you know, Like a Nunn or a Biden or somebody like that.

But the point is, that Hillary's doing this because she has to get well with Obama's supporters, particularly the blacks and young people.

HANNITY: All right. Let me ask you this. See, I may have a different theory than you. And I want you to -- just that -- just, you know -- just agree with me for a second or follow with me for a second. And that is, I think Barack Obama, very cleverly, is trying to say OK. Well, I'll help you pay off your campaign debt, I'll do some fund-raising for you, we've got to show unity, let's get along.

I still think they don't like each other. But I think he instinctively understands that if he doesn't have Hillary and Bill on their team.

MORRIS: Yes, sure.

HANNITY: . that there's going to be a knife in his back.

MORRIS: Absolutely.

HANNITY: That they're going to undermine his campaign. Is that what will happen if he doesn't try, at least, to reach to them?

MORRIS: Right. But this is all a choreographed pantomime. Obama doesn't like him, but he needs to pretend to be fighting for unity.

They -- the last thing in the world they want is for Obama because if Obama wins she can't run until 2016.

HANNITY: So they're still -- they'll still -- she'll still want to run?

COLMES: You know what I find.

MORRIS: They'll still find ways to undermine.

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Hey, Dick, you know what I find so remarkable about this? I know that it makes conservatives' hearts sing to look at differences between Obama and Hillary and play all the tapes of all the things they said.

But you know the conservatives have had a very hard time with John McCain, and you know, they've got a lot of stretching to do to act like they support him.

MORRIS: Sure. That's right.

COLMES: In many case worst stretching than we're seeing Obama and Hillary.

MORRIS: Yes, that's right. Clearly in terms of the candidates and the leadership level of the party, the Democrats are more united than the Republicans.

But I do feel that in terms of his real ability to get Hillary's voters, he'll get the women because they are pro-choice, feminist Democratic Party.

COLMES: There are a lot of women very angry about her not getting the nomination.

MORRIS: Yes, but he'll get the votes. But the votes he's not going to get and will be in play will be the white, down-scale, male, largely, blue collar voters who basically don't like women and don't like blacks, and they had to decide which one they hated more in making their vote.

COLMES: Are you in dangerous territory when you're accusing people that you don't know of being racist, not liking blacks, not liking -- being misogynistic? You don't even know these people and you accuse them of that.

MORRIS: Well, I polled them, and a huge portion of the votes that Hillary got at the end of the game when she was saying, I speak for white, hard- working American people, were people who were basically voting against Obama because of race.

COLMES: Are you saying.

MORRIS: Her appeal was overtly racist and their response was overtly racist.

COLMES: But Obama talks about bitter people clinging to their guns.

MORRIS: Yes.

COLMES: . and you come on and say, you know, there are all this people who don't like blacks, don't like women. Are you saying the same thing in a different way than he's saying? And he was raked over the coals for what he said.

MORRIS: I'm saying -- well, he's running for president, I'm not. I think that the people that voted for -- for Hillary toward the end of the race, the people who flocked to her in the blue collar districts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Idaho, were motivated by fear of Reverend Wright, fear of the otherness of Barack Obama.

And I also don't feel that they particularly enjoy voting for Hillary. And I think they had to look at to the lesser of two evils. And I think that those people are probably not going to go to Obama no matter what happens.

COLMES: We'll look at lesser of two evil, you still have Obama versus.

MORRIS: They're very likely to go McCain.

COLMES: . John McCain. Isn't Obama the lesser of two evils to many of these people?

MORRIS: No. I think many of those people will go for McCain. It's why this election is close right now.

COLMES: Doesn't Obama bring many people into the -- into play and register many voters who previously do not vote? Young people, African-Americans.

MORRIS: Yes, absolutely.

COLMES: . go down the list of people who were not empowered?

MORRIS: Absolutely. This race is a very hard race to poll right now because there are a lot of white people who are saying they're going to vote for Obama who won't, and there are a lot of black people and young people who are not registered who are not even being polled but who will register to vote for Obama.

COLMES: And that helps Obama. And we continue with Dick Morris. More right after the break.

Plus San Francisco School Board votes to eliminate PE credit for students in the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program or JROTC. Will the anti-war majority in San Francisco finally succeed in kicking military recruiters out of their schools?

Coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I was honored to be in this race with Barack, and I am proud that we had a spirited dialogue. That was the nicest way I could think of phrasing it. But it was spirited because we both care so much, and so do our supporters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLMES: That was Hillary Clinton in Unity, New Hampshire today campaigning for her former opponent, Barack Obama.

We now continue with the author of "Fleeced" Dick Morris. Some other events that took place this week that may impact the presidential race, Supreme Court decision, specifically the one on guns, praised by both John McCain and Barack Obama.

MORRIS: Yes, Barack Obama is a new convert to the Second Amendment.

COLMES: Why you say new convert? He never was going to take people's guns away as John McCain claimed.

MORRIS: A new convert to the Second Amendment.

COLMES: No, he always wanted people to have guns with controls.

MORRIS: This is a very important decision for the election because it puts the Supreme Court at the center of our politics in a way that it has not been since Roe v. Wade or reapportionment or any of the huge decisions.

This decision, the child rape and the Guantanamo decision, all put -- which is horrible.

COLMES: Habeas corpus.

MORRIS: Yes, habeas corpus.

COLMES: Brown -- key to our criminal justice system.

MORRIS: As I say in "Fleeced," we've let 420 inmates out, 50 of them are shooting at our soldiers, and we had to kill or capture them.

COLMES: Right.

MORRIS: And we paid their airfare.

COLMES: But Dick, people should have a right to appeal and that's key to our criminal justice system. Go ahead.

MORRIS: They're not criminals. They're warriors.

COLMES: We don't know. Go ahead.

MORRIS: So the key to -- the key is the Supreme Court now becomes the central issue. And ultimately that will galvanize the left far more than the right. And the right -- the left wing looks at that Second Amendment decision and says that's Roe v. Wade.

One day I'm going to wake up and there's going to be that Roe v. Wade headline, and it's going to be the same five against the same four, and I can see it coming, and I've got to elect Obama.

This will do more to get the -- women vote for Obama than anything Hillary did today.

COLMES: You think this will put front and center Roe versus Wade and the fear of losing that protection for women's rights?

MORRIS: Yes.

COLMES: Because the Supreme Court.

MORRIS: The Supreme Court.

COLMES: . should be important but.

(CROSSTALK)

MORRIS: They picked the wrong time, five months before an election, to put a conservative majority on trial. And I think that this will galvanize feminist support for Obama.

COLMES: And this helps Obama? If you were to call it right now, you'd say a Obama wins?

MORRIS: It is such a hard race to poll. McCain - sometimes, I think, he's sleepwalking through this election. He doesn't use the issues he needs to use. If he ever got his act together and campaigned properly, he could beat Obama.

But if you tell me this Obama runs against this McCain through election day, Obama is going to win.

COLMES: Has McCain articulated a vision for this country?

MORRIS: It's not so much that, he needs to call -- I wrote this book "Fleeced" for John McCain, in the first chapter.

COLMES: Why didn't you write a book for Obama? Come on, we're talking about fair and balance.

MORRIS: Let him read it and talk about health insurance for illegal immigrants, talk about raising the Social Security taxes on middle income people.

Let him attack Obama for saying that right now we can conceal an investigation.

COLMES: He's raising it for people over 250, by the way. Not middle income.

(CROSSTALK)

MORRIS: Let him raise those issues.

HANNITY: You do raise -- and this was a good part of the book and I like this -- and I guess the question becomes, if you go to the D.C. gun case, he said that the D.C. gun ban was constitutional.

There's been a series now on campaign finance, on Jerusalem.

MORRIS: Right.

HANNITY: . on Iran not being a serious threat. I know everyone's focused on the flip-flop, I'm focused on the man, the person, the character. You know where is his political core? I don't see it.

MORRIS: Well, I don't buy it. I don't think that he's a flip-flopper. I don't think that he's someone who changes with the wind if he were.

HANNITY: Dick, you've got to be kidding me.

MORRIS: If he were, I feel a lot better about him. I think he's a left wing ideologue who invents whatever he has to in order to get elected.

HANNITY: So you think that's worse?

MORRIS: Yes. I think that he's trimming his sails without really reversing himself, just artfully papering over the differences, and the whole reason we wrote "Fleeced," my wife and I, was to put out the agenda of what he said and what he's committed to so he can't get away with it.

HANNITY: All right. So you're really going to my point which is his character is flawed. That he's really -- this isn't about a candidate of change. He's got character issues.

MORRIS: I think he's a skilled community organizer, a skilled politician, and a skilled lawyer, and he is using words to obfuscate his true left-wing agenda, which was apparent during the primary.

HANNITY: Was he playing the race card in Jacksonville when he said they're going to.

MORRIS: No.

HANNITY: . make you fearful of me?

MORRIS: No, he was not, he was putting race out there in the hopes that people would attack him on it. When Dobson hits Obama about the meaning of the bible and everything, Obama loves that stuff. He can take those punches all day.

What he doesn't want is for someone to look at his voting record.

HANNITY: Yes, I agree. So then that goes to the simple question -- and you were getting into it with Alan and you outlined it in your book -- how does Senator McCain defeat Barack Obama?

MORRIS: I told you once on your radio show that I have the issue that would win the election, then I came here and I said it should health insurance go to 15 million illegal immigrants for free?

HANNITY: That'll take.

MORRIS: That's in the Obama plan. That is what John McCain should run on?

HANNITY: How about gas? Does gas -- it that going to play as big a role, do you think here?

MORRIS: I think the oil drilling is a very good issue, but the best issue is should our parents have to wait in line behind an illegal immigrant to get a heart transplant operation or a bypass that will keep them alive?

HANNITY: All right now. Signed copies of your book.

MORRIS: DickMorris.com.

HANNITY: OK. When are you going to bring me mine?

MORRIS: And by the way, it's in a special.

HANNITY: When are you going to bring me mine? That's not the question.

MORRIS: OK.

COLMES: You don't have a copy of the book yet?

HANNITY: He didn't give me a -- free autographed copy.

COLMES: (INAUDIBLE) like everybody else.

HANNITY: All right, good to see.

MORRIS: Actually I did autograph a copy to you.

HANNITY: No, I didn't get it.

MORRIS: And I autographed one.

COLMES: Can we move on please?

MORRIS: Yes.

HANNITY: Dick Morris, thank you for being with us.

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