Obama Can’t Avoid Mentioning Rush in Commencement Speech

RUSH: Let’s go to the sound bites. This was Saturday morning, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Obama gave the commencement address, and here is a portion of what Obama said.

OBAMA: If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil, your mind may not be changed, but the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. (applause) It is essential for our democracy.

RUSH: El Rushbo living rent-free inside Obama’s head. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffing and Puffington Post. Now, this from the guy who said in the first month of his administration, you’ll remember when I remind you, he had a meeting of Republican and Democrat congressional leaders in the White House and he looked at John Boehner, and he said, ‘You gotta stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. That’s not how things get done in Washington.’ So he goes to Ann Arbor a little over a year later and says, ‘If you’re a fan of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, try reading something else.’ But he tells John Boehner, ‘Don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh, why, that’s not how things get done in Washington.’ So what he wants is for all of you who think you’re brainwashed by me, I’m your Svengali, you’re a bunch of mice and I’m the pied piper, you gotta break free here, folks, you gotta break free, you gotta read some of the trash that’s on the Huffington Post. You gotta go somewhere. It may make you mad but you gotta break away.

Now, he also said — we don’t have this on the bite — but he did say if you’re a fan of something else you should try Fox News. I mean he tried to balance this out, but the problem with it is that it’s not what he does. He’s as closed-minded a president as we’ve ever had. He doesn’t listen to opposing points of views. He doesn’t want to hear them. Remember the health care summit, the look on his face when Paul Ryan told the truth about health care, you could see the rage. Obama wasn’t open to it. He’s not open to anybody else’s ideas. He may want you to think so, but he’s not. What Obama doesn’t understand is that you do watch other media. You do read other media. You do listen to other media. You may not do it as much because you don’t trust it and like it anymore. You know the New York Times is what it is. You know that the Huffing and Puffington Post is what it is. You know what you’re going to get out of TIME Magazine. I play for you on this program what they say.

The sound bites that we play on this show are primarily of people who oppose me or have opposing points of view. I’m not afraid for you to hear what they think. But here’s Obama telling the students at University of Michigan Ann Arbor, ‘Don’t be afraid, you know, you Limbaugh fans, don’t be afraid.’ People that listen to this show know more of what Obama and the liberals are saying than people who listen to left-wing shows. We don’t hide from it. And the people in this audience are not by any stretch of the imagination uninformed or ignorant about what Obama is, who he is and what he believes. There is a second companion bite to this. Another portion of what he said, and it’s this.

OBAMA: You can question somebody’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like socialists and Soviet-style takeover and fascists and right-wing nut, that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes.

RUSH: Oh, it’s getting to him, folks, it’s getting to him, it is getting to him. He doesn’t like being called a regime, an authoritarian regime. Now, stop and think of this. Let me try to put this in perspective. It’s a commencement speech. You have a bunch of kids whose parents have gone broke sending them to this school to get their degrees, their education. The president of the United States is coming in to do the commencement speech, and what does he do? He talks about me, talks about Glenn Beck, and talks about regimes. Does he inspire these students? No. He’s instructing them on how to think, what to avoid, and where to go. And of course the godlike reverb, off the charts in those two sound bites. Conservatives are not asked to do commencement speeches. They just aren’t. But if I was asked to do a commencement speech, I wouldn’t spend any time on Obama at all. I would talk about the obstacles certain people are going to face based on policy decisions we’ve made, maybe how to get around them. But a commencement speech to me is supposed to at least try to be inspiring and uplifting, congratulatory.

Sometimes you lie to them and say, ‘Okay, you’re the future, kids,’ when they’re really not yet. They’re still at the age where the kind of car they drive determines what people think of them, but you do want to motivate ’em and inspire them out there. But there was none of that from Obama. I think to anybody with an open mind it is obvious that he has not the experience nor the temperament, but you know what Terry Bradshaw said about Ben Roethlisberger. He has got to remember who he is. He just can’t go wandering around a bunch of college town bars and offering to buy shots for 20-year-old women. He’s the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback. He’s an elite athlete in the National Football League. Well, the same thing about Obama. He’s got to realize who he is. Maybe he does, but he has an entirely different version or view of the presidency than anybody else who ever served in this office has.

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