RUSH: You know, Jim DeMint… I am envious. I’m jealous. Jim DeMint has done today what I normally do. I’ve spent an hour here trying to categorize this Obama speech, and I’ll tell you why I goofed up. I goofed up because I take this job seriously, and I was trying to give you in-depth 
analysis and tell you what was wrong with this thing — and it doesn’t take two seconds to do it. Jim DeMint had the best reaction. It’s from an interview at National Review Online. Jim DeMint said, ”Frankly, I can’t believe what he says anymore. It was really hard to take it seriously.’ Obama’s ‘duplicity’ … ‘It was hard to listen to the contradictions.” That nails it. You just don’t believe what he says. You can’t take it seriously.
I was trying, in my analysis to you, to take it seriously, but you can’t. (interruption) Well, just because he’s the president doesn’t mean you have to. But my point is, Snerdley, that I could have done a better job for the audience in analyzing this. Rather than going through the hand-wringing here and try to analyze it topic by topic and so forth, I coulda just said what DeMint said: Folks, basically I didn’t take it seriously. I don’t know what to believe. You don’t believe anything he says. (Of course I never have. This is the thing.) Some people have. But it was. It was genuinely mindless. Because I was trying to be civil, and this is what happens. I was trying to be civil in that first hour.
I was trying to be respectful and analyze this in the serious vein in which it was ostensibly given, and I ended up with diarrhea of the mouth. That normally doesn’t happen. Normally it’s people like DeMint quoting me. So I realize I gotta work even harder here. I gotta stop practicing golf more and get back into here what… (laughing) That’s for you at the Stick-to-the-Issues Crowd. But DeMint is exactly right: You can’t believe what he says anymore; it’s hard to take seriously. Here, I have a little game. I told you, Cookie, ‘Go grab me three Obama sound bites. I don’t care what they are. Don’t work hard. Don’t study. Don’t find anything specific. Just pick three. Like get a dartboard and throw a dart up there.’ So she gave me June 2 of last year, a February 1 of last year, and June 15th of last year — and I defy you to tell me what’s different. So here he is. This is at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh last June.
OBAMA JUNE 15, 2010: (godlike echo) We have to build a new and stronger foundation for growth and prosperity — and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing for the last 16 months.
RUSH: Really?
OBAMA JUNE 15, 2010: (godlike echo) It’s been based on investments in our people and their future, investments in the skills and education we need to compete, investments in a Twenty-First Century infrastructure for America from high-speed railroads to high-speed Internet, investments in research and technology like clean energy that can lead to new jobs and new exports and new industries. This new foundation is also based on reforms that will make our economy stronger and our businesses more competitive; reforms that will make health care cheaper, our financial system more secure, and our government less burdened with debt.
RUSH: He sounds like a commentator, not a president. Here’s a guy, ‘This is what we need to do. We need to ramp up here; we need to ramp up there.’ He’s been in charge for two years! He’s basically trying to position himself as an outsider here, as a spectator. ‘This is what we need to do,’ forgetting the fact he’s been in charge of ostensibly fixing all of this, starting with the stimulus bill — and after two years no progress, by his own admission. But not because he hasn’t tried. Just because nobody has. The Republicans are still the problem, or whatever is in his mind. That’s so close to last night it’s scary. Now, let’s go to another one. This is February 1, 2010, almost a year ago, at the White House.
OBAMA FEBRUARY 1, 2010: (godlike echo) We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money, as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation. We can’t. In order meet this challenge I welcome any idea from Democrats and Republicans. What I will not welcome, what I reject, is the same old grandstanding when the cameras are on and the same irresponsible budget policies when the cameras are off. It’s time it hold Washington to the same standards families and businesses hold themselves. It’s time to save what we can, spend what we must, and live within our means once again.
RUSH: This is a year after he’s blown the budget sky-high, a year after he’s blown it all up! (sighs) You think all this isn’t planned? He just said that a piece of Sputnik crashed in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where he happens to be today. Fifty years ago. Underscoring his statement last night, ‘This is a Sputnik moment.’ He went to Manitowoc only because he wanted to say, ‘Sputnik crashed here 50 years ago. Sputnik is a big theme.’ It’s disingenuous. But again he speaks as a bystander, not as somebody who has promised to fix this stuff. Not as somebody who has said, ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs, is our focus;’ not as somebody who said, ‘I’m rolling up my sleeves and we’re getting serious about this.’ One more. This is from June 15th of last year from the Oval Office.
OBAMA JUNE 15, 2010: What has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity on shape our destiny, our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like, even if we don’t yet precisely know how we’re gonna get there, we know we’ll get there.
RUSH: So that was the boundless JFK, Reaganesque optimism that America can own the future. From last night? No. Does anybody know what this means? And again, that sounded lifestyle as last night ’cause he doesn’t believe this. And, by the way, one of the reasons that DeMint says, ‘I can’t believe what he says anymore. It’s really hard to take it seriously,’ is because the media has built this guy’s expectations up so high, built him so high that there’s no way he can meet people’s expectations. He’s starting to become a ho-hum to a lot of people.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Edward in Shelby Township, Michigan. Where are you, sir?
CALLER: Hi, Rush. We’re about 30 miles outside of New Fallujah.
RUSH: (chuckles) You know, I’ll never forget the trouble I got into with our affiliate in Detroit there, WJR, when I referred to it as New Fallujah.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: The then president of the radio station, Mike Fezzey, called me and said, ‘I know what you mean, here, but you gotta…’
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: I said, ‘You can’t be serious. People took it seriously? He said, ‘I don’t want to run the risk.’
CALLER: I heard your caller say that yesterday, and I hadn’t heard it for a while, and I go, ‘Oh, yeah.’
RUSH: Well, we just changed it to Fallujah and threw away the ‘New.’
CALLER: Yeah. (chuckles) I’m honored to speak to you again.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’ve been listening going on 20 years now, so it’s been quite a while.
RUSH: I appreciate it. I am stunned when I hear people have done that, and I really thank you.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, we enjoy it, and we appreciate you very, very much. What I was calling about was, of course, the president’s speech and how I thought basically what you said: This was a kickoff for reelection. But I thought it was a speech for really useful idiots, like the Drive-Bys, the unions, the left, the Hollywood group — and, of course, the independents. The people who can’t make a decision for themselves.
RUSH: Well, now, wait, they did make a decision for themselves.
CALLER: Last time they did.
RUSH: They abandoned the Democrats last November.
CALLER: Yes. Yes, they did. This was one of the few times I can remember that happening, ever since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, when they went big for Reagan. I don’t know why we should listen to anything that he spoke about in his speech, because he’s lied to us in the past on just about everything he said.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: He’s done everything behind closed doors.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And then the one thing that really stuck in my craw was when he said this — and you know what he meant. He says, ‘We’re either gonna move forward together or not at all,’ and pretty much saying that, ‘If I don’t get what we want, we’re not going anywhere.’
RUSH: Well, even if he meant it genuinely, ‘We move together or we don’t move at all,’ screw that! I don’t know about you, but I’m not waiting for everybody else to follow me as I climb the ladder!
CALLER: No! No! I mean, that’s ridiculous. Any thinking person who wants to get ahead in life, or doesn’t want to get ahead, either way, but to say something like that I think is kind of an insult to the American people who have been so innovative over the years.
RUSH: I know. That’s exactly right. One of my problems with the thing, and there were many, was it was hard to take any of it seriously because you know you do believe half of it. They put it on the prompter. He doesn’t believe half of it, and that’s why I think it came off flat. You know, faking passion… Put yourself in a position of having to give a speech where most important thing, the thing you want you believe in most and you want to persuade people agree with you is liberalism. Ask yourself if you could do it, if you were good enough to fake it and get away with that. I don’t think too many people are, and I don’t think he had it in him last night to do it. It was all part of the strategy: ‘Let’s make everybody think I’m moving to the center.
‘The media has everybody thinking that, people want to think to at that so let’s go ahead and say the words and then we’ll head out to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and say, ‘That’s where Sputnik fell! I happened to come here. Sputnik’s a big deal,’ and we’ll just keep moving to my 2012 reelection.’ Thanks for the call. I appreciate it, Edward, very much.