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RUSH: Yeah, it was painful. It was just painful. I’m sitting there, Kathryn and I are watching this thing last night and we’re frankly appalled and surprised at how bad it was. There was no life in that speech. There was no energy. I know why. He just couldn’t fake it. He didn’t believe half the stuff he said, all that soaring America great stuff. He didn’t believe it. Everybody in the room knew it, none of the Democrats believed it. There were more plants in that audience than a campaign stop and look at the media coordination that took. After every other line, you know, cut to somebody in the audience, some average citizen who’s overcome the obstacles of dealing with Republicans everyday, and the name and ID and so forth and then go back to Obama up there. I’m glad Boehner didn’t cry. Maybe the best thing about it is we didn’t have to look at Pelosi all night.

Anyway, folks, great to have you here. It’s the EIB, Rush Limbaugh, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Our telephone number, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

It really was flat, surprisingly so. We’re sitting there watching this and occasionally stealing glances at one another, and how they gonna deal with this? I mean the media’s built this up, they’ve built this guy up. It’s gonna be the Second Coming of Obama himself, and, man, it wasn’t there. I don’t even remember the stupid joke about the salmon. In fact, you know what I’ve done? I had an idea for the Cookster. I said, ‘Just give me three or four sound bites from any Obama speech in the last two years, I don’t care, pick one. Save yourself some time, just whatever the least amount of time you can spend on it.’ I’ll play these bites and say, ‘When did he say this? Last night? Two years ago?’ Doesn’t matter. It’s all same. How in the world do you stand there last night and talk about all the problems we’ve got with infrastructure and shovel-ready jobs and forget to point out that you spent a trillion dollars to eliminate the problem two years ago? Well, you do that because you figure people are stupid and you know that your sycophants in the media are not gonna call you on it. It was breathtaking. And the slobber crowd, I mean half of them couldn’t even fake that last night.

By the way, ladies and gentlemen, I’m prepared to retract just a tiny bit of my criticism of these people sitting together. One thing I didn’t count on, I thought the House and Senate were gonna sit next to each other, but they didn’t, so it was Senate prom night, House prom night but they were still on their sides of the House chamber. But even when there was a standing O, it was clearly obvious that there weren’t many standing up. It was clearly obvious the Democrats didn’t have a whole lot of people in that room. A couple of times Biden tried to get some applause started and it didn’t happen. Two claps and nobody followed him so he sits back down and tries to look around like blaming somebody else for clapping. He couldn’t get it started himself. But the more people hear from Obama, I think the more they’re turned off by him. And the reason is the media’s built him up into something he can’t be. The media’s built him up into something that he is not. It took him one hour, and basically all he said was mush.

This Sputnik business, everybody’s focusing on the Sputnik business. Sputnik shmutnik. I mean there isn’t any comparison. The Soviets put Sputnik up there as a defensive thing, their people didn’t even know about it. The point about Sputnik is that we used to be a leader and an innovator in the private sector, and here’s Obama trying to use Sputnik as an example how we need to get our government back on track when he’s been in charge of it for two years. It’s almost like last night he hasn’t yet begun to serve in office and he’s recounting all these problems that he’s gonna fix and all these solutions he’s got as though he hasn’t been there for two years. But I’m listening to all this Sputnik business, and I’m thinking, ‘Wait, pal, aren’t you the guy that wanted to shut down NASA and then aren’t you the guy that wanted to turn NASA into a Muslim outreach arm of the federal government, and then aren’t you the guy that wanted to turn NASA into some global warming research apparatus?’ He sits there and starts talking about Sputnik, talking about how we’ve lost track and lost ground, and he’s the architect of it. Every area we have lost ground — look, how many times, ‘Education, education’? That should have been the drinking game. All my life I’ve been hearing we haven’t been spending enough on education and we need to invest more in education.

It was remarkably bad, especially, folks, considering what this was. This was the opening salvo of his 2012 reelection bid. This wasn’t a State of the Union speech. It was a campaign speech. And it was flat as it could be. And even with the Republicans helping to create a supportive atmosphere in the chamber, even that couldn’t save him. And by that I mean the ribbons and sitting together side by side, this unity stuff. Even when there was a standing O by the Democrats it didn’t show. There was no enthusiasm in the room, there was no life in the room, and even when there were standing O’s there were just two or three that really had any energy whatsoever. Now, the lesson here for the Republicans is, stop reacting to the liberals and their media, start leading; showing the way. Stop the same old lament that we have here on this program, and that is they set the premise and we’re always reacting to it. This sitting together stuff, talking about that endlessly was just stupid. Here, let’s go to the audio sound bites. I mean it’s so bad that Jon Meacham has to say the fact that there was no applause was a good sign for Obama because that’s how seriously people are taking all of this.

MEACHAM: Its lack of applause was a good thing. I think people are not interested in that level of showmanship at this point.

RUSH: Come on.

MEACHAM: They want results, they want jobs.

RUSH: Come on.

MEACHAM: They want to know their kids are gonna get a good education.

RUSH: Come on, man.

MEACHAM: And that the president has received the message that he has to be as engaged as possible with their concerns and not some sort of larger vision that seems less important to them. When he said, ‘Let’s fix what needs fixing and let’s move forward,’ I think that’s the headline tonight.

RUSH: Meacham sounds as dead as that audience felt last night. Meacham sounds as lifeless as the whole mood in that room last night. You know what last night was? Last night had the tone that the Giffords memorial shoulda had. You realize the Giffords memorial had much more energy in it than this thing last night. Last night’s the State of the Union, and I kept listening, ‘Well, where’s the State of the Union?’ The Giffords memorial had three times the energy this thing had last night. This thing was like a memorial service, for us, for the country. This guy trying to invoke Reagan and sound soaring and all that, and the reason, as I say, he just doesn’t have the ability to fake it. He’s such a committed leftist that trying to fake all this new moving to the center stuff and all this pro-America rah-rah, you could tell he just doesn’t believe it. You could just tell. It’s not in his heart. It’s not in his heart. It’s just not there. I know a little bit about this, folks. I am a highly trained broadcast and performance specialist, and I know that as a performance last night he didn’t pull it off. It’s gotten so bad that we’ve got ridiculous polls already, at CBS, 92% of the American people approved of the speech. This is Katie Couric and the CBS business correspondent Anthony Mason about the CBS poll of voters after the State of the Union.

COURIC: CBS News and Knowledge Networks assembled a scientific sample of Americans to watch the speech, then respond to our poll questions online. Anthony Mason has the results. Anthony, what are people saying tonight?

MASON: Katie, the response of more than 500 viewers we polled immediately after the speech was overwhelmingly positive tonight. Ninety-two percent of those viewers said they approve of the proposals the president made in his speech tonight.

RUSH: This is The Politico: ‘Americans responded with overwhelming positivity to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech, two polls conducted after the Tuesday night speech found. In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll of people who watched the speech, 52 percent of respondents said they had a very positive reaction to Obama’s message. Another 32 percent said their reactions were somewhat positive.’ So 84%. Over on CBS it was 92%. Now, what is this? I don’t care, go ahead and jimmy the poll but don’t try to tell me that 92% — and 500 isn’t a sample — but regardless, don’t try and tell me that 92% were rah-rah over this. (laughing) Sputnik, I guess, a very powerful image out there, 92%. But, you know, what we have here are more attempts to make people think that the November 2010 midterms didn’t happen, that Tucson happened, and suddenly two years of a failed president, 18 months of a Tea Party are gone due to a game-changer. And then we had this flat, boring speech, and all of a sudden Obama’s approval numbers double? I don’t think so. This is not even close to people’s reaction. Here, Frank Luntz in one of his famous focus groups, this was on Hannity last night on Fox. They had a bunch of people in Atlanta and here’s a couple sound bites from it.

LUNTZ: Barack Obama said the worst of the recession is over. How many people believe the recession is over? Raise your hands. Three of you. Obviously that must have undercut the credibility when he said it?

MAN 1: I think with inflation kinda at risk still and unemployment the highest it’s been, I think it’s worrisome for us.

MAN 2: I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Is he talking about cutting spending? Are you kidding me? I mean all this guy’s done is spend, spend, spend.

LUNTZ: You’re a small business owner. Do you feel like the economy is starting to turn around for people like you?

MAN 2: No. I’m afraid of the economy for people like me. I don’t feel like that at all.

RUSH: I forget the number of people in the Luntz poll, but I mean three of them, four of them thought the speech was great. They were African-American. The rest of it, there wasn’t anywhere near 92% approval. And you hear the passion in these people’s reaction is toward the negative. Luntz then said this to the panel after the speech.

LUNTZ: One other question for you all. He does say that he wants to cut spending. How many of you by show of hands believe him? Thirteen of you voted for him. All the questions I’m asking, only five of them feel comfortable with the things that he said or how he said them.

RUSH: But on CBS, 92% loved it; 84% over at CNN thought it was just hunky-dory. So a giant disconnect. Look, I don’t want to spend too much on this. I know I’m gonna get questions, ‘Don’t you think you’re being petty? Can’t you find one thing good to say?’ Frankly, folks, I opened with this since because I felt duty-bound, to be quite honest with you. I resent that an hour of my life is gone having had to watch this thing last night, but it’s the gig, it’s the job. It was remarkable to me just dry and dead and it wasn’t real. And then a corporate tax cut — yeah, but corporate tax cut with a bunch of ifs. And then the very item that allowed them to claim victory in the lame duck, ‘By the way, the Bush tax cuts, they’re not gonna last two more years. After that they’re gone.’ Well, then why did you go along with extending them now if they’re so rotten? So I don’t think even he believed cut the corporate tax rate business. Look, this is part of the reelection bid, this is one of his opening salvos for it, and I wasn’t standing up and whooping and hollering, Snerdley, because I just didn’t get the impression he believed any of it. I didn’t hear passion, even when trying to do this imitation of Reagan and all the soaring rhetoric.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let me stay focused on Sputnik here for just a second. Somebody needs to set the president straight about NASA. And remember what he’s done with NASA. He wanted to wipe it out, then turn it into Muslim outreach, and then convert it into some agency that studies global warming. Now, I love NASA, and I’ve made it plain on this program over the course of many, many moons. As much as I love NASA, they have never built a space rocket. They have never built a computer. They have paid for them. They’ve supervised all that. But those things were all built by private industry, which submitted bids, and they were chosen. We need to remember this. Obama needs to finally learn it. NASA didn’t send one rocket anywhere!

Well, they didn’t build it. The government had nothing to do with manufacturing any of the hardware or the software that handles the space program. So you have to wonder: Does Obama really think the federal government’s involvement in education since the time of Sputnik has done one thing to improve education in this country? This… I’ve grown so weary of hearing this complaint, this lament that we’re not spending enough on education. Education is the answer; education is the cure. Well, we have been spending more on education. Even Obama last night made mention of the fact that we’re starting to lag behind other nations in certain areas: Science and math and this kind of thing.

Education never gets turned down; it never gets defunded. Somebody comes along and says, ‘We need to spend more money on education!’ It’s, ‘Damn right, let’s do it,’ and we do it, and we always have. We’re not underfunded when it comes to education. It’s who’s in charge of the curricula. It’s what people are being taught. The purpose of schools, to liberals’ minds, is not to educate; it’s to indoctrinate. And we see the results of this. Sputnik hasn’t done one thing to improve the education in this country. Does anybody think our education system has improved significantly in math and science since 1957? There were so many — what you call them? — disconnects in this speech last night; so much apparent ignorance of what government does, even, as opposed to what he wants government to do.

All right. We’ve only begun here, folks, as you know. The pace quickens with each passing moment on the EIB Network.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So Obama is on the road following the campaign speech last night. He’s in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and I just tuned in a little bit here during the break at the bottom of the hour and he’s talking about the need to rebuild our crumbling roads and bridges — which is one of the primary reasons we spent a trillion dollars in the stimulus bill two years ago to rebuild our crumbling roads and bridges. How did that work out? Obviously it didn’t work out. The roads and bridges are still crumbling! Now, he hasn’t cited any. He didn’t point out any crumbling roads and bridges. We’re just supposed to accept the fact that there are crumbling roads and bridges and we need to get serious now about repairing them and we need to get serious now about our deficit.

Now, he knows exactly what he’s doing here, and he’s counting on ignorance, a lack of memory, or total idolatrous support from people to forgive him. Let me just put it this way. This is the best way to put it. If I’m president, and I’ve done everything Obama’s done up until the State of the Union — I went out there and I delivered that speech for the stimulus bill, and I predicated it on ‘shovel-ready jobs’ and we’re gonna have less than 8% unemployment when I get through (that’s how great this is gonna be), and ‘We’re gonna rebuild our bridges and schools. We’re gonna get going on that. We’re gonna spend a trillion dollars. It’s time we got working. All this is gonna create jobs.

It’s two years later, and I gotta go do the State of the Union show after my party gets shellacked, and my speechwriters come to me and say, ‘Rush, we need to really talk about the need to rebuild the crumbling roads and bridges,’ I’m gonna say, ‘Look, pal, I live in Literalville. We tried that two years ago and we didn’t rebuild the roads and bridges. We allocated the money for it. We can’t talk about what we failed doing!’ That would be me if my speech writers came to me and said, two years after stimulus, ‘We’ve gotta keep harping on this crumbling roads and bridges.’ I would say, ‘Come back with something else or let me write it. You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.’ They’re rerunning this as though he hasn’t yet served a day in office.

Now, they’ve obviously got this tested somehow, with focus groups and polls. Obviously this plays to somebody. This is showing up as a positive message with some group of people that they’re testing out there — and whoever that group of people is, we need to be very afraid of because they are blithering idiots. We spent a trillion dollars! Forget the stimulus. We have a highway bill that has funds collected each and every day to make sure roads and bridges are kept in a decent state of repair. We know that certain places where Democrats and liberals have run cities for years and years and years with no opposition, much of that money has ended up in people’s back pockets, and the roads and bridges have not been repaired.

Not because the money hasn’t been allocated, simply because it’s been diverted to other more pressing items. Now, we have here, ladies and gentlemen… The science and math scores. In light of all that, we’ve spent gazillions of dollars on education and by the president’s admission last night we don’t have anything to show for it. Here’s what he said: ‘Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success, but we want to win the future — if we want innovation to produce jobs in America, not overseas — then we also have to win the race to educate our kids.’ At that point I was saying, ‘No, we have to get rid of you!’ You’d be amazed how often that phrase worked last night.

No, the fix for this is getting rid of you!

No, the fix is defeating you!

‘Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success…’ No, getting rid of you is. ‘[B]ut if we want to win the future, if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas, we have to win the race to educate our kids.’ How long has this ‘race’ been going on? ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require the education that goes beyond a high school degree…’ Who is that just built a plant in Mexico and a whole bunch of jobs are going down there to build Obama cars? ‘[A]nd yet as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school,’ after years of liberal control on all aspects of education. Check the dropout rates in cities where liberals have run the school system for who knows how long. Check ’em!

‘The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations.’ We have a story here that chronicles the horrible results of science education. ‘America has fallen ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree.’ Yeah, how’s that? How’s that with all the focus we have, all the student loan programs, all the tuition-assistance programs, all the societal pressure, ‘Go to college! You can’t get anywhere unless you go to college!’ How is this hamming? How are we ‘falling to ninth in the proportion of young people with college degree’? Obviously people are quitting college once they get there. There has to be some explanation for this because it’s almost American rite of passage that you have to go to college.

You have to. There’s so much societal pressure on this, so much peer pressure on this. So if people are going to college, why are they quitting? I would maintain that one of the reasons that men are quitting is that universities are being turned into chickification factories. There’s nothing there for ’em, as has been chronicled. ‘And so the question,’ Obama says, ‘is whether all of us as citizens…’ Oh, and in light of all of this earlier in the speech he talks about the need to make sure that all of the illegals in school are allowed to stay there, that they could be working on the next cure for cancer or whatever. I mean, it was ping-pong all over the place last night. So hypocritical and contradictory in spots.

‘And so the question is whether all of us, as citizens and parents, are willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed.’ Well, how would you do that? Tell me, what is government’s role in that? Specifically. I want to know: What is government’s role in ‘giving every child a chance to succeed.’ Somebody on the left out there call me, educate me. Tell me. He said, ‘What we can do, what America does better than anybody is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices.’ No. We are the nation that put computers in HOMES. Offices already had them. We are the ones that revolutionized computers so that they were commonplace in people’s homes and now in their hands, and we didn’t have to subsidize anybody to make it happen.

‘We’re the nation of Edison.’ Yeah! We’re the nation of Edison and you’re trying to wipe out one of his greatest inventions claiming it’s a thing that destroys the planet: The incandescent lightbulb. ‘We’re the nation of the Wright brothers, of Google, and Facebook.’ Facebook? Really? That’s up there with Edison? Anyway, it was just… (sigh) Folks, it was tough to stomach. It was tough to swallow. After telling us how behind we are in education and innovations and infrastructure and trade — he spent the whole speech ripping this country, folks — at the end he tells us we’re strong. Last line. ‘The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice. And tonight, more than two centuries later, it is because of our people that our future is hopeful, our journey goes forward and the state of our union is strong.’

Normally presidents say that at the beginning. He saved this when he knew 90% of the audience had gone. He’s hoping a lot of his base was gone. The base doesn’t want to hear how great America is. So he saved all that stuff for the end when he thought the base was either toked up, gone to the bar, or in bed with each other, before getting to what he really believed. I got all kinds of stuff here from the media, the way they analyzed it. This is always fun. You know, we have our view of this, and then we expose ourselves to what those people thought of it, and it’s… (chuckles) It’s a challenge to your sanity. It really is. You must have a stable, confident personality to deal with it. For example, from The Politico:

‘In bipartisan Tones, Obama Challenges GOP — Yet for all the surface civility, Obama wants to pick a fight, or at least draw a stark contrast, between his jobs-centric philosophy and the GOP’s determination to cut government first and ask questions later.’ Now, here’s some people (this is Glenn Thrush) who actually, I’m sure, think they’re very good at what they do. I mean, after all, they work at The Politico. They’re very good at what they do. And yet they wrote here apparently honestly believing that Obama has a ‘jobs-centric philosophy.’ The guy who has destroyed American jobs with his policies, the guy who has led to double-digit unemployment with no end in sight, and they actually write that he has a ‘jobs-centric philosophy.’ What is the jobs-centric philosophy? Where are all the jobs? Where’s the focus on the jobs?

What kind…? It’s a total disconnect, and this Republican determination to cut government first and ask questions later,’ that’s, again, not what’s going on. ”The president believes the American people care more about creating jobs and the investment it takes to prepare us to compete and win in the global economy,’ said former Obama adviser Neera Tanden… ‘The Republicans basically think the election was a mandate just to slash — even in areas like education that are tied to jobs. He’s betting the Republicans are wrong.” So this is the strategy? The strategy is that the regime is trying to put it out there that they are about jobs, and the Republicans are about slashing, and they think they can sell that with the help of people like The Politico. The only thing ‘jobs-centric’ about Obama’s philosophy is HIS job. He’s gonna do anything, say anything, to get reelected and hold onto his job. That’s the jobs-centric he cares about.

And we’re back in a moment.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, I need to share with you what I just shared with my staff. I asked the staff, ‘Am I sounding mean, too critical, bored by all this?’ ‘No, no, no.’ ‘Cause just, frankly, I’m really worried you all are gonna think I’m phoning this in. I don’t care about this last night. It was so insulting to me to sit there and watch this. Yeah, I feel like I’ve got to talk about this. And I told you people, don’t watch it ’cause I’ll watch it for you, and I know a lot of you didn’t watch it and you want to know what happened. It pains me to have to talk about it. I’m endeavoring here to pursue this, though, nevertheless. The State of the Union for the people in the politics business, other than an inaugural night, is the biggest night of the year. And this guy blew it for everybody. Everybody. I mean all the grandiose plans of sitting together and hunky-dory and getting along, who noticed? There was no energy. It was lifeless in there, and the content was just an insult, frankly, to my intelligence.

So I just want to assure you and promise you, I’m not phoning it in. This was nothing but political grandstanding, and it wasn’t even good political grandstanding. I don’t think he wanted to be there, to tell you the truth. He didn’t look like he wanted to be there, and Michelle looked like she’d rather be over at people’s houses turning off their furnaces than be there. They didn’t even introduce the people sitting next to Michelle, did they? It was great back in the old days when Clinton, after the Lewinsky stuff was discovered, looks up there at Hillary and she’s got the Nurse Ratched look on her face, and Clinton says, (imitating Clinton) ‘I honor you,’ and everybody knows, ‘Oh, my God, what’s gonna happen when they get home?’ I honor you. Jeez. And Biden, is his head rejecting the plugs? It looks like there’s less hair there. They had that camera from the rear and it looked like his head is rejecting the hair plugs. I mean this is the kind of stuff I was thinking about while watching because there was so little substance happening.

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