RUSH: So Obama’s at the White House saying something. You ever notice that all of his press appearances, his announcements, his campaign appearances, whatever you call ’em, they always happen while this program is on. They always do. And it was Obama who said to the New Republic that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are just standing in the way of progress. Now, I didn’t of course hear the whole thing, listened to a little bit of it during the break, and he just said, the president of the United States, just said, “We can’t just cut our way to prosperity.” Of course we can’t! Of course we can’t. And of course there aren’t any cuts apart from DOD. Apart from the defense budget, there haven’t been any cuts.

Obama then said that his policies are resulting in economic growth, a reduction in the deficit by 2.5 trillion dollars. Why, he’s painting a picture of absolute utopia that’s taking place in America. You would never know, if you just landed here from Mars, why, these are the salad days, never had it better in this country. We’ve never had a more responsible president. We’ve never had a more responsible budget process. Obama is protecting the people of this country from these budget cutters who happen to be the Republicans, by the way. “We can’t just cut our way to prosperity. We need a balanced approach as we move to prosperity.” And of course that really gets to the nub of it. What is the source of prosperity?

In the United States, what has always been the source of prosperity? It doesn’t matter what it has always been, because today the source of prosperity is the government — Santa Claus. Government is the source of prosperity and the Republicans are out there trying to cut people’s prosperity. Now, they’re actually not cutting anything, and the Republicans haven’t proposed any cuts. Nobody ever does. There are never any real cuts proposed. The federal budget is not getting smaller. Projected budgets are not getting smaller. And yet every week we hear about these massive Draconian cuts.

Now, you in this audience know how that works. If a budget item doesn’t grow as rapidly as projected, that equals a cut, but at the end of the day it still grows. But he’s out there, he’s warning the low-information people in this country via the media. He’s warning the low-information voters that these Republicans want to cut their prosperity. And he’s saying you can’t cut your way to prosperity.

Now, we can tax our way to prosperity. Did you know that? We can do that. But we can’t cut our way to prosperity. So what this all adds up to, is that Republican officeholders right now are in a holding pattern and they’re trying not to alienate people that didn’t vote for them. They’re not so much concerned about those of you who did vote for them because they figure you’re going to always be there because of your fear and dislike for the current regime. But they don’t want to do anything that would irritate the people who didn’t vote for them. So they’re in a holding pattern and they’re trying to hold on until the situation hits the fan. They don’t know what that situation’s gonna be and they don’t know when it’s gonna happen, but it will. It always does.

The only question really is is how far gone is the country going to be when the situation hits the fan. That’s the only question. And what is going to be required to get it back. But there’s no fight right now. The Republican officeholders, they don’t want to oppose any of this. They don’t want to be seen opposing it. They don’t want to say anything that could be interpreted as opposing it. You think I’m wrong? Where is it? Where is the opposition? When’s the last time you heard any opposition to what Obama’s doing? Tell me. You know, the only time you hear opposition to what Obama’s doing is when Obama claims it exists. Well, other than here. I’m talking about the Republican Party. There isn’t any. We agree with him. We want immigration. We want to relax our attitudes on the social issues. Abortion, not talked about yet, but it’s coming. Contraception, immigration, amnesty, all these things that we gotta reach out, to all these people that hate us.

The only real option is that which Obama claims exists, like these Republican budget cutters. If you listen to Obama talk — this is my point — if you pay attention to Obama, and that’s all you do, and if you pay attention to the media reporting on Obama, and that’s all you do, you’ll finish the busy news day thinking that the Republicans are out there trying to undermine him at every turn. The Republicans are trying to undermine him, our precious young president every turn, along with Fox News and me.

If you pay attention to the news, you won’t hear any Republicans opposing Obama, or trying to undermine him. But if you listen to him talk about it, you’ll think they exist. The Republicans are being accused of things that Obama knows they want but they’re not stating. I find it really interesting. Obama goes on TV and savages these Republicans, trying to do all this damage. Meanwhile, the Republicans are actually in the process of caving to Obama. He knows that he needs to have an enemy. He knows he needs to demonize his opposition. Santa Claus needs an enemy. So he creates it every day.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, Obama went out today, as I mentioned earlier, had a little press availability at the White House. The upshot of this, the upshot of his appearance — I’ve had a chance to study it now, read some of the reporting on it. The upshot of his TV appearance today in the White House pressroom was to blame the fear of the sequester as the reason the economy contracted in the last quarter. That’s primarily what he was out there to do. As you know, the economy contracted at 0.1 tenth of a percent. The economy shrank. Shrunk? Got smaller. Didn’t grow. So Obama went out there, and his point today was to blame the fear of the sequester for that.

I guess blaming Republicans’ spending cuts didn’t fly. They threw that out there as a trial balloon. I guess that didn’t work ’cause Obama had to go out there today and blame it on everybody being afraid of the sequester as the reason for the economy contracting. Never mind that Obama told us in the last debate that he had with Romney that there wouldn’t be a sequester. He told us that. Here’s some sound bites from Obama’s press availability. Number one, this is Obama calling on Congress to deliver a plan of spending cuts to avoid the sequester. This is what he blamed for the economic contraction.

OBAMA: Economists and business leaders from across the spectrum have said that our economy is poised for progress in 2013, and we’ve seen signs of this progress over the last several weeks. Uh, home prices, uh, continue to climb, car sales are at a five-year high, manufacturing has been strong, and we’ve created more than six million jobs in the last 35 months.

RUSH: Whoa!

OBAMA: But we’ve also seen the effects that political dysfunction can have on our economic progress.

RUSH: (laughing) I didn’t know any of that.

OBAMA: The drawn-out process for resolving the fiscal cliff hurt consumer confidence.

RUSH: I didn’t know any of that. Honestly, I did not know that “economists and business leaders across the spectrum have said we’re poised for” growth. He always does that. He says “economists from across the spectrum agree” or “experts from all sides agree.” I haven’t heard that. Ummmm, I haven’t seen that car sales are at an all-time high, or a five-year high. I didn’t see that. Have you seen that? (interruption) Seriously, have you? Have you seen that manufacturing has been strong? I did not see that story. We created six million jobs in the last 35 months? That’s three years. Six million jobs? What I know is that we’ve lost 8.5 million jobs since he took office.

“What difference does it make?” What I know is, when Obama took office to now, there are 8.5 million fewer jobs in the country to get. Those 8.5 million jobs just vanished over the first four years. I haven’t seen anywhere where we’ve created six million jobs in the last three years. I haven’t seen any of this! I didn’t know any of that. But now, the low-information voters know it. He said it. They’ll hear it, and see, now, the Republicans, if they dare stand up and oppose anything, what are they opposing? A robust economy, a robust housing market, robust job creation.

“The Republicans want to just stop progress everywhere! It’s amazing how mean these guys are.”

He paused here and actually posed for the photographers at this session.

OBAMA: These reforms would reduce our government’s bill. (snickering)

AUDIENCE: (rippling laughter)

OBAMA: What’s up, cameraman?

AUDIENCE: (laughter)

OBAMA: C’mon, guys. Ha ha!

AUDIENCE: (laughter)

OBAMA: They’re breaking my flow all the time.

RUSH: He actually stopped in mid-appearance to pose for the cameras, and this is his line about our inability to cut our way to prosperity.

OBAMA: We’ve been reminded that while it’s critical for us to cut wasteful spending, we can’t just cut our way to prosperity. Deep, indiscriminate cuts to things like education and training, energy, and national security, will cost us jobs and it will slow down our recovery. It’s not the right thing to do for the economy.

RUSH: See? All those massive spending cuts that the Republicans have proposed are bad. We got this great recovery going on, this massive growth taking place, folks. It’s about 0.1% we contracted, but, no! We’ve got robust economic growth going on out there, and the Republicans are gonna cost us jobs if they keep proposing these spending cuts (i.e., the sequester). So that’s what all this was about. He paints this rosy picture, and nobody had the slightest idea any of it’s happening, and then he positions the Republicans as standing in the way.

Look, this is the best illustration of what I said in the last hour. The Republicans aren’t opposing anything, but Obama goes out every day and accuses them of it. The Republicans are laying low. The Republicans are trying not to get noticed, and when they do speak up, it’s all about, “We need to reach across the aisle. We need to make Hispanics loves us.” Obama comes out and says, “They’re trying to take all the goodies away from people!”