Now, ladies and gentlemen, as you all know, when I say something about anything, there’s nothing left to be said about it. As such, I’m not going to start out here with an in-depth analysis of the State of the Union speech last night. I will wait for your input on this. I’m not going to deny you my input, but if I start telling you what I think there’s no reason to take any call about it because there’s nothing left to be said once I say something about it. So I want to mix. I have some little overviews here, without getting too specific. Nancy Pelosi, everybody’s commenting on the blinking rate, 30 to 40 times a minute or whatever. It used to be she was unable to blink. Now she can’t stop blinking. I think it was Morse Code. I think she was sending code to the Democrats as to when to applaud or when not to applaud. In addition to when she stood up, that was a signal for them. She also looked like she was chewing her cud to me. I don’t know if she had chocolate or something stuck, breath mints in her mouth or something, but she was constantly moving around. It was distracting. I finally switched to a network that didn’t have Cheney and Pelosi in the background, because it was just odd. The president was classy. You should have seen this, Dawn. You would have loved this, the way he opened the whole thing by acknowledging her and her dad, and she’s the first female speaker of the House and so forth, and she was beaming and waving like a queen there when this happened. The whole thing lasted… You know, people asked me, “How come you don’t go to the White House Correspondents Dinner?” Because, folks, it’s phony! One night a year these people in the media get to go and act like they love everybody and love the president and so forth, and you know they hate his guts! It was the same thing last night. The most interesting aspect of all this in terms of the show of this — I’m just an average guy. I don’t watch this stuff as a policy wonk. I just watch this as an average guy, and I’m jaded. I hear Democrats and I’ve heard them for six years literally trying to destroy this guy’s life. I hear them – making up some of the most outrageous insults, calling him names, and then he walks down the aisle, and they all can’t wait to be in the front row or on the front edge there so they can get their pictures taken with big smiles and handshakes and so forth.
It’s just a bunch of phonies, and to me it doesn’t sell. It may be a minor thing to you, but as a person of cultured refinement and manners, I think it’s just ingenuous. It burns me up to watch — and then, on the way out, why, all these people were asking (the Democrats included) for Bush to sign autographs of the program that they were all given, and Congresswomen couldn’t keep their hands off of him, from both sides of the aisle. And he’s walking; he’s nice, and he’s gracious. He tells Jesse Jackson, Jr., “You look just like your old man.” He’s chatting up Sheila Jackson Lee — who won’t stop chatting, by the way. She would not shut up as he’s trying to walk out. He runs into Dennis Kucinich, both in and out, telling Bush, “God bless you, Mr. President,” and so forth and so on. Warm embraces. Tom Harkin out in the hall after the thing is all over. Russ Feingold doing the same thing — and, I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. Something here is not genuine. One of these two situations is phony.
Either last night with their professed love, respect, and admiration for George Bush is phony or their behavior every day of the week other than last night, every day of the year other than last night is phony. But it’s just unseemly to me, it is not natural, and I don’t want to hear, “Well, it’s all about the collegiality, Rush! At the State of the Union show everybody stands up and applauds, collegiality, trying to put forth the image that we’re unified as a country.” Fine. It doesn’t work. The Democrats and a bunch of Republicans today are back at it complaining and whining and moaning about the Iraq policy. There’s no plan. Chuck Hagel lost it during a Senate committee today. We’ve got the audio sound bite of this coming up. I don’t know. Whatever else happened, it just sort of sours the occasion for me. I thought one of the best parts of last night was when Bush introduces these real people heroes, the military personnel, the woman who is an entrepreneur and had her daughter there. The subway hero from New York, Wesley Autrey, who was the highlight of the night for me. This guy gets introduced by Bush, he stands up and starts pointing at Bush, “You the man! You the man,” and accepting all these accolades, just a real guy. It was great. Bush was amused by it. You could see it on his face. But I’ll tell you something. I don’t care; I’m just illustrating this to make the point. I’ve taken a lot of grief from people (even some of you who are, quote, unquote, “fans, supporters, listeners”), when I have openly said, “The Democrats are invested in defeat”, and some of you have written, “Find another way to say it. You’re not going to convince the American people that Democrats want us to lose.” Well, I’m not going to change the way I talk about it, certainly not after last night. When the president absolutely mentions that what this is all about is forging on to victory, half of that room sat still, half of that room did not applaud. Nancy Pelosi didn’t make a move other than her dancing eyes. Now, you can be critical of me for being, uh, too direct or whatever you think, brazen, but I just ask you to look at the video from last night if you saw it.