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.
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.