RUSH: Let’s now head to these sound bites. This is Sunday morning. We have a montage of Obama advisers Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod talking about Romney’s performance at the first presidential debate.

GIBBS: I’m not gonna take away from Mitt’s masterful theatrical performance. He did a superb acting job. He did everything but learn tap dance.

GIBBS: Governor Romney had a masterful theatrical performance this past week. Again, it was a masterful — masterful performance by Governor Romney.

AXELROD: Governor Romney showed up to deliver a performance, and he delivered a very good performance.

AXELROD: Governor Romney went to give a performance. He gave a good performance.

AXELROD: George Burns said, all you need to succeed in show business is sincerity — and if you can fake that, you got it made. And that’s essentially what Governor Romney’s been about this whole week.

RUSH: How many things have these guys thrown at the wall hoping something sticks? And this is just the latest. “Ah, it was a performance. He didn’t mean any of it. Once you fake sincerity, then the rest is easy.” They’re floundering. Their side is floundering. These people on the left… There are stories of these professors at Harvard and so forth. Folks, they don’t know what to do. They’re very worried. It’s like I told you last week: They believe in this concoction of Obama as the most brilliant human being ever conceived.

They believe this stuff!

They believe it.

They believe all the stories they have made up about us. They think Romney is the biggest empty suit, rich guy, cheat. All these caricatures they create, they end up believing. But particularly the ones about Obama. “So smart. He’s gonna lower the sea levels!” All of that crap from the 2008 campaign, they believe it. I know you probably think I’m wrong about this. Don’t doubt me.

They believe it. And they’re floored. They cannot explain what happened. They can’t. So now Kerry is at fault, or Romney had a great performance and Obama decided to carry that forward last night in LA at his campaign event, talking to a bunch of Hollywood people that are supposedly very worried, too. He had to go out there to reassure them: Don’t worry, everything’s okay!

Here’s what he told them…

OBAMA: Everybody here is, eh, incredible professionals. They’re such great friends and they just perform flawlessly night after night. I can’t always say the same.

RUSH: Whoa! He just admits to these guys that he can’t do it every day. No, he’s saying he’s not all performance. He can’t do it. There are any number of ways of interpreting this. But to go out there and tell these guys, “Look, everything is okay. I just can’t do it every day”? What, is he acting every day and he goofed up at the debate? Every day is an act with the debates the real Obama, and, uh-oh?

That’s what a lot of them are afraid of.

Except these idiots in Hollywood have never thought he was acting.

They thought what they got and what they made up in their own minds about him was the real deal.

Everybody on his team’s discombobulated.

Don’t doubt me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, so the narrative is that Romney turned in a great “performance,” right? He was acting. But the New York Times has a piece in which they say that it was Obama who, quote, “did not say his lines right.”

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RUSH: There are two themes now as we head into the Ryan-Biden debate and the next Obama-Romney debate, particularly the Obama-Romney debate. The two themes are that Romney lied and he just turned in a much greater performance. “Whoa, what a great performance!” That was all over television yesterday. That’s the latest theme. In fact, the New York Times today is carrying the theme. They say that the Obama aides were appalled that Obama “didn’t say his lines right” in the debate.

That’s a quote.

“It turned out the former was the one who showed up in Denver. He kept looking down and was not using the lines they had practiced assailing Mitt Romney, who kept the president on the defensive and presented a forceful case against his re-election.” He “was not using the lines they had practiced.” You don’t need to practice lines. There were all kinds of… I know a few people in the Romney camp. They, at least I was told, expressly decided: No zingers, no one-liners, none of that.

This was gonna be a debate of substance.

And that’s what it was. So now they’re saying that Romney turned in a great, great performance — and that he lied and that Barack Obama screwed up by not calling him on any of the lies because Obama didn’t say his lines right. Now, say his lines right? That’s how you would assess an actor’s performance. “Advisers had seen two presidents during practice debates, one who had been listless and passive two nights before and another energetic and aggressive the next night.

“It turned out the former [the passive] was the one who showed up in Denver. He kept looking down and was not using the lines they had practiced assailing Mitt Romney, who kept the president on the defensive and presented a forceful case against his re-election.” Well, who’s the actor? Let’s continue now with the sound bites. CBS reporters. They’re not buying the spin that Obama lost because Romney lied.

Face the Nation yesterday morning, Bob Schieffer said to Axelrod (paraphrased), “What happened? What happened at the debate? We set the table for you. We gave you the 47%. We pretty much gave you everything you wanted. We ripped Romney here and there based on everything you told us to do, and then Obama didn’t do anything with it! What the hell happened, David?”

AXELROD: Governor Romney showed up to deliver a performance, and he delivered a very good performance. It was completed un-rooted in fact, it was completely un-rooted in the positions he’s taken before, and he spent 90 minutes trying to undo two years of, uh, campaigning on that stage. But he did it very well.

SCHIEFFER: Wuh…? Are you saying that Governor Romney lied or was dishonest?

AXELROD: Well, yeah. I think he was dishonest, absolutely. I would —

SCHIEFFER: Would you go so far as to say he lied?

AXELROD: Well, I’m not… I — I — I’m saying that he was dishonest in his, uhh, answers. You can characterize that any way you want.

RUSH: These guys can’t take it.

They just can’t take it that their little messiah got his ass whooped.

They cannot take it. Folks, they don’t know how to process this. So now they’re saying… In this bite, you know what Axelrod’s saying? “You know, Romney… That wasn’t Mitt Romney! That wasn’t the Romney we know. That wasn’t the Romney who’s been campaigning. He lied! Why, he had us so confused! Poor Barack, he didn’t know who he was dealing with! It looked like Mitt Romney over there, but he was saying so many things that weren’t right.

“Poor Barack, he was flummoxed. He was almost paralyzed. He had no idea. He didn’t recognize the guy who showed up because this guy was telling so many lies.” Of course, Romney didn’t tell one lie. There wasn’t one lie that Romney told. He didn’t make anything up. It was that Obama instinctively knew his lies wouldn’t work. If you want to know what really happened, I think that’s it. I think Obama instinctively knew it. Here’s Romney. He’s forceful and accurate, particularly in the way Romney described Obama’s failures. Particularly in that way.

He laid out every mistake Obama has made economically.

So whatever “lines” they had, Obama knew he would look and sound foolish if he used them. So he tried to carry the day by acting aloof and presidential and above it all by adopting an attitude of, “I don’t even need to be here. This is so beneath me. What am I doing here? I’m so bored. Who is this guy? I don’t even know who he is. Why am I here?” And it looked much, much worse than that. We continue now with Face the Nation, Norah O’Donnell and Axelrod.

Norah O’Donnell, by the way, is as upset as she can be. She’s asking Axelrod here why Obama didn’t call Romney on all of his lies.

O’DONNELL: So, when you say that he was dishonest, and you went through those series of things where you think that Mitt Romney was dishonest, why didn’t the president make that point in the debate?

AXELROD: I think he was a little taken aback at the, uh — at the, uh, uh — the brazenness with which Governor Romney walked away from so many, uh, of the positions on which he’s run, walked away from his record, and I — I — I… You know, that’s something we’re gonna have to make an adjustment for, uh, in these subsequent debates. (mumbles)

O’DONNELL: So you admit you were surprised by that, that the president was surprised by that.

AXELROD: Anybody —

O’DONNELL: So what would he do differently? Do you think he —

AXELROD: Anybody would be! I mean, it takes a certain… As President Clinton would say: It takes a certain brass to do what Governor Romney did there.

RUSH: How hard is it? If you really think somebody’s lying, how hard is it to deal with it? Look, this is Barack Obama! This is the most brilliant, the most qualified man ever! His light is so bright, we can barely look at him for very long before being blinded. And he’s thrown off his game by a pathological liar? Why not call the pathological liar on it? Why not say (Obama impression), “Are you Mitt Romney?

“You don’t sound like him. I — I don’t recognize a thing you’re saying. Why, just last week you said X and here tonight you said Y. I don’t know who you are.” Why couldn’t he have said that? If that’s true, that woulda been a great way to deal with Romney’s lies. He coulda called Romney a liar without calling him a liar. Say, “Wait a minute! I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Just last week, you said X. Could you show me your birth certificate? Are you really Mitt Romney?”

What a great line that would have been!

Well, that’s essentially what they’re saying here, isn’t it? That a totally different, lying-through-his-teeth Mitt Romney showed up and it affected our poor president. “Whew! He was blindsided, paralyzed. He didn’t know how to deal with this.” Come on! The community organizer whose best friends are Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko doesn’t know how to deal with nefarious characters?

Let me tell you something: What he doesn’t know how to deal with here is somebody standing up to him. Do you realize that this may be the first time in at least four years that somebody looked at Barack Obama and said, “You know what? You’re full of it, pal, and you’re ruining this country.” I don’t think Obama’s used to being opposed or stood up to.

And if he had these magical lines at his disposal, he either forgot them or he realized that they would sound really bad if he used them. But I think it’s more than that. I don’t think they know what hit ’em. I think they live in an alternate universe. They never face opposition, media or anywhere else. The road, speaking of which, is always paved for this guy wherever he goes.

Sticking with Face the Nation, here is John Dickerson. He is the CBS political director, and he and Axelrod ultimately have this little exchange…

DICKERSON: When Senator Obama in 2008 said, “I’m gonna cut the deficit in half; I’m gonna close Gitmo,” a lot of people said those are unrealistic, but they didn’t say he wasn’t telling the truth.

AXELROD: Well, uh…

DICKERSON: There’s a difference, isn’t there?

AXELROD: No, there — there is — there… The difference is that, ummm, closing Gitmo was an — involved an act of Congress, and he wasn’t able to get Congress, uhhh, to agree with him on that question.

RUSH: Oh, come on.

AXELROD: This is basic math.

RUSH: Come on!

I told you before he was immaculated that he was not gonna close Gitmo. I told you that he was not gonna purposely lose Iraq. He was not gonna close Gitmo. What “math,” Mr. Axelrod? For two years the Republicans couldn’t stop Barack Obama on anything! The Republicans did not have enough votes in the House to stop Obama doing anything: Illegal immigration. Amnesty. Health care, cap and trade. You name it!

You could have done anything in those first two years!

The Republicans couldn’t stop you.

If you’d-a wanted to close Gitmo, you could have. And, by the way, when has Congress stopped you guys? If Congress doesn’t do what you like, you do an end run around ’em with an executive order or some such thing. This is pathetic, folks. This is really pathetic. These people have now been exposed. It’s just a question how many people are seeing it, but they’re being exposed as the frauds that they are and that they have been since the get-go.

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RUSH: Lies. Romney lied. That’s the narrative that’s gone out from on high from David Axelrod. By the way, can I ask a simple question? And I’ve thought this for a long time. Who is David Axelrod? This guy is a very sinister looking guy to me, and yet he’s the president. Do you realize Axelrod is acting as president? While Obama campaigns, they’re sending Axelrod out to all these TV shows to explain policy, to explain what Obama has done, what he’s gonna do, what he’s thinking of doing, what he meant to do at the debate, what happened at the debate.

Well, this guy, why should anybody believe what comes out of his mouth? Who is he? Has Axelrod been vetted? Is he clean and pure as the wind-driven snow? Who is this guy? This guy’s made millions of dollars going on TV and lying for a liar. They’ve obviously decided it helps to put him out there, but he’s the guy that’s concocted this narrative that Romney had a great theatrical performance, oh, yeah, and that Romney lied. You remember three times Obama, in this debate, accused Romney of cutting taxes for the rich to the tune of $5 trillion. That’s as much as Obama has spent, folks. There’s nobody that has ever proposed a tax cut totaling $5 trillion, over whatever time period you could think of.

Obama said it once. Romney refuted it. Obama said it again. Romney refuted it. Obama tried it a third time. Romney refuted it. And Obama said, okay. He gave up. At that point he gave up on it. This is why, folks, I think Obama didn’t use the lines they gave him, because up against Romney, his lines would have looked pathetically weak and would have appeared to be lies themselves, such as the $5 trillion tax cut. It was an out-and-out lie. Romney wasn’t lying about that when he refuted it. It was Obama who was. Obama lying accusing Romney of it. Finally after three times — well, after two times, Romney calls him on it, and Obama backed away. He didn’t use it again until the next day in Iowa, when there was no chance for anybody to refute it. A sure sign of a coward.

You notice the next day Obama had no problem with his lines. The next day at his campaign rally, wherever it was, Denver, Iowa, I don’t remember where it was; doesn’t matter, he was out there on prompter again, and he was telling everybody all about these lies that Mitt Romney told the night before, but there wasn’t any Romney to refute ’em. I’m telling you the reason he didn’t use whatever they had prepped him with is ’cause he knew that he would look ridiculous. ‘Cause he knew that what he was going to be saying wasn’t true. And he wasn’t gonna be able to bring it off, because there wasn’t a media to prop him up, to back him up, and there wasn’t a media to go to Romney and say, “What do you mean, you’re gonna cut taxes $5 trillion?” He had no protection whatsoever. He was naked up there. He was all alone, and all alone Obama can’t cut it. Don’t doubt me.

Now, another thing. I have maintained for a long time, ’cause I’ve seen stories on it, that Obama literally doesn’t like Romney. He doesn’t like who Romney is. He doesn’t like how Romney became Mitt Romney/ Je doesn’t like Romney’s lifestyle. He doesn’t like anything about Romney or his life. Romney and the way he’s lived his life and the way he’s succeeded, acquired his wealth, the things he’s accomplished, Obama despises. Those are the kind of things Obama wants to prevent happening. He doesn’t want people to have that kind of success anymore, unless it’s ordained from the government. And in this New York Times story, I have it here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, in this same New York Times story where they talk about Obama refusing to use his lines, and they’re puzzling over that, why didn’t Obama use his lines? That same article says this:

“Mr. Obama made clear to advisers that he was not happy about debating Mr. Romney, whom he views with disdain. It was something to endure, rather than an opportunity, aides said. It was something to endure, rather than an opportunity, aides said.”

He didn’t want to debate Romney. He doesn’t like Romney. This was something that he had to endure. He wasn’t looking forward to it at all. If you woulda asked Obama, “What was your favorite part of the debate?” He would have said, “When it ended.” ‘Cause he didn’t want to be there in the first place. The New York Times says it right here: he views Romney with disdain. He doesn’t like what Romney represents. I don’t know if it’s personal. He just doesn’t like what Romney represents. Romney personifies, in Obama’s world view, what’s wrong with this country. He personifies everything about this country that Obama doesn’t like. The wrong people are ending up with all the stuff. I’m not kidding, folks. You may not want to believe it, but don’t doubt me. I’ve never been more confident of anything, and I’m confident about a lot.