RUSH: Go to the sound bites coming next and you’ll hear them: They think they’ve turned the corner. Like on April 15th, everybody’s gonna file their taxes.

Is Obama gonna do a Rose Garden ceremony to talk about how persuasive he’s been and how many people love the income tax? “My God, look at this, folks! Look at how many have complied this year. Look how many people love the income tax, and the income tax is making our country and a transfer of wealth possible. Look at how many millions and millions and millions of people file their taxes.”

Yeah. Of course they’re not gonna do that ’cause it’s mandatory. It’s the law. It made what happened in the Rose Garden yesterday, A, disingenuous; B, dishonest; and, C, irrelevant. In fact, it’s embarrassing. You’ve got a deadline that some people think has been extended and some people don’t know it hasn’t been extended. Some people do. It’s the individual mandate.

The law of the land “is,” as far as most low-information people are concerned.

You either gotta have health insurance by yesterday or you have to pay your penalty. Only seven million — and that’s not even a real number, as we have come to learn and as our instincts yesterday guided us. It’s not even the real number. Let’s start on the audio sound bites, and we’ll mix your calls in with all this stuff as well, so those of you on hold are not gonna be languishing forever out there.

This is a montage from yesterday, last night, and this morning of the Drive-Bys orgasmically reveling in Obama’s “victory lap.”

DIANE SAWYER: President Obama took a kind of victory lap.

WOLF BLITZER: President Obama called reporters to the White House for something of a victory lap.

JIM ACOSTA: …what was basically a victory lap here in the Rose Garden

ERIN BURNETT: …the president’s victory lap.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: The president taking a victory lap…

TRISH REGAN: … bit of a victory lap.

GLORIA BORGER: … a victory lap or crowing and saying, “We told you so!”

LISA KENNEDY MONTGOMERY: …the president’s health care victory lap.

BILL SCANLAN: A chance to take a victory lap.

CHRISTINE ROMANS: A victory lap?

ED HENRY: It was a pep rally as much as a victory lap.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: And that is what a victory lap sounds like.

FRANCES RIVERA: The public victory lap…

STEVE DOOCY: …the president’s victory lap yesterday in the Rose Garden.

JOHN KING: It’s hard not to call this a victory lap.

RUSH: Really? Do you think one of you people, just one of you could have called it something else? A “celebration”? You all called it a “victory lap,” every one of you? Every single Drive-By reporter called it “a victory lap.” So it didn’t matter where you watched the news yesterday, that’s what you got. Well, let’s go back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites, shall we?

January 2005. Here is a Drive-By Media montage of condemnation of George W. Bush, for displaying “hubris” at the beginning of his second term for daring to claim a mandate. If you recall (you may not recall, so I will tell you), after Bush’s reelection in 2004, he first met the press in 2004-2005. This is from January 2005, and he said he was gonna “start spending his political capital,” is how he said it.

Meaning: He had a mandate.

He won by a large margin; he had a mandate. He ran on a campaign of specific things, and he was gonna start doing them. And the Drive-Bys were not happy and decided to condemn Bush. Now, when you win an election, the aftermath is a victory lap. But this is not what they called that. Oh, no, no, no! This was Bush being braggadocios and filled with “hubris,” and it was very, very bad.

TIM RUSSERT: … a president thinking that he has more of a mandate than he does — hubris, if you will.

LANNY DAVIS: He has a hubris issue.

DAVID GERGEN: Hubris can also reach to overreaching. Hubris. A scandal often is a product of hubris.

GWEN IFILL: Hubris in the second term? Do you agree with the hubris?

MACK MCLARTY: Well I think the hubris…

KEN DUBERSTEIN: The hubris is certainly the problem.

ELEANOR CLIFT: … or whether he’s going to be captured by hubris.

RICHARD SHENKMAN: The other problem is hubris.

JIM PINKERTON: You just have to be careful about what the Ancient Greeks called “hubris.”

WILLIAM KRISTOL: The president is susceptible hubris.

FRED BARNES: When somebody accuses Bush of hubris…

BRIT HUME: … used the word hubristic, meaning hubris.

MORT KONDRACKE: It approached the edge of being hubristic, filled with hubris.

TRENT LOTT: (b-roll noise) But you can’t get caught up in hubris.

BILL HEMMER: (b-roll noise) Have you seen hubris in the past four years?

BILL SCHNEIDER: (b-roll noise) No, no. This wasn’t about hubris.

RUSH: Only one guy. It was Bill Schneider. Whatever happened to Bill Schneider? Did he move to Moscow, finally make it official? He used to wear one of those big Moscow hats when it was wintertime in New England. He put on the hat like the old Soviet leaders wore and reported from outside the polling place. Bill Schneider, remember him? He’s the guy at the end there who said, “No, no, no, no, this wasn’t about hubris.” And of course remember when Bush celebrated victory on the deck of the aircraft carrier when he landed after the invasion of Iraq. Oh, they hated that. They didn’t permit any victory lap there. But when Obama does it, oh, yeah. And let’s not forget, what was the mission of Obamacare? Was the mission of Obamacare to sign up 7.1 million people?

No, ladies and gentlemen. Obamacare was supposed to insure 40, 43, whatever number millions of people who didn’t have insurance. That’s what Obamacare was supposed to do. Obamacare wasn’t supposed to sign up seven million people. Signing up seven million people’s chump change, irrelevant, it’s embarrassingly insignificant. And yet they’re all throwing themselves a party there in the Rose Garden. They’re deluding themselves. I mean, you take the most rosy figures, they’ve only insured about six million, and I don’t even think that’s an accurate number. They don’t even really know. But we’ll give ’em benefit of doubt. They’ve insured six million, 4.5 million of ’em are Medicaid, that’s not Obamacare.

So the mission was to insure 43 million uninsured, and they’ve got seven million signed up on a day dictated by law. They’re actually celebrating people complying with the law as though this is some great sales job or massive job of great persuasion by Obama. Is it 47? The AP today are saying 47 million uninsured. “Status Update as Health Law Marks a Milestone.” See? There you go. What milestone? We got 47 million uninsured! The number is growing after three years of Obamacare. Well, three years since passage. They’re deluding themselves. They’re again creating and living in a false reality. And they end up believing it, folks.