This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” January 29, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The president made a lot of promises in his State of the Union address. At this point, how many people actually now believe him? Well, it turns out not many.
Although the president declared that he has cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, a Rasmussen poll taken after the speech shows that 53 percent of Americans say, well, that’s not true. Only 21 percent say the president has actually kept his promise. Twenty-six percent don’t have a clue; they’re not sure.
Likewise, the president claimed that the $787 billion stimulus bill had created or saved two million jobs. Well, only 27 percent of Americans are buying that lie, while a whopping 51 percent get it as a lie.
Well, now that Americans are seeing through the Anointed One’s rhetoric, well, what is he going to turn to next?
Joining me with analysis, the author of “The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy from the Grassroots to the White House,” Doug Schoen, and former Pennsylvania Senator, Fox News contributor Rick Santorum.
There’s a rumor you might run for president. That’s just a rumor.
RICK SANTORUM, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: A rumor. I’ll leave it at that.
HANNITY: OK. I’m not going to go there.
SANTORUM: OK.
HANNITY: How does the president say we lost four million jobs, that we created — we saved two? How does he do that?
DOUG SCHOEN, AUTHOR, “THE POLITICAL FIX”: It’s a tough claim to make, Sean. I’d like to help him, but unemployment is, what, 10.1, 10.2 percent? It’s not really showing any signs of recovery. And the poll is basically bearing out reality.
HANNITY: All right. And at 17 percent, if we include those that stopped looking for jobs or are underemployed. So politically speaking, I think George Herbert Walker Bush, when he said, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” broke the pledge, destroyed his credibility.
SANTORUM: Yes. I think if I’m Barack Obama, you almost have to throw yourself on the mercy of the court and say, “Look, I tried. It’s not working. We need to do something else. We need to do more.”
But to go out there and try to convince the American public as unemployment is at double digits and looks like it may even go up some more, and try to convince them that what I’m doing is working, is just — is that moment where people say, “He’s out of touch with us.”
HANNITY: But he nearly quadrupled the deficit in year one, and he’s going to even increase the deficit…
SCHOEN: Right.
HANNITY: … a lot more when he said he’s going to be a fiscal conservative.
SCHOEN: Right. He’s relying on tax increases to keep the deficit from ballooning even further, and optimistic economic assumptions.
Sean, there’s another approach. President Obama could have said, “Look, my approach hasn’t worked. I want to govern in a bipartisan way. Mr. Boehner, Mr. McConnell come to the White House, and let’s talk about your agenda and my agenda, and we’ll find a happy medium.”
HANNITY: You get criticized when you’re on this program, and I read the blogs.
SCHOEN: I do.
HANNITY: I’ve got to tell you something. If they listened to you, they would be in a much better position.
Like, I’ll use Evan Bayh as an example.
SCHOEN: Exactly.
HANNITY: If Evan Bayh came out and said no to cap-and-tax, no to this massive health care reform that only 20, 30 percent of the American people want, the American people would say, “There’s a Democrat I could support.”
SCHOEN: And he’s moving in that direction, Sean.
HANNITY: He’s moving.
SCHOEN: But I would tell you this…
SANTORUM: Because his race is getting closer in Indiana, that’s why.
SCHOEN: … because we need — we need bipartisanship on a fundamental basis. We need deficit reduction.
HANNITY: Yes.
SCHOEN: And we need a real spending cut. If we got that, as we saw it in the mid-90s with the Clinton administration, the Democrats would win popularity.
SANTORUM: The problem with that is that the Democrats who are in office right now don’t believe in spending cuts. They believe that the way they get this going is spending more money. They believe in Keynesian economics, priming the pump, government spending money.
That’s why President Obama said, “That’s why I’m waiting until 2011 to do any deficit reduction, because this year we need to spend more money.”
HANNITY: Here’s what I don’t understand, thought. I mean, look, you’ve been in tough campaigns. You — look, you’re in sort of a light blue state, maybe even a dark blue state, Pennsylvania.
SANTORUM: Increasingly dark, yes.
HANNITY: So what is Blanche Lincoln thinking? What is Gillibrand thinking? What is Ben Nelson thinking? What is Evan Bayh, who’s up for re-election, thinking? Russ Feingold is behind in a poll in — you know, against Tommy Thompson.
SANTORUM: I would say that, if I’m Blanche Lincoln, I’m thinking what ambassadorship that I’m interested in. Because…
HANNITY: It’s over.
SANTORUM: It’s over. I mean, it’s — you just can’t win.
SCHOEN: There is another strategy. The moderate Democrats get together and say, “We’ve had it.”
HANNITY: Who? Who’s going to do that?
SCHOEN: The ones you were mentioning.
SANTORUM: There’s not enough of them. There’s not enough.
SCHOEN: Lincoln, Nelso, Bayh — and they say, “We’re not going to do it, and we’re going to speak out, create a counterweight, an independent force in America.” And you know, that could have some credibility, notwithstanding what Rick says.
HANNITY: If the president goes on national TV in the State of the Union and says, “I’m going to be fiscally responsible” last, what, Wednesday and today, introduces the biggest budget ever in America history with the biggest budget deficit in American history, it doesn’t — it doesn’t…
SANTORUM: Well, he’s saying he’s going to be fiscally responsible next year.
HANNITY: Oh, next year.
SANTORUM: You remember that? But again it goes back to…
HANNITY: Next year it’s over a trillion.
SANTORUM: It goes back to the fact that what — they don’t believe that you create economic growth in this country through the private sector. They believe you create economic growth through government spending. And when it comes to Washington, D.C., they’re right. The lowest unemployment rate in the country? Washington, D.C. Half of what the unemployment rate is of the rest of the country.
SCHOEN: Sean, there’s another problem, which is arguable as big, which is with the interest payments on the debt, we don’t have the resources to fund our military. We are effectively the hugest debtor nation in the world. We’re mortgaging ourselves to the Chinese and other nations. We can’t do what we have to do internationally.
HANNITY: I say myself, and I agree with — I guess we got our answer to the question that I’ve been asking for the last two weeks. And that is that he’s not going to go Bill Clinton’s — he’s a rigid ideologue.
SANTORUM: He is a rigid ideologue.
HANNITY: Radical ideologue.
SANTORUM: When I heard him say, “I am not an ideologue,” I just kept thinking Richard Nixon, “I am not a crook.” I mean, it was the same thing. And the fact is, everybody in that room, and everybody in America, increasingly, is thinking you really are an ideologue and you’re not going to change.
SCHOEN: When you look at the polls, Sean, there is a consensus. Fifty, 60 percent of Americans who want fiscally-prudent policies, moderate social welfare, and a strong national defense. If the president governed that way in a bipartisan manner, he would have broad support, as would the Democrats.
HANNITY: I — I…
SCHOEN: Wrong choice, political disaster.
HANNITY: You know what? Where is there — there’s not a Democrat saying what you’re saying.
SCHOEN: There isn’t a moderate Democrat.
HANNITY: Not one.
SANTORUM: That’s the problem.
HANNITY: The problem with your party.
SCHOEN: That’s what we need.
HANNITY: Yes. All right. Good to see you both.
SCHOEN: Thank you.
HANNITY: We’ll watch to see if there’s any announcements coming your way. I heard these rumors.
SANTORUM: I’ll come here. I’ll come here.
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