Then you must have missed an awful lot of shows in your 17 years of listening. I think Rush is more charged up than he's ever been and if you heard him defend Bush 100% of the time you must have missed about 50% of his broadcasts.
That was after 2006 election as I posted. In fact I remember him saying on his show late 2006 he was not going to ‘carry the administration's water’ anymore. After that he became more and more critical, but still feeling forced to stick with certain pro-Bush themes. The most obvious was to defend the Bush economy(didnt work out too well ), although I noticed he liked to skip back to Reagan economy many times.
Being charged up is not the same as being good(sharp). Of course he is charged up, democrats in power are the best thing to happen to him.