Trump's Support Is the Result of Obama's Radicalism, and the GOP's Refusal

RUSH: A brief departure today. Normally it's been this way for the past, I don't know, number of years, but particularly in the last two or three weeks, at least half of every day's audio sound bite roster has been about me. What I've been doing is relegating those sound bites to the last hour of the program so as to avoid any catcall criticism that I want to make this all about me, but today I can't. I've gotta move this stuff to the top because it's relevant.

RUSH: Okay, let's go to the audio sound bites. We got some really fascinating stuff here, as we're one week away from the Iowa caucuses today, and it's all over the park now. You've got people weighing in on how the polls don't mean anything, particularly in Iowa, they don't mean anything for a host of reasons. You've got people beating up on Jeb Bush. I got a story, Steve Hayes here from the Weekly Standard, really laying into Mike Murphy who runs the Bush PAC called raising the roof or whatever, Right to Rise, that's what it is, and the headline: "How Jeb Cleared the Way for Trump."

Now, as you will hear, I'm being blamed for Trump. Oh, yes. Does that surprise you? I am being blamed for Trump now. I asked Trump to run. I've been advising Trump. Yeah, right, of course. No, they're not saying that. You'll hear what they're saying. It's coming up in the audio sound bites. I just want to point out here -- by the way, don't let anybody. I did not ask Trump to run. I don't advise Trump. You know, people can hear that, take it out of context, might appear somewhere on some watchdog website.

Snerdley said that stuff to me and I was repeating it, echoing it. It's a joke. In the old days everybody would have known something like that was a joke. Already there are people in their pajamas getting out of bed running to their computers, "My God, Limbaugh just said he's the one that told Trump to run!" I gotta get a scoop. They're typing it up there, tweet it out, Facebook it out. I just want you to know it's all made up, just having a little fun here.

Stephen Hayes, the Weekly Standard: "How Jeb Cleared the Way for Trump." You know, the bottom line is, you know why there's a Donald Trump? It's very, very simple. It has nothing to do with me. The Republican Party, whatever you want to call it, Republican establishment, the ruling class, I don't care what you want to call it, they are responsible for Donald Trump. They are responsible. I'll go through the reasons again here in due course if you'll hang in there and be tough.

Let's go to audio sound bites here and get started on this before the first break of the hour. I'm not gonna air audio sound bite number one. We're gonna go to number two. Number one is simply Howard Kurtz talking to Trump on Fox News Channel on Sunday morning. And Howard Kurtz tells Trump, "Yeah, when Rush Limbaugh tells you to back off, you back off, and when he doesn't, you don't. I mean, it sounds like it's really --" And then Trump says (paraphrasing), "No, no, no, no. Rush has not said any of that. Rush has been terrific, he made a point, but then he said you gotta do what you gotta do. Everything is cool there, Howard, don't sweat it. Just get that on the record."

Now we go to the same show, Media Buzz, Howard Kurtz speaking with the Republican strategist, Mercedes Schlapp about National Review magazine and their anti-Trump issue. Howard Kurtz says, "You saw Trump hitting back against National Review, but it's influential in the media, National Review is." Now, that is a key claim. Howard Kurtz says to his guest here, National Review is influential in the media. "Is this National Review campaign against Trump as a menace to the conservative movement, is that a problem? Is the National Review issue a problem for Trump?"

SCHLAPP: I don't think so necessarily. You have to understand the Trump supporter. The Trump supporter is not a subscriber to the National Review. They are getting their cues from Rush Limbaugh. There is a disconnect between these conservative thinkers, many of them who live in New York and Washington, DC, and the rest of America.

RUSH: They're not getting cues from me. They're getting cues from Trump. You have a candidate, particularly Trump, why is it that when we're talking about Republicans -- well, I know the answer to the question. I'm asking it rhetorically. Why is it when we're talking about Republican candidates, even Trump, when you start talking media -- even this woman's a Republican strategist. It can't be that people are making up their own minds. It can't be. No. They're taking their cues from somewhere. You people, the Republican voter, the Republicans apparently on the strategist and consultant side even believe this, that you don't have minds of your own. That what you do is the result of whoever has the most influence over you. It might be Dr. Krauthammer. It might be National Review. It might be George Will. It might be talk radio. But it doesn't matter; you are incapable of making up your own mind.

This is not an attack on Mercedes Schlapp. I don't even know Mercedes Schlapp. I'm just saying words mean things. I listen to what people say. I'm a literalist. You know me. I'm the mayor of Realville. She may not intend this meaning but I'm telling you that's how I interpret it. "No, no, no, no, no. Trump supporters are not subscribers to National Review. They're getting their cues from Rush Limbaugh." They're getting their cues from Trump. Trump is who they're supporting. In fact, I think it is a mistake for these people to assume that Trump supporters are not Trump supporters for specific reasons related to Trump.

I don't know what they're telling themselves. Then she goes on to say here that there's a disconnect between these conservative thinkers, many who live in New York and Washington and the rest of America. That that case could be made for that for anybody that lives, works in Washington, New York, Boston, the East Coast corridor.

Now we move to The Kelly File, Megyn Kelly. This was on Friday night on Fox. She is interviewing Rich Lowry. This is the exchange they had.

KELLY: Rush Limbaugh came out and said this is misplaced because you overestimate the degree of conservatism in the Republican Party.

LOWRY: He could be right. If he is right, it's profoundly depressing and our mission is to hold up this banner and put this flag in the ground for principled conservatism whether it's popular or not. And, in fact, sometimes the less people want to hear something, the more important it is for us to say it.

RUSH: I wonder how many people might be confused or not understanding what I mean when I say that the Republican Party is overestimating its base. I didn't say overestimating the degree -- well, yeah, overestimating the degree of conservatism, but overestimating is a keyword. You have to understand how the establishment defines conservatism before anybody says anything. This is true of Republicans, in some cases. It's true of Democrats from top to bottom. It's true of liberals top to bottom. It's true of some Republicans, but not all, and that is conservative base -- why do you think Jeb wants to win without it?

They do not have a positive attitude of the conservative base or of the Tea Party. They think of them largely devoted to pro-life. That's their main fear and rub is they think they're all pro-life social issues first, second, and third people. And then they want low taxes and smaller government and spending. They're overestimating, they're misdefining what it is that defines the conservatism of the base, has been my point. And, as such, they are ignoring it at their peril.

RUSH: So when I say overestimating the conservative base, what I mean, not by numbers, they're not overestimating the numbers of conservatives. They're overestimating what they think of as conservatism. The GOP moderates, the establishment look at conservatives and see a bunch of strident, single-issue, inflexible people. And that's not who the Republican base is. That's not who conservatives are.

So when I say overestimating, overemphasizing probably would be a better word. They don't understand them. I don't care what word you use, the Republican base is not understood by its own party because of a built in prejudice and bias against it. I'm not aware I said this about National Review, by the way. I've long said it was about the Republican establishment. I think when it comes down to who is and who isn't a conservative I think even the experts in the business don't know because of whatever prejudice they have against certain conservative policies or issues.

Whatever bias they've got, they don't take the time to understand really how broad the spectrum is of conservatism. It's much more than just the social issues. It's much more than just pro-life versus pro-choice. It's much more than small government and low taxes, and they use those characterizations to impugn, belittle, mock, and it goes far, far deeper.

So maybe "overestimate" is a confusing word, but I'm not suggesting that they're overestimating the number. They're overestimating their definition, which is narrow and singular. And it's why they tend to join Democrats in thinking when it comes to who conservatives are.

RUSH: Now, here's my recycled explanation again for the theory that the GOP paved the way for Donald Trump. And so did Obama, by the way. Obama's actually the starting point. It's Obama's radicalism that actually begins the process which creates a scenario where somebody like Donald Trump charges in to fill an absolutely impossibly huge vacuum.

Now, we knew who Obama was -- well, I did -- from even before he was inaugurated. I don't know how many Republicans looked or today even look at Obama as a radical anything. Many of them just see him as the latest Democrat. But he's far more than that. He is the most radical leftist that has been elected president, that's even gotten close to it. And because Obama was not stopped, because the Republican Party laid down, folks, Donald Trump would not have exploded. Donald Trump would not have thought to even do any of this, nor would any other outsider.

I'm telling you, if the Republican Party had just simply seriously tried to stop Obama, if they had just done what opposition parties are assumed to do. In 2010, 2014, the Republican Party was given huge landslide victories, admittedly in midterm elections, but in both of them, one of them gave them the House of Representatives and a record number of Republicans in the House. The Democrats haven't had this few members of the House of Representatives since the Civil War.

The 2014 midterms gave the Republicans the Senate. So, yeah, they were midterms, but they were huge, huge Democrat landslide defeats all the way down the ballot. On every issue that matters, on every issue that drove the turnout in 2010 and 2014, on every issue that not only drove the turnout, but resulted in massive Republican victories, the Republican Party took a dive. They did not make one serious effort at stopping Obama. Now they want to stop Trump. But they made not one effort to stop Obama.

Now, admittedly they couldn't have stopped Obamacare because they did not have the votes. But even though they didn't have the votes, they could have used the bully pulpit that they've got far more effectively than they did. They could have gone out and spent all the time they had educating people what it was, what Obamacare was. They could have done what we were doing here. They could have called Obama out on his lies, that it wasn't going to allow you to keep your doctor or your plan, that it wasn't gonna reduce your premiums $2,500, that it wasn't gonna do anything it was promising to do.

It was not going to insure the uninsured and reduce costs and make everybody available for health care actual treatment. None of that. They could have gone out, they could have made the case. They could have set everybody up so that when they did get enough votes to stop it they could have seriously made an effort to repeal it. Well, they talked repeal, they talked repeal during campaigns, but there was never one serious effort to repeal it. I don't need to remind you about amnesty and immigration and all of that.

My point is that on every issue that matters, the Republican Party, which was asking for money and getting it, the Republican Party, which was asking for votes and got them, took a dive. Now they get energized. Now they get in gear. Now they get revved up. Now. And for what? To stop Ted Cruz, one of their own. You have to understand that in this environment, that is a huge vacuum. People of this country voting for Republicans, even people that don't vote Republican expect the Republican Party to try to stop what the opposing party is trying to do. That's the name of the game in politics. You supposedly bring to the table your core beliefs, your principles.

When the other side wins you stand up for yours. You do everything you can to convince people that the side that won is not good, they're gonna do great harm. You set yourself up to win later elections down the road, but more than that you do everything you can to stop what you disagree with. They didn't. And they still aren't. Now, I have nothing to do with this. Nobody on talk radio does. Nobody at Fox News does. Nobody's taking cues on Donald Trump from anybody but Donald Trump. He's perfectly capable of providing and giving the cues. He's done plenty to give people reasons to support him and to believe him.

If the Republican Party had actually been opposed to Obama and acted like it, the vacuum would not have existed making it much more difficult for Trump. When somebody comes in, enters a race, and is the only person from the outset that is voicing opposition to the status quo and is identifying with people and their feelings about it and their thoughts about it and is telling that he wants it to stop, why wouldn't people support that one voice?

Then the primaries get going and Ted Cruz joins that chorus. You got two people, maybe Rubio, but the other establishment Republicans, they've had their moments, but it's not something that the Republican Party has identified with, opposing Obama. Not by Republican voters. And, by the way, the budget is the most recent example of this, but it's not just the budget. I mean, you go back even the years of George W. Bush, folks, where there was no criticizing the Democrats. The Democrats were out impugning, destroying George W. Bush and his administration. No defense of it, no push-back. And in fact -- tell me if you remember this -- do you remember people like Senator McCain, Governor Christie at times, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, I mean, pick your name, how many times do you remember them saying something like, "We can't oppose Obama. That will anger the independents. We can't do that because that will lead to a government shutdown for which we will be blamed."

It doesn't matter what the issue is: immigration, budget, Obamacare, the word had gone out: We can't oppose Obama. The independents won't like it. They'll get mad at criticism of the first black president and they will run right back to the Democrats. So there wasn't any. And everybody else was told to shut up. Do not be critical. Do not oppose. They would tell you that we can't win elections by criticizing Obama. We can't win elections by criticizing Democrats. That's not what voters want. Voters want bipartisanship. Voters want cooperation. All of that literal BS. And so there wasn't any.

They didn't even fight back on that stuff the IRS was doing to the Tea Party. Secretly they might have actually enjoyed it because the Tea Party was competing for donor dollars. They didn't like the Tea Party. Look at the built-in majority coalitions the Republican Party punted. They could have a majority coalition opposing Obamacare, even when they didn't have the votes to stop it. Obamacare's never been supported by a majority of people. The majority of the American people have always opposed it.

Republicans could have forged an alliance. They could have branched out. They could have expanded their demographic appeal. They could have done everything they claim that the party has to do to modernize and stay viable. But they didn't do it because it would have meant criticizing Obama, and for some reason, from somebody they were told can't do that, we'll never win elections that way. We will lose the election if we criticize Obama. We will lose the election if we don't appear to be bipartisan and able to make Washington work.

So the IRS and Obama were allowed to basically defund the Tea Party by delaying or denying the awarding of tax-exempt status to various Tea Party groups. I mean, the list of issues is endless. They said, "Don't be combative, don't be angry, can't win." We've had to demonstrate we can cross the aisle. We've had to demonstrate we can cooperate. We've had to demonstrate we can be bipartisan. And I'm telling you this is not why people showed up in record numbers in 2010 and 2014 to vote against Democrats.

So don't believe that Donald Trump is the product mind poisoning from talk radio. Donald Trump is the result of the radicalism of Barack Hussein O combined with the Republican Party not standing up and opposing any of it, not seriously. There were words during campaigns, but when it comes to actual policies being implemented or tried, they never made Obama veto anything. "Ah, he'll just shut down the government." You know the drill.

There was no serious effort to stop it, which is what voters wanted. There's a huge vacuum in that sense. So here comes Trump. That's why he got into it. And his entry into the campaign shook it up, the best laid plans of the establishment were turned upside down.

RUSH: This is Fox News Channel Friday night, special report, Bret Baier. He is in the roundtable here, and here's how he opens one of the topics on the roundtable discussion.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Look, folks, you and I know the Republican establishment no more wants Donald Trump than they want Cruz. They don't want either of them. But they hate Cruz. They despise Cruz, because they're afraid of Ted Cruz. Trump, on the other hand, they don't even think is a Republican. When you get right down to brass tacks, the people inside the Republican Party don't even think he's a Republican.

RUSH: So they move on next to Dr. Krauthammer. Baier after playing the clip says, okay, Charles, what say you?

KRAUTHAMMER: There's a reason why this is now coming out, National Review pushing back. I think they have a sense, that we may be approaching a moment, an inflection point where essentially the so-called establishment, I hate the term, the mainstream Republicans, decide to throw in the towel on the Trump candidacy, have a sense that he's inevitable. Some of them because they really can't stand Cruz and that you may get the beginning of establishment mainstream Governors or Senators, you get one or two start to endorse Trump essentially as a signal that it's okay, he's become normalized.

RUSH: So there's a bit of agreement, Dr. Krauthammer with me, Republican establishment's enmity for Ted Cruz. And his point about National Review is that they are worried that Trump is about to become normalized and they're throwing in the towel, don't want to throw in the towel on it, assume he's gonna be the nominee, they want to, you know, plant the flag for conservatism here. I don't think this stuff is really hard to understand. People overanalyze this, overestimate a lot of this. And sometimes the simplest explanation for things happens to be what's right.

But I want to grab a phone call quick here before we escape on this hour. Scott in Cheverly, Maryland, great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Quick comment on the National Review issue against Trump, and, you know, of course they purport to represent William F. Buckley and his philosophy and so forth, but I think it's useful to be reminded of the fact that Buckley once said he would rather be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston phone book as opposed to the faculty at Harvard. And I think what we're seeing is the Republican base is basically saying, "Look, we're sick and tired of these feckless establishment Republicans who are ostensibly conservative. We've given them the House, the Senate. They've done nothing." So the base is saying, you know, let's try basically a common man, and Trump essentially represents the first hundred names in the Boston phone book. So, you know, let's see what this guy can do. You know, he's got the guts to confront these, you know, the politically correct liberal fools.

RUSH: Let me ask you a question point-blank, Scott. Do you believe what National Review said, and others are saying, that Trump is not conservative, A, number one. There's a follow-up question to that. Yes or no?

CALLER: You know, I do have some concerns about whether or not he is, you know, conservative. I mean, I'm vacillating between him and Cruz. You know, so, yeah, I do have some concerns, but, you know, as I said, I think the people are --

RUSH: But what you're saying is it doesn't matter, it's not the primary determining factor whether or not you're gonna support the guy, right?

RUSH: And that is profound just in its own simplicity. It's right there in front of all these people to learn. I gotta go. I wish I had more time to expand on it, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Don't go away.

RUSH: Up next is Dana Perino Friday night on The Five on the Fox News Channel. Eric Bolling sets it up.

BOLLING: Many establishment Republicans have warmed up to the idea of a Trump presidency. Rush Limbaugh knows why.

RUSH ARCHIVE: They are beside themselves with hatred for Ted Cruz that goes beyond the rational. ... [S]ome of them are actually saying that they would actively, publicly support and vote for Hillary Clinton over Ted Cruz. ... If there is an establishment shift here to Trump, it is to cut Cruz off at the pass.

RUSH: That's not news. I'm not saying something there that nobody else has said. This has become conventional wisdom. And, of course, the RNC is getting closer and closer to saying, "Well, we can deal with Trump. You know, he's the kind of guy we can mold. He's malleable. We'll be able to come to common ground with him, negotiate. But Cruz? He is so principled, he's so committed -- he's such a staunch conservative -- we can't weaken Cruz. We can't get Cruz talked off his game. We don't want to mess with Cruz." Trump, they think they can have an easier time with. So here's Dana Perino. They played that clip you just heard. Here's her reaction.

PERINO: You talk to people at the NRCC, the congressional race committee, they're planning ahead. They think, if Donald Trump is the nominee could he bring enough new voters to help us incrase our majority? The thing about Rush Limbaugh, though -- we kind of talked about this yesterday -- is that you could be anti-establishment for the last five months if you were for Donald Trump. But now if there were attacks against Cruz, now you're... The establishment is for Trump or Cruz. I mean, it's become so diluted.

RUSH: What do you think she means? I think what that is... You heard Dr. Krauthammer refer to it, too. He doesn't like this term "the establishment." What did he say it is? "Mainstream Republicans." He'd rather call 'em mainstream. I think the establishment is getting a little tired of being called "the establishment," and they are angry at those of us who are pigeonholing them into one candidate or another. We all know what the establishment is in the Republican Party.

I mean, it's the party that hasn't tried to stop Obama. That part of the party that has not done anything to try to stop Obama. That's the establishment. The ones who want to preserve the status quo of Washington as it is, as the central focus of life in America. And so I think Dana Perino (God bless her; I like Dana Perino), and all these others are trying to diminish this talk of the establishment by basically saying nobody knows who it is, changes from one candidate to the next. But we know. We know who it is.

RUSH: So Trump goes out there and basically says, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and I could shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's like incredible." He was at a rally at a Christian college in northern Iowa. So everybody has the requisite cow. It's history repeating itself. "That's gonna be it. I can't believe he's running around talking about shooting people? That's gonna be it. It's one thing to say you think McCain should have been captured and you don't like him 'cause of that. It's another thing to say what you said about Mexicans. But now to say you could actually shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, he's gonna implode." Literally, this is what people think.

Governor Christie said that he couldn't believe Trump would say this. He was astonished when he heard that Trump had gone out and said he could shoot somebody and wouldn't lose voters. He was at a town hall in Portsmouth. He said, "Look, I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's pretty amazing to say it." And then Christie said, "Look, I want to burn down Washington, too, 'cause it's so ineffective, but who's gonna --" So here Trump says, "Yeah, I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't hurt me," and Christie, "I can't believe he said that. Look, I want to burn down Washington, too." (laughing)

And then the Fox News poll: "Donald Trump Takes Back Iowa with 11-Point Surge," in the last two weeks. "According to the poll, Trump has gained 11 points and Cruz has lost 4 points. Marco Rubio remains a distant third with 12 percent," but he's lost three points since the earliest days of January. No mention of Jeb Bush in the latest Fox poll. You want to really irritate people? You tell 'em what did Trump do, I mean Cruz was gaining ground, what did Trump do? If you want to really tick 'em off, say, "Must be the Palin endorsement." You will drive them crazy. They will go insane.

We'll go back to Pittsburgh. Jack, great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Yeah, listen, full disclosure, I'm a Trump supporter. I haven't always been, but I am now, and --

CALLER: Well, I originally liked Scott Walker. I thought he was such a tough guy --

CALLER: -- over there in Wisconsin and what he did with the unions and all their money that they brought in, and this is from a retired union guy. And I thought what he did was fantastic.

RUSH: He was an early on favorite of the first Iowa vote taken way, way, way back. I mean, he was killing it, he was in the seventies.

CALLER: I know. I wish he hadn't a dropped out. I don't know what happened. Anyway --

RUSH: What happened, at least according to people that I knew who were for him and then changed their mind, it was because his answers on foreign policy to them seemed unprepared, is the only thing I heard. There might be other reasons, and I don't know, but that's anecdotal things that I heard from people who were eager for him. But he got to foreign policy, they began to question the well-roundedness, I don't know how else to say it, but --

RUSH: Anyway, so you're with Walker, then you gravitate to Trump now and that's where you are now.

CALLER: Yes, maybe it's just me. When I look at Donald Trump, especially during the debates, he's up there, and I just don't get it Rush. I've heard you explain it over and over and over again why he is where he is. And I still don't get it, because all I see is a grown man who acts like a 13-year-old up on the stage when he's standing there making all the stupid faces and all the mudslinging and the name-calling, you know, he just sounds like a 13-year-old, to me.

RUSH: Okay. Let me see if I can actually describe him. So here he is, here's Trump on the very first day he's announcing, and he says what he says about Mexicans, and you are thinking -- did you see that, by the way, that first day?

RUSH: Okay. You saw Trump's announcement. You're probably laughing yourself silly, you're thinking this is hilarious, this guy can't be serious. There's no way. He's telling jokes, he's saying this stuff about Mexicans, and then you find out a couple days later that everybody ate it up, and you can't believe it. You can't. And then the first debate comes, and the Megyn Kelly stuff happens, and you think, he's finished, you just don't talk that way in politics.

And he wasn't finished. He started gaining support, and you're saying how in the hell can this happen? And then he starts with these, like you say, childish name-calling insults of people, and with each instance of it, you think, "You know what? At some point people are gonna wake up. They're gonna abandon them," and they don't. In fact, according to the polling data his support increases. And you don't understand it. It doesn't make any sense to you because it just doesn't in a polite sense, in an adult sense, like you said, it just doesn't make sense to you.

CALLER: Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, one thing he always brags about is how he's a deal maker.

CALLER: Well, where has that gotten us in the past few election cycles? I mean, I've heard you say it again and again, Republicans are always caving. You know, we don't need somebody to make deals right now. You know, we don't need somebody to go in --

CALLER: -- their phone, either, which I think Donald Trump would be the dictator that Obama always dreamt of being.

CALLER: You know, I think Obama would be nothing compared to what Trump will be, 'cause if he thinks he's getting criticized now --

RUSH: Let me ask you a question, Jack. What if Obama is a dictator implementing things you support?

CALLER: Well, once it turns around and if we get a dictator like a Republican dictator, the other side isn't gonna -- I want a real constitutionalist like --

RUSH: One thing, when Trump starts talking about making deals, he's not talking about making deals with the Democrats in Congress. That's not the kind of deal-making that he's talking about. I could be wrong. The kind of deal-making I think he's talking about is like with the Iranians and with the ChiComs and basically foreign policy and economic related trade deals, that kind of thing where he thinks we're getting beat and getting creamed and losing 'cause we got stupid, incompetent people making the deals. But then when you see him criticizing Cruz for not willing to make deals with the Democrats in Washington 'cause you can't get anything done that way, you know, then I say, wait a minute, that's the kind of criticism that the Republican establishment's offering up --

RUSH: -- of Cruz and you probably think he would make deals with the Democrats. I mean, he's criticizing Cruz for not doing it means he wants to, and that's what you're fed up with, right?

CALLER: Exactly. I mean, he's already made deals with too many people. I mean, I don't want to bore your audience who've already gone over all this, you know, the interview with Tim Russert that all is going around right now and how he said in the past that Hillary would make a great president and --

CALLER: -- she'd get smart people around her, which brings me to another point. I've never once heard Donald Trump say anything about government being too big. All he ever says is we have stupid people in there.

RUSH: So tell me, in your own opinion, your own words, why do you think people supporting Trump who agree with you, are still supporting Trump? Why does it not matter?

CALLER: I have no idea. That's why -- (laughing) -- I don't get it. I just don't get it. You know, and I hear all the smart people on TV. You know, they're not endorsing Trump, which I know you're not, either. But every time he says something stupid or makes another, you know, ridiculous thing, everybody just lasted laughs it off and dismisses it and says, "Oh, that's just Trump being Trump." You know, it's like Joe Biden on the other side. That's just Joe being Joe.

CALLER: And I don't want somebody that's -- I mean, the man certainly is not presidential.

RUSH: -- Clinton was lying with every other sentence. People would say, man, doesn't he do it so well? I think there's a bit of that with Trump. "My God, this guy gets away with this stuff and never comes back to bite him. It's incredible." The media always marveled with how Clinton got away with lying, I mean, blatantly, openly, right to your face. They just ate it up because he got away with lying to conservatives. And so it's not unprecedented this kind of reaction to people in politics. It's always frustrated us. Obama. It's clear as a bell who Obama is and what he's doing.

RUSH: You can't get the Drive-Bys to report on it. You can't get the Republican Party to even say it.

CALLER: Yeah. Well, I guess my last point would be, and I'm not, like you tell your callers, I'm not looking for a fight or a debate. I certainly can't debate you. But one thing I've wondered is since you are the CEO of the Limbaugh Institute for Conservative Studies, and conservatism is the only way to bring this country back, why you're not pushing back a little more on Trump, since you've said it, he's not even running as a conservative.

CALLER: Yes. I know. You've been very fair to Cruz as well. I think you've been fair to all the candidates.

CALLER: But I'm just afraid that the country is gonna be not any better off with Donald Trump as president than we have with Barack Obama.

RUSH: I'm not just putting some words together to make a sentence here. What I mean by this is, I would take anybody on that Republican stage over Obama or any Democrat running, and I don't think it's a contest. There's not a single one of those Republicans I wouldn't vote for if they became the nominee --

RUSH: -- against Hillary Clinton. Not a single one of them. I think the Democrat Party has got to be sent packing. I'm not that hard to understand. I've said it over and over and over again. You can interpret it however you wish, but it doesn't require a lot of interpretation. What has to happen, and not just in one election, we've got a huge task ahead of us. The Democrat Party and liberalism has got to be stopped. It has to be cut short. It has to be rendered minority irrelevant.

And I'll tell you how deep the task is. Even if Cruz wins this election, I don't have to tell you the long knives that are gonna be out for him from within his own party, but beyond that, Jack, the left has election insurance. They own a majority of the judges who write their own law. You want to talk about the bureaucracies and cabinet-level agencies, the EPA, the IRS, you name it, there are career leftists and liberals there that even when they lose the presidential election, their influence over regulation and any other thing that comes out of the bureaucracy doesn't take a hit. It's going to require a deep-seated, concerted effort to stop liberalism in its tracks wherever it is found.

It's a long project here and it has to have a long view. And there are many elements of making this happen that go beyond just winning elections, but that, to me, they're the ones who've gotten us where we are. They're the ones who are destroying the traditions, the institutions. They're destroying the economy. They're destroying the healthcare. They're destroying everything they touch. They're destroying the US military. They're destroying this country on purpose in order to change it into something they think it should be and should never have been as founded. That's got to stop. That comes before anything else, to me.

Trump has the BALLS to get it done.

Trump ‘16!

Build the wall. Stop the Muslim invasion. If those are the ONLY two things he does (he will do much more) it’s worth voting for Trump.

Wait - I thought Trump’s support was all because his supporters were brain-dead sheeple who only support him because he’s a celebrity, and none of them have what it takes to be True Conservatives?

/do I need it?

Rush really believes his listeners are so stupid that they do not see what he is doing when he cheery picks his callers to trash Trump. Claims he has not endorsed anyone but clearly is in the bag for Cruz. Well, I do see it and I will not forget. How is Rush Beck any different then the GOPe thinking they are not accountable to their supporters?

Hannity couldn’t stop playing Trump’s gag about supporters staying with him even if he shot someone.

That could be easy to explain, staying within the context of the gag, that the Establishment is so pathetic that his supporters are that desperate for relief.

Secular humanists narcissistically think they should rule the world.

They got a reality check on totalitarianism after Nazi Germany and during the Cold War with the Soviet Union (or didn’t think the timing was good).

Now they’re ready to be “benevolent dictators” again. The ends justifies the rules, and all is fair in love and war. They don’t believe in a two-party republic.

The stages of Trump-grief:

Trump who?

Trump won’t last. He’s just in for his ego.

He said what? Oh he’s finished!

Once he loses the lead, he’s through!

The debates will wreck him!

The Jebernaught will get him.

Carson will get him!

The corporate conservatives/intelligentsia will finish him.

He’s no conservative!!!

The polls are all wrong!

Okay, he might win a few states, but that’s it.

We’ll have a brokered convention.

Well...he might win the nomination, but he’ll lose to Hillary.

If he picks Palin for VP, I’ll take my ball and go home. Better yet, I’ll write in Cruz.

He won? Welllll, I won’t watch the inauguration and start making CRUZ 2020 bumper stickers.

Trump's support is in part an emotional response to the carefully calculated and coordinated Communist/Socialist/Islamist assault on this nation.

It is in part an emotional response to the domination of the media by elements of that assault, and an emotional response to the impotence and treachery of the GOP elite.

We're all angry.

We all want America, the Constitutional Republic, back.

We all want the America we should have for our children and great grandchildren.

Take a deep breath, people, because emotional responses often play into enemy hands, and seriously consider the best course of action and the best person to put in the White House.

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