Reality Replaces the Media Narratives -- And a New Round of Narratives Takes Off

RUSH: Did I not say it yesterday? Everything is going to change, and I predicted the change was going to be dramatic, and it was going to take place simply because we have reality now to deal with. We have actual votes that have been cast. We have candidates who have finished in specific places in a certain order, and all of that that took place yesterday and the day before doesn't count for anything now. It was all theory; it was all speculative; it was all poll-driven, much of it wrong.

It's astounding to me how dramatic and what a huge difference the entire landscape assumes and how it is presented. Look at how dramatically things change as we go from a narrative of theory and what turned out to be bad polling to the shocking and dramatic reality of reality. We have hard votes cast. We have real winners. We have presumed losers and presumed second-tier winners. We have all sorts of narratives dead, all sorts of themes dead, all previous prognostications, many of them now taken under advisement and being recast.

Pretty much everything we were told to expect last night on the Republican side didn't happen. The polling data had Donald Trump winning in the vast majority of polls by anywhere from four points to six, depending, and Rubio was barely, barely gonna remain viable, finishing a distant third. Ted Cruz and Trump were going to be battling it out. We had all kinds of theories to explain why that was going to happen. And of course you have to throw it all out now.

One of the reasons, folks, that I don't join the narratives pre-voting is because I don't know what's gonna happen. All I know is and what I sense is that potentially momentous things are at play. And they really are. But I don't know, I didn't know before yesterday how things were gonna turn out. I didn't have a particular feel for it. And this is why I never try to endeavor to explain with ontological certitude what I think is going to happen in wide open contests like this.

For example, the Republican Party -- and let me give you a little bit of news that I just was made aware of prior to the show beginning. It's a new story from TheHill.com. Think of what happened last night. Let's put this in context. Evangelicals, social issues people, the very people the Republican Party wishes they could ditch, the very people Republican moderates and RINOs and establishment Republicans are embarrassed of, evangelicals, God-fearing people, pro-lifers, pro-constant old-fashioned cultural, sensible behavior modes -- those people were the margin of victory in a Republican primary -- well, caucus -- in the first state of the campaign season.

Now, you would think that upon seeing this that the Republican Party might think it worthwhile to conduct an outreach to this group of people. But they will not, because they have been doing their best to distance themselves from these people and to deemphasize their importance and their role in the Republican Party. And yet they are the reason Ted Cruz was victorious last night.

Now, there are many reasons why Trump did not win. We're gonna get into all of those as the program unfolds. But look at this news story. It's from TheHill.com. And rather than read this, let me tell you what it is. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republicans in the Senate, has said he doesn't think it will make any sense to oppose any part of the Obama agenda this entire year, because to do so might threaten the Republican presidential campaign.

So Mitch McConnell has just signaled to Barack Obama he's got a free road. He's got an open road and a clear road, whatever he wants to do, the Republicans in the Senate are not gonna lift a finger to stop him because Mitch McConnell thinks that that kind of opposition and that kind of criticism might harm the Republican presidential campaign, whoever ends up being the nominee.

Meanwhile, that very Republican presidential campaign, if it has the slightest chance of winning, is going to be taking direct aim at Barack Obama and his party and Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or whatever. The very nature of the campaign is going to be -- and you watch. It has to be this if the Republicans are gonna win. If the Republicans do not run against Obama, if they don't run against the last seven years, if they do not run against Hillary Clinton, if they don't promise they're gonna stop this stuff and reverse it, they're not gonna win anyway.

So the Republican nominee most likely is going to be running a campaign anti-Hillary Clinton illustrating all the errors, the mistakes, the horrible things that have happened in this country the last seven years, that will be the thrust of the Republican nominee's campaign for the White Houses in this year, and over in the Senate, the Senate majority leader is saying he's not going to do that very thing because it might upset voters who would be inclined to vote Republican, but if the Senate starts trying to stop Obama then those voters might get mad at the Republicans and vote for Hillary.

It is the most insane thing I think I could have encountered today. And I'm wondering if whoever the establishment prefers in this -- everybody says it's Rubio. I'm gonna tell you something, folks. I'm a lone wolf on this, but I know everybody is assuming that Marco Rubio is the chosen establishment candidate and they're doing so on the basis that Rubio has experienced the Gang of Eight and amnesty and so forth, but Marco Rubio I really like. I like Ted Cruz. There are any number of people in this campaign, two or three people, if they win, I'd be happy.

But it doesn't matter because the establishment does have their candidate, and it looks like it is going to be Rubio. And, as such, Rubio is gonna end up becoming an enemy of several Republican -- or many perhaps potential Republican -- voters. I just remember the days that Marco Rubio was in the state of Florida, local politics, state politics, and then going national. He was considered, perhaps, one of the greatest potential heirs to Ronald Reagan, and now he's being derided as a sellout member of the establishment.

I thought his speech last night... He was the first to get out there. He hustled to get out there. As such, it made him look like the winner. He had energy. I thought it was a great speech that Rubio gave last night. It was energetic. I'm not choosing sides on anything here, folks. Nothing's changed in that regard. Simple observations I share with you as the program unfolds. I just find it stunning. I wonder if whoever the establishment camp is... If Rubio had won, I wonder if McConnell would be saying what he's saying. He probably would.

But you need to wake me up here. I mean, this makes no sense whatsoever. The very nature of the campaign is going to be exposing everything wrong that has been done by Barack Obama and will continue to be done by Hillary Clinton. Every aspect of our campaign's gonna be focused on that and how we can reverse this direction, make this country better, improve people's lot in life via the economy, repealing Obamacare, you name it. And over in the Senate, we just got an announcement they're not gonna do that, because they're afraid of opposing Obama.

The same old, same old. It will upset independents or whoever, and it might have a negative impact on the Republican presidential candidate. Just stunning! The argument is that the Republicans can't oppose Obama in the Senate during an election year because it might hurt 'em at the polls in November. I mean, it's just inexplicable. Back to Iowa. So here we have the evangelicals the GOP would secretly like to get rid of and not be held prisoner by, if you will. It's the old "social issues" argument. They are the margin of victory.

They are the reason Ted Cruz wins last night with a record Republican turnout. It's not a record turnout in Iowa. It is a record Republican turnout. Remember we spoke about this yesterday, too, with that Des Moines Register poll which was predicting various things because of a huge turnout. People were saying the Des Moines Register poll was invalid and wrong because it was factoring in too large a turnout. It turned out to be right on the money in terms of forecasting turnout. Thirteen polls, ladies and gentlemen, had Donald Trump winning by four points.

Thirteen different polls had Trump winning by four. In the Real Clear Politics rolling average, Ted Cruz outperformed what Real Clear Politics polling averages said he would get by five points. Marco Rubio outperformed his Real Clear Politics average by six points. There was an exit poll question that was focused on quite a lot last night on television during the returns and the coverage, the aftermath. The exit question: "Shares my values?" Trump 5%. Now, again it's exit polling data, and we have evidence that many people play game, maybe even lie.

In fact, I'll give you an example. They had entrance polls last night for the Iowa caucus. And the first wave of entrance polls came in around six, 6:30. I was watching Fox News. And Fox News, I forget who it was, looking at the entrance poll said -- and the entrance polls indicated Trump was gonna win. It was a continuation of all the polling data in 13 polls that Trump was going to win, and the entrance poll said the same thing, and the people on Fox said, "Well, it looks like Trump's got this thing in the bag now! Who would lie in an entrance poll?"

I wish I could remember who said it. "Who would lie in an entrance poll? Makes no sense why anybody would." Well, obviously the entrance polls were not right, and the 13 polls preelection were not right, either. Exit poll question: "Shares my values." Trump at 5%, Cruz 38% "shares my values." Rubio 21% "shares my values." What is that a reference to, do you think? What is "shares my values"? (interruption) No, it's not religious voters. This is what everybody wants you to think. "Shares my values." This is a question of conservatism.

This is asking people, "Does this candidate share my values?" This is an ideological question, in my estimation. I think this indicates that 5% of the voters that went in there last night and caucused think Trump shares their values as a conservative. Thirty-eight percent think that of Cruz, and 21% think that of Rubio. Now, if you add Cruz and Rubio, if you add their totals, you get 51% of the vote. Now, I do not know the degree of sophistication to which the caucus-goers last night consider who's the establishment candidate and who's the outsider or whatever.

But if you combine Rubio and Cruz and if you just take them individually without attaching them to anything, you've got two conservative guys here. Rubio and Cruz are two conservative guys. That's 51% of the vote. Trump 24% of the vote. If you want to you can add Ben Carson, who's demonstrably conservative, and you're up to 60% of the vote in the Hawkeye Cauci was for conservatives. It works every time it's tried, is my point. Conservatism wins every time it's tried. When somebody tries to fake it, real conservatives are gonna spot it and it isn't gonna fly.

I saw another observation. You look at Cruz, you look at Rubio, and you look at Carson. You have two Hispanics and an African-American getting 60% of the caucus votes. Over on the Democrat side, two bedraggled, worn out old white people were the choice. And we sit here, we continue to have to listen to all this garbage that the Republican Party is where you find a lack of diversity and closed-minded bigotry and all of that rot got that has no basis in truth whatsoever. Some of the theories last night as to explain Trump's defeat.

"Well, he blew Iowans off by not going to the debate." I don't think that's what it is, folks. I don't think the debate had anything to do with it. I don't think Iowans sit around saying, "You know, he dissed us. We wanted to hear what he had to say and he refused to come tell us." They knew who Donald Trump was. Donald Trump's been on the media all over the place. It wasn't that. That's not what it was. Let me remind you of a couple things. The "New York values" business? Here comes Cruz, in describing Trump, saying, "New York values."

The media all thought that Trump's answer in a previous debate just destroyed Cruz in that question. I said on this program the next day, "Wrong, folks. You're dead wrong." The conservative base in Iowa that I know that we're talking about, Cruz ended up winning that. Not Trump. Trump won it in the Northeast. He won it in the Drive-By Media. He won it in the Northeast conservative media. He won it among people who live in New York, Boston, and Washington. But he did not win that exchange in that debate in Iowa. I think another mistake that Mr. Trump made -- and we mentioned it when it happened.

RUSH: And we find ourselves now in the midst of the Republican primary season. It's officially begun. There are hard results now. And much of what you were told yesterday, the day before, and the day before that, didn't happen, did it? And because it didn't happen, now the media is out taking what did happen last night and they're back at it making predictions of what it means going forward. And one of the things that I'm hearing is that Donald Trump is finished. Oh, yeah. You want to hear how that thinking goes?

"Trump was supposed to win. That's all he does. He talks about, 'Winning, winning, winning, winning, winning!' He never loses. He never loses. 'Everybody's gonna get tired of winning, it's gonna happen so much.' He comes in and loses. The bloom's off the rose. The people of New Hampshire are gonna say, 'We don't want to attach ourselves to go a number two guy!' I don't care he's up 21, 24 points in New Hampshire. He's gonna have a bunch of people abandon him. It's over for Donald Trump."

It's not over for Donald Trump any more than it was over for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio going into yesterday. But yet, that's what you're going to hear. "The bloom's off the rose! Trump has been exposed as a fraud, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The polls showing Trump at 21%? Obviously," they say now, "we can't believe those. The polls had him winning Iowa, and they weren't true. People are not being honest with the pollsters, blah, blah." They hate Trump so much, they can't wait for him to lose and be humiliated and tossed out.

So they're making it look like that's what last night means, and nobody knows that. I don't think Trump skipping the debate had a thing to do with what happened last night. This is a Republican primary. It's Iowa. Conservatives win in Iowa. It is going to be a conservative who goes to the nomination of this party, or else the Democrats are gonna win. If this party once again nominates another squish squash moderate, it's over. We haven't nominated a genuine conservative for the White House for the presidency in the Republican Party in years, and this time we're gonna do it.

And Donald Trump -- I don't know if you've forgotten -- one thing that I remember is that he went out and again tried to criticize Cruz. Cruz here is the front-runner. Cruz is not the enemy. Hillary Clinton is the enemy. Ted Cruz is not "a nasty guy." Ted Cruz is not a Canadian. Ted Cruz is none of that. He's not mean-spirited. Ted Cruz doesn't want anybody to die in the streets. Nobody's gonna believe that, especially when you offer that criticism sounding as though it could come from Bernie Sanders.

In a Republican primary, you do not win if you're going to sound like a liberal Democrat criticizing Ted Cruz. And it wasn't just health care. How many of you remember (I pointed this out when it happened) Mr. Trump pointing out that you can't do anything if you can't make deals, can't cooperate? Part of his criticism of Ted Cruz is he's hated; nobody likes him. Trump said, "I can do deals with Harry Reid and Pelosi. I know these people. I like these people. Schumer? I can do deals." No, no, no, no! We don't want to do any more deals with these people. We want to beat those people. There are many things that harm Mr. Trump, but not showing up at the debate is not one of them.

RUSH: And we are back in the initial stages of analysis and what happened last night. That's right. I can't make the point enough, the difference in attitude people have -- attitude, thoughts, feelings, whatever -- today versus yesterday at this time. They're a world apart. What happened yesterday at this time of day, what everybody was thinking was gonna happen, what they thought it meant leading to November? It's all blown up. Speculation, forecasting, prediction.

A bunch of people were trying to make it sound like they knew what was gonna happen. Last night reality interceded, and blew all of that up. And now the cycle is repeating again. Now we've got a hard result in Iowa, and here come the experts telling us what it all means and down the road for New Hampshire and South Carolina into Nevada and in the Super Tuesday primaries, the SEC primary on March 1st. The whole process is starting all over again. "Yeah, Trump's finished. This is it. This is proving that Trump was never really as popular as he was.

"It's all been a bunch of hype and free media, but everybody's down to earth now," and then the second storyline is, "The real winner is Rubio! Oh, yeah! Because Rubio, he did what was most unexpected, and that is finishing a strong third only a percentage point behind Cruz." Look, in terms of delegates, we're talking an equal spread of delegates. Trump got five, Cruz got five. What'd Rubio get, four? I mean, you look at the delegate count, the delegates are where convention winners are decided and so forth.

Yeah, the horse race aspect of this is important; it is. But that's the aspect of this that people can't let go of. You had a bunch of people in the media hoping that Trump was a phony, hoping that Trump was all hype, hoping that this was just a bunch of BS, that he's gonna implode. People said starting back in June when he announced, "He's gonna implode." He never did implode. They're thinking last night was the implosion. They're hoping. Their fingers are crossed that last night was the implosion.

When Trump announced on June 16th, and said what he said about McCain and the Mexicans, here came the incoming media criticism. It was concentrated, it was nuclear, and it was incessant and never stopped. And it's starting all over again. Trump is going to deal with a new round of incoming all aimed at convincing people he has never been real. "It's all been phony and hype and spin. Trump does not have a conventional political operation, and what we learned..." This is spin. This is... I'm sharing with you what we learned from the experts.

"What we learned last night is that retail politics is still retail politics. Trump hasn't overthrown anything! Trump hasn't upended anything. Trump hasn't changed anything. You still win in Iowa by going door-to-door -- going to as many districts, as many counties, whatever, as you can -- shaking hands, kissing babies. You have to go in, you have to debate, you have to meet the people. Trump didn't do that and he didn't win," and the establishment types are breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Because everybody that supports them in the Drive-By Media, even some in conservative media, are now happy and will with a huge sigh of relief saying (big sigh), "Oh, thank God! Donald Trump's not real. Donald Trump isn't changing anything. Oh, thank God. We still own the process. We're still in control of the process." That's what they think. And in their glee, they're forgetting to examine what really happened in Iowa last night. You see, they hate Ted Cruz more than they hate Trump.

They despise Ted Cruz, and they're gonna despise Cruz even more once they wake up from their stupor of drunkenness here, their happiness at what they think has happened to Trump, which hasn't yet. Evangelicals are the margin of victory. The group in the Republican Party that the Republican establishment would love to be able to get rid of, is the reason the candidate they really hate won. So now they're saying, "Well, you know, Iowa's its own place and when we get into New Hampshire, there aren't any of those evangelicals!

"There are not nearly as many. We got more libertarians in New Hampshire. State's perfectly set up for..." Who are they saying? Bush. Yes! Jeb and Christie and maybe even Rand Paul. Yes, this is the brilliant analysis that everybody who watches television is getting today. "It's bad news for Cruz! He's finished. He doesn't have a prayer. No way possible he's gonna win." And Trump? "Well, yeah, he's leading big. But, man, it wasn't real in Iowa, and it probably isn't real in New Hampshire."

Rubio reminds me of the Taco Bell Chihuahua dog since he’s always talking so fast. Always yapping like those little dogs do and maybe biting on your ankles. Yo quiero Taco Bell. LOL! Somebody with good photo shopping skills have at it. Oh, and Rubio wears men high heels. I would never ever considering voting for him. We need a Alph-male not some cute little boy who looks like he just started shaving recently. And, what’s up with that toupee? LOL!

Agreed. In years past whether it was Dole, McCain or Romney, I had to plug my nose before voting, but not with these three. I am a Cruz guy and was glad to see him win.

I was at lunch watching a (thankfully soundless) CNN political show on the only monitor not dedicated to the Superbowl, and what struck me was how open the admission was that there even is an "establishment candidate". If we get nothing else out of this campaign at least we'll have seen the end of the pretense on the part of the media that they aren't partisan members in full standing of "the establishment". At least it's out in the open now.

I got everything I wanted out of Mr. Trump when he told Fox to pound sand, and to a nearly equal degree when Cruz mocked the questions in the second to last (?) debate. If either one of those men slacks off, they'll own him, but right now a tense standoff is a huge improvement over a stage full of aspiring Republican candidates waiting to see what scraps the political masters were going to throw them. We've had quite enough of that.

Agreed. In years past whether it was Dole, McCain or Romney, I had to plug my nose before voting, but not with these three. I am a Cruz guy and was glad to see him win.

Trump really shocked me when he mentioned that he doesn't "consult God," or some such thing. He better get some God-love going, even if it's only pretend.
His past is too tarnished, even for Americans, I think. We really are what we've done and said. I don't think he will last.

If Rubio leaves the border wide open, he will be the last Republican president.

Correct.
The Canadian border needs to be sealed as well. That is how many middle easterners are sneaking in.

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