Trump's Abortion Mess Was a GOP Disaster and a Win for the Moribund Democrats

RUSH: I don't know what to do here today, folks. I don't know what to do. My buddies over at the Fox News Channel, the All-Star Panel there on the Special Report with Bret Baier, they misunderstood. They misunderstood what I said yesterday. I don't know what to do about this. Should I ignore it? Should I talk about it? Should I ... I don't know what to do.

RUSH: They did. They did. They misunderstood me. Not on purpose. Sounds like they really didn't understand. I realize you had to listen to the whole hour and a half to put it all in context, but still. So I don't know what to do. The rule of thumb is you just ignore this stuff and move on. Well, I don't know what to do. So I'm gonna think about it.

Hi, folks. How are you? Great -- (laughing) -- great to have you here. Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday within wrapping up another big week of broadcast excellence. It is a delight to have you here. Even those threatening you're never going to be here again, it's great to have you here. Telephone number, "Okay, that's it, that's it, I mean it now." 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program. And the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

What the heck. Let's just go ahead and try to deal with this. Let me ask a question. I'm gonna ask Mr. Snerdley. He's normally a sycophant, but I want you to not be a sycophant here. I want you to tell me, you listen to the whole program, you listened to this first hour, I delved deeply into -- did I not characterize what happened with Trump on MSNBC and Matthews, the whole abortion thing, as an utter disaster for the party? Not just for Trump, but for the party, as it relates to the election in November? Did I not point out how the Democrat Party was in the midst of a -- I think they're depressed out there.

Now Hillary is losing to Bernie in New York. Did you see those numbers? That's a national poll. It's a national poll. Even better. Hillary's losing to Bernie. Hillary cracking up to a Greenpeace representative, asking her questions about fossil fuels and whether she's taking money from Big Oil. Hey, Greenpeace, she's taking money from everybody. Everybody owns her. You should get in line.

So my point was, the Democrat Party, the voter turnout on their primaries is way, way down. There's no excitement. There's absolutely nothing dramatic. Even the race between Hillary and Crazy Bernie because everybody in the Democrat Party assumes when it's all over Hillary's the nominee by de facto and nobody's excited about that. And here comes this thing with Trump on MSNBC and this is the kind of thing that can totally energize a moribund campaign. And I went to great pains to explain yesterday here that, to me, what all of this ultimately should be about is defeating them, defeating the Democrats, defeating Hillary.

Folks, we have got one shot at this. I have spent a lot of time talking about it, trying to avoid being repetitive sometimes. Other times I realize it's necessary to keep pounding the same things. We have undergone seven years here of an administration which is transforming, undermining almost every institution and tradition that was founded and grew that defined this nation's greatness. We're also in the midst of an overwhelming demographic shift.

I just saw something last night. The Pew Research Center has done a really involved demographic survey and study and has come out with some predictions of what the demographic shifts that are going to happen in this country between now and 2050. In terms of every demographic that you want to discuss, it's gonna be an entirely different country. It's going to be an entirely different country from what it was founded as.

And the only thing that can maintain this country and see to it that your kids and your grandkids grow up into a country such as the one you did, just like you did, the only thing is principles that we have had handed down to us since our founding being maintained, ideas, principles, philosophies that unite all these different groups because this demographic survey is pretty telling. If all of these different demographic groups Balkanize, you can say good-bye.

I mean, there's always gonna be an American, don't misunderstand, but it's not gonna be the America that was founded. The point is, that's the objective of this current Democrat Party, is to rid all evidence of the founding of this country as much as they can, including as much of the Constitution as they could get away with.

This election is key to me. I have made no bones about it; I have not hidden; I have not withheld my belief that the most destructive force in the country today is liberalism, the left, the worldwide left. But it's focused here, the Democrat Party is where it resides, and it's in every one of their special interest groups. They are doing everything they can to undermine everything they believe an unjust and illegitimate majority founded. And they are succeeding.

You got the new unemployment numbers today, and everybody is clapping their hands, unemployment rate's 5.0, another 215,000 jobs, big whoop. To get back to where we were before Obama took office, we need to be creating five to six hundred thousand jobs a month, not 200,000. We haven't even reached replacement levels yet, in terms of what we lost.

But the telling figure remains, the labor force participation rate: 93 million Americans not working. I don't care what you want to jimmy the number with, the unemployment number, 5%, it's meaningless. You simply can't have a growing economy. You cannot have GDP. You cannot have economic output. You cannot have economic growth that creates this rising tide that lifts all boats. You simply cannot have a society with an opportunity for an improved standard of life with this many people not working. It simply isn't possible, and this many people not working is exactly what the forces arrayed against us choose. It's exactly what they want.

Every one of those 93 million, the vast majority of them, are needy, nevertheless. They have to live. They have to eat. They have to drive. They have to watch TV. They have to make cell calls. And if the government provides all of that and more, hunky-dory for them. But that doesn't lead to economic growth. No economic growth leads to very, very little economic opportunity for the middle class, which is what this country has always been. That's been the American dream. And all of this is by design.

I look at these demographic figures and I look at the way Millennials -- they don't know what's happening. They think they do, and what they're doing with is this shifting demographic. There is bitterness and anger in the Millennial group over different things than you and I are bitter about, but there still is bitterness. What they have concluded is that the accident of their birth explains their plight, meaning they just had the great misfortune of being born after peak America. It's just happenstance. They just happen to be born after America's best days.

They haven't the slightest idea because nobody has taken the time to try to tell them, because the primary opposition party has not taken the time to try to tell 'em. They don't realize that it's not just America's best days are behind us and it's a quirk of fate. They have not been told that this is all happening because of specific policies implemented by President Obama and the Democrat Party. That's why America is in decline. We can't afford four more years of this because four more years of this equals a generation of it. The ground that would be lost in four more years of Hillary Clinton or Bernie, it doesn't matter, the ground that would be lost is not unrecoverable, but we're not talking about the opportunity that we have now.

We've got to stop this. So everything that happens on this program, while you might have to wade through it to get to it because I assume you listen every day, and I assume you understand some things and remember some things, and I assume you listen here in context. Everything that happens in this program is designed, is purposed -- let's put it this way -- is purposed to illustrate that the problems we face are really not found in the Republican Party, except that part of the party that is the establishment that doesn't care to fight back against any of this.

The Republican Party that even now is salivating with turning over their own convention so they can -- Karl Rove's admitted it -- a fresh face. They've admitted it now. The RNC, Reince Priebus, they've admitted it now, they're looking at the convention -- told you -- they're looking at the convention as an opportunity to get their person, one of their people from the establishment installed in there, rather than Cruz or rather than Trump. They have shown, folks, the Republican establishment has shown they are not interested in pushing back against any of this. They've shown they're not interested in stopping any of this.

The last seven years, intelligence guided by experience, we know, we have seven years of no push-back, we have seven years of not even attempting to. In fact, we have seven years of we should be crossing the aisle more. We have seven years of hearing we need to reach out, work with the Democrats, we need to show the American people we can govern and we can make Washington work. No, no, no. It's the exact opposite. This election is really too crucial. I don't control, I have no control over who the nominee is gonna be, despite what many people think, I don't. And there isn't anybody else in media who does, either.

Like Rumsfeld once said, "You go to war with the army you got." You can sit there and pretend it's not as good or whatever, but you go to war with the army you got. And they really jumped on him for that, by the way, the Drive-Bys. So whenever anything happens out there that I think is going to continue to mischaracterize, damage the entire opposition to the Democrats, which is us, you want to call it the Republican Party, conservative movement, whatever, whenever anything happens, like Trump on MSNBC and this abortion debacle with Chris Matthews, when that happens I go into damage control for the sake of the November election, for the sake of preserving the opportunity we have to beat these people and roll 'em back.

What happened was a replay of Romney and the contraception remark, a question which led to the War on Women. You can disagree, "Rush, this is not quite the same thing." The effect is the same thing. We've revitalized and energized a moribund, asleep, depressed Democrat Party. We have done it on the basis of a hypothetical question. And this is where my good friends at the Fox News Channel take issue with me.

Dr. Krauthammer said that I was defending Trump, and Charles Lane of the Washington Post said I was defending Trump on the basis that he was asked a hypothetical question. I wasn't defending Trump at all. If I was defending Trump I wouldn't have categorized what happened as an utter disaster. I would have categorized it as a dire emergency. I was not defending Trump. I was trying to explain why Trump -- it's pointless to go any further with this. I've been doing this since September, and if you don't want to understand it or accept it, not gonna start now.

He just doesn't care about this stuff. He's gotta phone this in. He's never been a political animal. He lives in an entirely different world. He gets things done outside of politics. He gets things done his own way, but now he's running for president, that's in the political arena, he's gotta wise up and figure it all out, and he hasn't, in many ways, like how to handle a pro-abortion question or whatever question he gets about abortion. He knows he's to say he's pro-life, and after that it's a wing and a prayer. And it isn't gonna cut it.

So when it happens, my effort's not to defend Trump. It is to try to limit the damage. "Well, then, Rush, if you're really serious, why don't you just say Trump should get out, because that's the real damage." I know some of you are shouting that right now, "If you're trying to limit the damage, why don't you tell Trump --" I told you yesterday that's not the way to do it, folks. Everybody in the world has tried. People endorse other people, come out and condemn Trump. All it does is cement the Trump people to him even tighter. But again that falls into a category of I don't endorse during primaries and I'm not gonna change the policy and I've explained why.

The point of this is not to make a excuses. The point of this is to try to further explain what I'm about. Sometimes I feel like I'm not alone, but in a very small club of people whose focus is beating Democrats. I would vote for Daffy Duck before Hillary Clinton. I would vote for anybody, but whoever, I don't care who the Democrats nominate, I'm not gonna vote for 'em and I'm gonna actively campaign against 'em or advise or commentate against them. I think they pose the greatest threat to the country continuing as founded that we have faced in my lifetime.

The Democrat Party has always represented that threat, but it has never been as potent as it is today. And they're seven years into -- well, they're more than seven years, but seven intense years controlling the policy implementation apparatus of this country for seven years. They've gotten closer to their objective than ever before.

I gotta take a break. We'll come back and I guess I'll share with you some of the sound bites from my buddies over at the Fox News Channel when we get back.

RUSH: Okay. We'll start with Judge Napolitano. Last night on Special Report with Bret Baier during the All-Star Panel... The judge made the panel. Very cool. So Bret Baier said, "Okay, Judge, in the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls in Wisconsin, Ted Cruz slightly ahead of Trump. Trump in Washington today to meet with the RNC." By the way, that Real Clear Politics average might be. But I mean, Cruz is sweeping in Wisconsin.

He's up 10 now in, I think, two different polls, and in one of these polls -- the Public Policy Polling poll -- they're tied within margin of error. But in another one of these polls, Cruz is beating Trump with women at 19%. Trump is not close in Wisconsin according to all but one of the polls there is the point. At any rate, Bret Baier says, "Okay, Judge. Trump's in Washington today, had this meeting with the RNC. What are your thoughts?"

NAPOLITANO: If he truly believes this, it is so contrary to American culture even by the fiercest of pro-life people, it's hard to believe that he would think that this would get him any votes. Rather, it shows a lack of serious thinking about a very, very serious topic. I think that this statement alone, combined with his likely loss in Wisconsin, will begin the descent of Donald Trump's popularity in the Republican primary.

RUSH: Let me sum that up because we edited the answer here and he was actually being asked about Trump's comment to Chris Matthews on MSNBC, and our question here was about much larger things. So we cut to the chase. And the judge thinks it's over for Trump. Now, the judge is one guy, but the judge thinks it's over. He's not the first to say that he thinks it's over for Trump. But his instinct is, "Hey, this issue, that question, that answer? To show such a lack of serious thinking about such a very, very serious topic," meaning abortion, pro-life, and how incendiary it is in presidential politics throughout American culture.

And the judge's point is for Trump to appear so -- what -- unprepared, so unserious in his thinking about it? He thinks this is it, and it's the end of the line. This is going to be the beginning of the end for Trump. That's just one thought. Coming next we have Charles Lane, who was also on the All-Star Panel, followed by Dr. Krauthammer, and then a sound bite from the Today show today, all related to what we're talking about.

RUSH: Back to the Fox News Special Report with Bret Baier and the All-Star Panel. By the way, the polling data, there's two different polls out there that has Cruz up by 10. The Fox News Fox Business poll and the Marquette Law School poll. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, did not we have a Public Policy Poll yesterday that showed Trump up or Cruz? Yeah, one of them was up by one. It's the margin of error, like 36-35 or some such thing. Then the internals show that Cruz -- well, Trump's negatives with women are just off the charts. So Cruz was up by 19 in one of these two polls, I forget which.

But what threw me was Bret Baier saying the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls has Cruz slightly -- he's not slightly, 10 points is not slightly ahead. So they must be averaging in the Public Policy Polling poll. But whatever, it's a big spread, and when you get into the internals and you find the negatives for Trump, they're pretty -- in fact, let me find something quickly here before we move on. This is also from Public Policy Polling. These are favorable-unfavorable numbers.

These are national numbers favorable-unfavorable. Trump 29 favorable, 63 unfavorable. Ted Cruz, 30% favorable, just one point ahead of Trump on favorable, 58% unfavorable. Kasich, 41% favorable, 39% unfavorable. Romney -- I don't know why Romney's in this, but he is -- 23 favorable, 65% unfavorable. Hillary, 37 favorable, 55 unfavorable. Bernie Sanders, 41 favorable, 48 unfavorable.

Do you realize in this list of six candidates -- Trump, Cruz, Kasich, Romney, Hillary, Bernie -- nobody is liked? There isn't anybody except one candidate who has a higher favorable than unfavorable rating, and of all people, it's Kasich. Kasich also happens to be the one the least heard from. I think that's how you chalk it up. I mean, if you want a campaign slogan for 2016, it would be, "Everybody sucks." Other than Kasich, everybody is disliked by a far greater number of people than like them.

Now, we don't have numbers for whoever the Republican establishment might choose to be their nominee in a contested convention, like Jeb or Paul Ryan or whoever else. And they've made it clear that they're thinking about it. Karl Rove has let the cat out of the bag. He basically said it might revive our negative unfavorable positive numbers, it might energize the party, get somebody in there that doesn't have all these negatives attached to it.

Look, we don't even need these people to say it. We know they're pondering this. We know that they're trying to come up with a way to deny either Cruz or Trump the nomination.

Now back to our good buddies at the Special Report with Bret Baier and the Fox News Channel. This is Charles Lane, he's at the Washington Post, Baier says, "Trump allies and supporters say that when Trump was on MSNBC, he misspoke. He shoots from the hip all the time and he felt the questions were rapid fire from Chris Matthews, and Trump was having trouble, but he straightened it out. Trump straightened it out, he's gonna bounce right back. So Charles, what's your take on that?"

LANE: Rush Limbaugh supplied him with an excuse, which was kind of a strange excuse, was he was just trying to pander, is basically what Limbaugh came up with. Nevertheless, you're right that he has always thrived off the image of somebody who's a victim of a media ganging up on him. And so he will attempt to play with that. On the other hand, Bret, I would say that his reaction, which was to back off and sort of correct himself several times, was an unusually defensive moment for Donald Trump. He normally, you know, admits nothing and presses on as before. The mere fact that he felt he had to correct this time, that was kind of unusual.

RUSH: Right. Now, the only thing I want to address here is that I was trying to supply Trump with an excuse. Can I remind you of what the umbrella here is? You know, I realize I don't every day start the program by saying, "Folks, here's today's objective, and everything I say today falls underneath this objective or this umbrella." I don't do that every day. I just assume that with 27 years under my belt, now into our 28th year, and I assume with people knowing me, they understand where I'm headed, what I'm about, what animates me, what my objectives are.

I've made no bones about the fact that I think the most destructive force that we face today is liberalism and the Democrat Party. I realize it may be quaint to put it that way, but we backed it up with various reasons, policies and so forth, the very things which are destroying the traditions and the institutions and the principles that founded this country. So when this thing happens, if somebody reads what I say and doesn't hear me explain the purpose of a particular program on a particular day, the last thing I was doing was offering Trump an excuse.

The objective for me -- see, I don't know who's gonna get this nomination. I really don't. And I don't think I have a thing to do with who does and who doesn't. And I don't think anybody else does, either. The proof is Democrats would have never won an election the last 27 years if I had the power a lot of people assign to me. But they have won a lot of elections. They have won far more elections than I would ever have wanted them to. So folks, I don't live under any illusion here. I'm not running around with an inflated head that can't fit inside a doorway. I'm not under any misconception about what I'm able to accomplish or do except within the confines of my career.

Whoever the nominee of this party ends up being, I want them to win because that is far more preferable to me than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or anybody else that they might nominate if they decide they don't like Hillary, if they decide she can't win. If they try to do their own manipulations and end up putting Joe Biden in there, I don't care who it is, I don't want them to win. I want the opposition to the Democrat Party to triumph, and I want it to win. And when the opposition screws up, I want to try to limit the damage of the screw up and limit the damage of the mistake.

And this was a disaster, what happened, because of the subject matter. It was designed to be a disaster. It was designed to destroy Trump. It was designed to take him out. It was designed to once again do much more than that. Matthews is a political hack, like Stephanopoulos is, like they all are in the Democrat media. And the objective for them -- they never forget their objective -- their objective is to beat us. They want to beat us more than they want to beat ISIS. They want to stop us more than they want to stop ISIS. They think Trump's gonna be the nominee. They've got themselves convinced Trump's gonna be the nominee. They are doing their best to destroy who they think our nominee is gonna be.

We're not. We haven't even gotten around to helping destroy Hillary Clinton because half of us are still trying to destroy who we think's gonna be our nominee. So in that we're on the same playing field with the Democrats. The Democrats, whoever our nominee is, they're in the process of trying to already destroy that person. And I'm trying to stop that from happening. What little I can do by limiting whatever damage might happen when somebody says something unfortunate, stupid, inexperienced, naive, whatever it is.

I'm not excusing Trump. I was trying to mitigate the damage by explaining why he might have screwed up. But everybody else wants to look at things like, "That's it, gotta get rid of him." We don't have any control over that and we already face a really precarious situation if things don't play out right. Because, depending how this happens, a bunch of Cruz voters may get their noses out of joint, decide not to vote, like a number of them didn't in 2012. And the Trumpists, the odds are they're not gonna show up if they think the nomination's been taken away from Trump, if they suspect anything outside the normal Democrat process has taken place here.

You can kiss victory good-bye if any of these things happen, you can kiss it good-bye right now, and all the rest of this remains an academic exercise to prove who's the smartest, who's the cleverest, who's the best conservative, who's the best moderate, who's the best this.

The war has begun, and we haven't entered it yet. We are still in the circle firing squad phase. And I don't like being in that phase. So it wasn't pandering, it wasn't an excuse. It was an attempt to explain to people who want to support Trump why he might have screwed it up. It was an attempt to explain to people who don't want to support Trump why it might not be what you think it is. There might have been a reason for this happening that is short of unacceptable.

I don't know. Maybe it's a lost cause. And maybe I should begin every program by saying, "The purpose here, the purpose of this program today is to once again explain why we must beat the Democrat Party. Everything I say today is designed to do everything we can to not damage ourselves and to end up defeating the Democrat Party." In fact, I might even put that in a show open. I might have Donovan record, put it in the show open so there's no mistake about what's going on here.

What wonderful punishment would you mete out to a 14 year old?

What do we do when fourteen year olds commit murder?

What do we do when 25 year olds commit murder?

Just get back to the facts. If baby killing is outlawed then a woman who kills a baby should be punished. People have this weird notion that the majority of modern women struggle over the idea of having an abortion. They don’t. Maybe if there were actually legal consequences more woman would take more responsibility with birth control

Are you chastising Trump's response from a political vantage point, or from a prolife one?

If political, conventional wisdom says you are correct, why give them the soundbite of your lack of pre-thinking?

If prolife, his answer appeared to be honest, with an honest uncertainty about the righteousness of punishing the woman.

I stand every day outside an abort mill with 2 tough, committed guys. All 3 of us liked
what he said to Matthews (one is a Cruz supporter), and thought Cruz's answer was
political-speak. Now, we didn't like the walk-back, which strikes us as his kow-towing to
his advisors. But the interview itself showed a guy unafraid to speak honestly. Were
Matthews the Magnificent to walk anywhere in America asking the same question, he
would find 99.9% of the people (non-Liberal) would have mixed feelings on this as well.

We discussed the true possibility that he would gain many Christian women who had
been put off by him, who would now see him as genuinely finding his way to prolife,
perhaps offsetting those upset by the answer.

I have a little different take on his outrageous comments - I think he says stuff to try to make this stop. I don’t believe he wants to be President - participating in some of the debates, running for President, polishing “the brand” but it got out of hand and he is trying to blow it up.

The abortion comment - with all of the Republicans that have destroyed by that topic .... sheepish ... - is what has cemented the idea with me. He is trying to lose (he doesn’t want to appear to be a quitter). By now, any Republican should be able to answer any abortion question by saying, “let’s stick to the issues threatening our country, the law has been decided on abortion. I’m running for President to bring jobs back to this country, to repair racial relations that this President has exploited” ...... and on and on. They don’t need to answer these questions just because Matthews or StuffinEnvelopes wants them to .....

I think the only thing that now stands between Hillary and the WH is the FBI Director and that is just a bumb in the road. I just don’t think he will want to go down as the FBI Director that decide to take out the leading candidate for President.
I will continue to hope for the best and vote against Hillary no matter who is the candidate,but it looks like we are truly screwed as a country.
This gaff by Trump has activated the left.

Maybe the subject will burn itself out before the election as far being leftist frenzied talking points. It’s too bad that the politicians on our side don’t calmly speak the truth about the fact that abortion is killing a human being and every innocent human being deserves to be protected. Trump is wrong about this. He has backed up and not stood up for what is right. This is a crack in his wall. He needs to come out calmly and sincerely on the side of life. This will work for him. Folding doesn’t.

I made that point yesterday in the first thread that came up about his comments.
I also made the point that he shouldn’t have answered the hypothetical in the first place. It is not within the duties of a president to do so.
I also said that this would have serious consequences.
Within an hour of my post he had switched positions twice.
Why go on MSNBC in the first place and expect to get a fair shake and not expect a trap?

It was a loser comment from the political vantage point and from the pro-life one.
The hailstorm from both camps is directed at Trump and The Pro-Life movement is being accused that punishing women is their platform.
I said in a previous thread when this first started that tomorrow’s news would be: Trump wants to punish women.
That has indeed happened.
Unfortunately now it is : Pro-lifers want to punish women.
That has never been the case.

and it’s not getting any better this evening....

>http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/01/politics/donald-trump-abortion-laws/index.html<

Link to CNN story on Trump’s latest FLIP-FLOP on Abortion.

If a man kills a pregnant woman he is charged with two murders.

If a pregnant woman was to talk her boyfriend into punching her in the stomach to make her abort, she and the boyfriend would be charged.

If abortion was to be illegal, the woman making the decision to have an abortion would be just as guilty as the doctor, or boyfriend, who performed it.

Sadly, that’s true. It’s been a disaster for pro-lifers, and has resulted in headlines all over the world that undermine the pro-life cause. This is what they have always wanted to think about pro-lifers, and Trump, who recently “discovered” that he’s pro-life, gave them exactly the ammunition they needed.

Way to go, loose cannon.

There is no point in trying to defend Trump in any way on this. He simply needed to be smarter, spot the trap, and avoid it entirely. Instead he stepped onto the leaves and fell 10 feet into a ditch in the ground.

The pro life movement is a loser issue for the GOP and I say this as a pro lifer. Sorry that is the truth. For a lot of women the right to an abortion is like the 2nd ammend to many - a no go zone. Even Reagan pretended he was pro life but kept the pro life movement at arms length - calling them by telephone on marches rather than appearing in person. That optics were that bad. And that was in the 80s when the country was a l,ittle more divided on abortion thanks to age. That older generation died off and the newer generation has gotten more pro abortion not less.

Abortion has been legal all my life. It has been around for that long. Reagan himself legalized it in California before Roe Vs Wade.

Sorry, the war on abortion is over until Jesus returns - the pro life movement lost. Treat abortion as a libertarian issue with some pro life safeguards and move on as a party.

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