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RUSH: No, no, no. I’ve not forgotten where I was in the Trump story about the Trump campaign. And a mistake that the Republican Party is making is thinking they need to improve their standing with Latinos and Hispanic voters to win. Now, there’s nothing wrong if they do that, but that’s not the road to victory. That’s not what they have to do. Romney’s already proven it. And when you hear me run the numbers, report the numbers that already had been run on what it would have taken…

I’ll cut to the chase. For Romney to have won, given everything else that happened in 2012, he would have needed 70% of the Latino vote. Not gonna happen, right? However, given everything else that happened, if Romney had just secured an additional 4% of the white vote, he would have won in 2012. Now, which of those two is more attainable, more doable? Romney nor any Republican is going to get 70% of the Latino vote. Now, I say that, and I can actually see where I’m wrong about that, given certain circumstances.


But Romney wasn’t gonna do it, and the Republican establishment is not gonna do it the way they’re going about it. They’re not gonna get a significant increase in the Latino vote by being Democrat Party Light. They’re not gonna get it by being for amnesty. They’re not gonna get it by not criticizing Obama. They’re not gonna get it by reaching out to Hispanics on the basis of liberal-type issues.

Even if they did — if they knew exactly how to do it — they’re still not gonna get 70% of the Latino vote, which is what Romney would have needed if everything else was the same. But achieving 40% additional white vote? Well, that’s much more doable than getting enough of the Hispanic vote to win. What does it also tell you? It tells you why Romney lost. Now, we all know the reasons why Romney lost. There was a lot of the Republican base that stayed home, and many of them happened to be white.

Now, see, here’s the thing. You’re hearing all this talk that whites are a minority, or soon to be a minority, “People of color are becoming the majority, and the days of white-dominated America are history and forget about ’em ’cause it’s never gonna happen again. It’s about time you came to peace with that, because your people’s day has come and gone, and your day of running this country is over.” Well, it’s wishful thinking on the part of the leftist identity politics experts.

The fact of the matter is if Romney had just achieved 4% more support of white voters, he would have won. And 71% of the country to this day are still white, 73% still Christian. So these people on the left, they’re relying on getting away with intimidation and lies and dispiriting attacks on things that people hold dear. They’re succeeding. The Republican Party’s helping, by the way. They’re succeeding in getting voters to stay home. But I’ll give you the details of all this — how you get there — in mere moments.

And, yeah, we’re gonna get to the Patriots thing and the Brady suspension being upheld. We’re all gonna get to it, folks. That’s why we’re three hours here every day. Takes that much. I mean, I could do all this in the first 20 minutes and go home. But all I would be able to do is tell you what happened. You would not benefit from my own analysis of it, which is why you’re here. And that analysis along with the reportage consumes vast majority of the three hours the program.

And I also have to get some phones in. We’ll start that now with Alan in Grand Junction, Colorado. Glad you called, and I appreciate your patience. And hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s good to talk to you. I’d just like to talk for a moment about Jericho Trump. This is a guy… Oh, wait a minute. I got that mixed up with your past story.


RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: Donald Trump is a man of monstrous ego, but I think people love him because he doesn’t even pretend to be humble. My suggestion is this, Rush. He doesn’t want to president, and he doesn’t even want to be nominated, but he has something to do. He has a company to run. But he loves America, and I think he sees that the nomination process is broken, and he’s trying to teach Republicans how to run for president. I think when he finds that candidate that most closely aligns with his thought processes, he’s gonna throw his support in behind that candidate.

RUSH: Well, now, that’s an interesting observation. Because, you know, it’s not just his thought processes. Can Trump…? Following your theory, now: Can Trump teach somebody else to be like he is?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: I mean, Trump is Trump. We’re all unique personalities. Trump is unique and different from everybody else, but he’s really showing how unique he is in the world of politics.

CALLER: Well, that’s true. But I think what he can do is draw on those positive qualities from a candidate or candidates that are out there now among the 15 or so, and when he finds the one that’s closest to him and what he wants to accomplish, as maybe similar strength to his, he will back them.

RUSH: So Trump really doesn’t want to win? He’s just getting in this to show the others how it can be done?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: And at some point, he’s gonna watch whoever is best at emulating him, and he’s then going to get out and endorse them?

CALLER: I think that’s what’s going to happen. I don’t believe he even wants to be president. He wants to fix something that’s broken. That’s what he’s been doing for years and very successfully.

RUSH: This, I think, is where the smart minds — the wizards of smart in the Washington establishment — are beginning to scratch their heads, ’cause I think from the beginning of this, they’ve all said what you just said. “He doesn’t want to win this. He doesn’t really want to get the nomination. He doesn’t want to be president,” and they use that to comfort themselves that this had a life span and he was gonna get out or implode. I think they’re starting to ask themselves now, “Wait a minute. Are we wrong? Does this guy actually intend to run and win?”

I think both parties are starting to very seriously ask themselves that question.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Go to phones for a couple times here, Lewis in Omaha, you’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hello, Mr. Limbaugh. It’s an honor to talk to you. I believe first time I heard you on the radio was around September/maybe October of 1988 when I was stationed in Camp Pendleton near San Diego at a substation down there.

RUSH: Well, you’re a lifer. That’s practically day one.

CALLER: I got to listen to you consistently for probably the next 10 years. I kind of caught up with you again when I moved out to Omaha after I got out of the Marines.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad I came back. It’s great to know that you’re still there.

CALLER: Yeah. Well, the reason I’m calling is ’cause I consider myself to be a very hardcore conservative, and I don’t like Trump at all. I mean, I remember him way back when he was a liberal, and I don’t see anything that’s changed. I mean, he’s been a liberal for about 59 years now, for about three months he’s talking conservative talking points, and suddenly that makes him one of us? I haven’t seen him change his actions, just change the words that he’s saying. I just do not understand.

RUSH: Well, you’re not alone.

CALLER: It feels like people follow him around the way they follow Obama around.

RUSH: Well, you’re not alone in this. There are a number of conservative media types –not a bunch of, but there are enough — who agree.

CALLER: I’m not… I definitely don’t consider myself to be establishment type. I mean, I probably disagree with McCain 99% of the time except for when he talks about national defense.

RUSH: I’m not talking about those guys. I’m talking about the press.

CALLER: Trump hits him on being a POW? I mean, he could have attacked him on so many other different ways, but that just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, as a veteran. But I know there’s veterans that like Trump. I mean, I don’t understand it.

RUSH: You don’t like the way he went after McCain on the POW thing?

CALLER: Not with the POW thing. I mean, there is a host of different things that he could have used.

RUSH: Well, do you really want to get into that, because one of the reasons why… Honest to God now, LouisP One of the reasons why Trump is resonating to well with veterans… Are you not aware of the anger, a lot, millions of veterans have aimed at McCain over this?

CALLER: I’m angry about the establishment, too.

RUSH: They think McCain’s a sellout on POWs and MIAs.

CALLER: Like I said, 99 times out of a hundred I’m against John McCain, what he hands for. But the one thing that he went after is probably the only thing I would honor McCain for. You know, what he did for our country is what most Americans would never be able to endure. But anything else is fair game. Why he went after that, I don’t know.

RUSH: Well, he actually didn’t. We’re starting to get into repeating old history here, but he was misquoted and misreported about what he said. He didn’t say what the Washington Post and the media then ran with supposedly he had said about McCain. Look, I don’t want to revisit all that. My point to you is that when I tell you there’s a lot of conservative media, I’m not talking about the establishment media.

I’m talking about some conservative the bloggers who think Trump’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They don’t trust him. They don’t like him. They say the same thing you said. This guy has given money to liberals, he’s been a liberal, he’s got public statements in favor of Obamacare that you can find, and all these things. I know that there are some people who support Trump who will tell you they don’t care right now what he’s saying, that he represents something else that they want.

It’s the willingness to fight. It’s the willingness to tell the media what’s what and various Democrats what’s what. Some people think it’s possible for anybody to evolve. Some are saying, “Yeah, yeah, I doubted Trump. But I think any American right now that’s paying attention that doesn’t disavow what’s been going on Democrat Party for seven years would be suspect.” So you’re never gonna have universal, total support for anybody doing anything. So we’ll just have to see how all this plays out.

That’s why I’m observing here, folks. I’m doing objective journalism here in reporting all of this stuff, but you have no idea what you think about any of it, do you, yet? I mean, in terms of people, supports, endorsement, you have no idea, right? I am the ideal Drive-By journalist… (interruption) No, no. I’m the ideal, real journalist — America’s Real Anchorman here — just telling you what’s going on, and endeavoring to understand it. I’ll take the occasion of this call to go back to this story that we dredged up from the archives.


It’s by Byron York in the Washington Examiner in 2013, almost over two years ago. Now, the point here, folks, is, you take a look at establishment Republican, you can talk about Trump all you want, Louis, but there are plenty of Republicans who have been voting Republican for years and are fed up by what those Republicans are not doing. The Republicans said, “Well, we can’t do anything unless we have a majority in the House.” Voters gave them that 2010.

Next, Republicans say, “Well, we can’t really do anything until we get a majority in the Senate.” Oh. Okay. Voters gave them that. Now they’re say, “Well, we really can’t do anything because they don’t have 60 votes,” and the voters are saying, “Screw this! We have given you majorities in both houses, and we don’t see any evidence of it,” and they’re livid. It’s not just… You know, Trump is coming off as more authentic than the people these Republicans are voting for, many of them.

The authenticity is a big deal. So many people today, more than I think in my entire career here behind the Golden EIB Microphone, have suspicions about the kind of people that go into politics, meaning that they’re robotic. They’re programmed, they’re phony, but not authentic. They’re not really real. You never get the real person, because they’re so on guard. They don’t want to say the wrong thing. Adopting that kind of existence/personality, not saying the wrong thing, means you don’t say anything.

You find clever and creative ways to say nothing, and people are sick and tired of politicians saying nothing or, even worse, saying things that voters want to hear but then not seeing any accompanying action. It’s much like… How many of you pay attention to commentary, say… Well, anywhere. Written, published commentary say on backlogs, or here on radio or on TV, and you see April… Let’s just stick with conservatism here for a second. You have a conservative commentator.


It’s not important here to mention names because mentioning names would distract people’s attention from the point I want to make, which is that on our side, folks — and I was conversing about this with a good friend of mine before the program today. You look at the left is made up of what? Activists. Yeah, they have their beliefs, and they have their words, sick and inciting and so forth as they are, but they also have lots of action. They’re out there protesting.

They’re agitating. They’re doing whatever they can to implement. And they’ve succeeded. They’re a minority. They are a minority, they’re bullying their way to victory. Our side… What have I always said about conservatism? That it is, in large part, to understand conservatism, it’s an intellectual pursuit or application. It shouldn’t be because it’s just common sense. Liberalism is simply the pursuit of emotions, and it’s much easier to tap into emotion and motivate emotion than it is to tap into intellect and motivate that.

I’ve seen it over and over again. We have a lot of smart people on our side who are satisfied with intelligent commentary and words. But there’s never any action behind it. Very rarely any action behind it. There’s all kinds of commentary and analysis. “This is wrong; that’s wrong. This is good; that’s good.” But it ends there. There’s no effort behind the words to implement any beliefs that appear to be apparent by virtue of what someone says.

I think that people on the right happen to be satisfied when they think they have succeeded in winning a verbal argument. The left is not interested in that. The left doesn’t care about winning or losing verbal arguments. They don’t even want to get into debates. They don’t give a rat’s rear end about that. All they care about is getting rid of us as a viable political opposition, just getting rid of us. That’s all they care about. They don’t care about winning arguments.

They’re not satisfied when they win an argument. They really celebrate the people that do. I’m convinced they look past all of Bill Clinton’s negatives because Clinton routinely, in their eyes, made mincemeat of conservatives, and that was his value. And ditto Obama. And Obama’s been a disaster for the black population of this country economically. Let’s just face it, he’s been a disaster for everybody economically. But he’s loved and adored by people who love and adore him because he makes mincemeat of conservatives all the time, and that’s all that matters to these people.

We’re not making mincemeat of anybody. But that’s what Trump’s doing. Trump is starting to make mincemeat out of people, and the people he’s made mincemeat out of are leftists. So people are shoving aside the news when they hear it, “Hey, you know what? You’re being fooled. This guy’s not one of you. This guy’s a liberal Democrat! He’s running the biggest scam you’ve ever seen yet. You’re gonna end up paying the price.” People are willing to look past it at this stage. Still early, and there are a lot of other factors that make this fun for people.

But when you start talking about the actual winning of elections and then doing something with the victories… Republicans are winning elections, but that’s where it stops, as far as their voters are concerned. So, if you go back to the 2012 presidential race, and you listen to what the Republican establishment today is saying they need to do, their candidate needs to do to win the White House, you find out how off track they are and how greatly they are misjudging what they have to do to win.

The headline for Byron York’s piece back in 2003 is: “Winning Hispanic Vote Would Not Be Enough for GOP, But Winning the White Vote Would Be Everything — After six months…” This is just six months after the election here. “After six months of mulling over November’s election results, many Republicans remain convinced that the party’s only path to future victory is to improve the party’s appeal to Hispanic voters. But how many Hispanic voters do Republicans need to attract before the party can again win the White House?”

Well, they need a lot. They need more than they’re ever going to get. They cannot win the White House pursuing the Hispanic vote, and yet this is the singular belief establishment has. They can’t win unless they get the Hispanic vote. The truth is, they’re never gonna get enough of it to win, because they are losing the support of other demographic groups in the process. And that base that they need to win is exactly what Donald Trump two years later is tapping into, and this is what has them so under…

Folks, at the Republican establishment level, you know as well as I do that if they could throw away the Christian right, the conservative base, the Tea Party, they would do it. Even if it meant being in the wilderness of defeat for a couple cycles, they would do it. For whatever reasons that they don’t like conservatives, whatever reason they don’t like Christian voter, whatever it is, they would do it. But Trump is their worst nightmare.

Trump is tapping into the exact group of voters — and the group of voters made up of different demographic groups of people. But Trump is tapping into that universe of voters the Republican Party can win with, and he is demonstrating to them how they can win. They don’t like it. It’s like a kid being shown… If you had a magic formula to show your kid eating spinach would make him live to a hundred, he’d still reject it ’cause he doesn’t want to do it because you’re saying so. This is what we’re dealing with here.

I gotta take a break. I’m a little long here and still much to do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Very simply, cutting to the chase, Donald Trump — love him or hate him, worried about him or not — there’s something that’s happening. You can see it. All you have to do is admit it, and the Republican establishment doesn’t want to. Trump is showing their theory to win the White House is not gonna work. They want to stick to the theory no matter what, because they actually do want to win with it, but they won’t. The formulas don’t work. It’s this simple.

This article in 2013 provides all the data from Byron York. Romney needed 70% more Hispanic votes than he got to win the presidency. If they’re focused on one demographic, and the Republican establishment is right now, Hispanics are it. That’s why immigration is it. That’s why amnesty is it. Romney already won a majority of the independents. Years ago they told us that’s what you had to do to win the White House: The independents.

“He who wins the independents wins the election,” right? Well, somehow that went out the window, because we’re now winning independents but we’re not winning the elections. So, what happened? Well, fooled again. Next up: “Win the Hispanics! Gotta get the Hispanic vote. If you don’t get the Hispanic votes, you’re history.” Romney would have needed 70% additional Hispanic vote, which wasnever gonna happen. But he needed only 4% more white votes to win. If he would have just gotten 4% more of the white vote.

Now, the Democrats don’t want to hear this ’cause the Democrats are in the midst of trying to break down the old order, which they think is a white, patriarchal power structure discriminating against everybody. It’s the root of all evil. From the days of the founding of this country, the while male majority is the root of all evil, and everything the left is doing is bent on destroying the power of that particular block. They’re doing it with guilt. They’re doing it with the law. They’re doing it by upending the culture.

They’re doing everything they can, as a minority, bullying their way in to blow up, and Trump is reviving it, folks. It’s no more complicated than that, and that’s why there’s so much… It’s not a racial thing. It’s a numbers thing. It’s coalescing groups to win elections. The Republican Party has chosen the impossible route: 70% more Hispanic votes than Romney got. But 4% additional white vote would have won. Why? The white vote is so large. The white population is so large that getting 4% more of it.

Going from 60 to 64% of whites who vote would have won the race for Romney. So, they gotta ask themselves, “Why didn’t they vote for Romney? Who’d they vote for him? Did they vote? But it’s a lot easier to get 4% of 65-70% of the country, than to go get 70% of 18% of the country or 25%, whatever it is.” And yet who are the Republicans angering? The Republican Party joining the Democrat Party in angering white voters, and there’s Trump tapping right into ’em. Blue-collar white voter Democrats, you name it. That’s why everybody is out of sorts in the establishment.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Folks, and just one more thing here about the Trumpster. It just so happens, just so happens to dovetail nicely with that point that I was just making, which I’ve been a number of profundities that I have uttered and offered today, and this one is well, and it is that Trump is actually lighting up — he is coalescing, he is exciting — a cadre of voters, the exact voters Republicans need to win. The ironic… Republicans are… I mean, it’s hard to say, but these are the people the Republican Party don’t seem to be interested in be.

Maybe it is they just take them for granted, assume that those voters are always going to be there while they openly make tracks to the Hispanic community, They try and secure more of those people and alienate people in the process. But from Public Policy Polling. And I know it’s a left-wing bunch, so we take that into account, but here is the latest number for Public Policy Polling. Trump’s favorable with Hispanics versus Jeb Bush favorables with Hispanics. Who do you think is in the lead in this category?

It ought to be Jeb. It’s gonna be Jeb Bush going away, right? Not so much because of anything that’s happened, just because what we know about formulas. We know the Republican Party’s making great strides, made great efforts to appeal to Hispanic voters, and Jeb Bush has long been known as someone the Republican Party thinks Hispanic voters would actually flock to and love.

Well, as we speak, Donald Trump’s favorables with Hispanics are at 34%; Jeb Bush’s are at 31%. That number of Trump’s leads the Republican field. “Media Research/TV.org blog,” this is a Public Policy Polling poll, “Trump leads the Republican field among Hispanics 34% favorability. Jeb Bush is next at 31%.” Now, I know it’s early, and any and all of this could change, but the thing to keep in mind is that this Trump candidacy has gone in stages here, folks.

From, “He’s never gonna get in,” to, “Okay, he got in, but he’s not gonna stay. He’s just doing this for show! He’s just trying to hype somebody. He’s gonna see out of the this in a couple weeks,” to, “Well, we didn’t realize he’s gonna stay in this long, but he’s gonna screw up. He’s not a professional like we are and he doesn’t understand our business. He’s gonna step in it at some point and that will be it, and then we can get down to business.”

And then he stepped in it, except he didn’t. They thought he was gone after this McCain contretemps. I, a lone voice across the fruited plain and the purple mountain majesty, was telling everybody, “It’s not what you keep saying. Trump is not behaving according to the rules here. He’s not apologizing, not begging forgiveness. He’s doubling down. You watch. People are gonna love this.”

His numbers grew. Now, is, “Well, he’ll be out by September, by the time school starts. He’s not gonna last.” I’ll tell you what’s happening now. Republicans and Democrats are alike are beginning to ask themselves, “Have we been wrong from the get-go? Does this guy really want to win.” Gulp! Gulp! “Does he really…? What? Is he gonna stay in this or what?” That’s what they’re asking themselves now.

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