RUSH: Now, remember when that happened in the Saturday night debate, a lot of people were shocked watching this. I immediately evolved a theory to explain it. Here you have the Republican front-runner — and let’s review. The Republican front-runner defended Planned Parenthood. “A great organization that does great things for women’s health.” It’s almost a cliche!

It’s what left-wing, Planned Parenthood defenders say.

They’re an abortion mill!

They are an abortion factory!

The lion’s share of their so-called “funding,” their income, comes from performing abortion. They don’t do mammograms, for example. The idea that Planned Parenthood is involved in women’s health is largely a PR smokescreen to cover up the fact that they’re an abortion factory. Well, Mr. Trump came out and said, “Planned Parenthood, they do great things,” and that he didn’t want to defund them because they do “great things for women’s health.” That’s the Republican front-runner. I sat up when I heard this.

I said, “Whoa! Not even Romney said that. McCain hasn’t even said that. What’s this?” Then, as the debate went on, Mr. Trump accused Bush of lying about Iraq. They knew there weren’t any WMD in there, and they still went to war anyway. “They knew,” Trump said. “They knew.” Trump said that he opposed the war in Iraq and that Bush was lying about that and lying about 9/11, that Bush didn’t keep us safe, that the Twin Towers fell when Bush was in the White House. And he did that while assaulting Jeb, going after Jeb.

But, nevertheless, I said, “What is this? This is the first time I’ve heard any of this,” and then it hit me. Well, it’s an open primary, and in South Carolina, Democrats and independents can cross over and vote. I theorized what Trump was trying to get here was get some of those votes, because we had reports that Cruz was gaining ground. Internal polling data showed Cruz was two points behind. If that internal polling existed in the Bush campaign, Trump campaign knew it, too. So it was one of two things… Either Donald wanted to go get these additional voters one of two reasons.

Either to stave off what was happening with Cruz, or to just amass more and more votes to just hammer that final nail in the coffin and just be done with this and just win with a slam dunk. And then commentators on TV took me to task. They said, “No, Rush! Trump’s not that diabolical, he speaks from the heart.” I said, “There’s nothing ‘diabolical’ about it. It’s political strategy. All I’m saying is Trump is not surrounded by idiots. He’s got some political pros in his organization and it could be well they strategized to do this.”

Because it’s not often that you hear the Republican front-runner anywhere defend Planned Parenthood and destroy a revered former Republican president. Bush is revered in South Carolina with 83% approval. You just don’t hear that. So there had to be a reason. And then Trump yesterday — or maybe two nights ago — now when he’s on MSNBC during that town hall, admitted he’s going to get crossover votes. He was going to get Democrats and independents. I said, “A ha! My theory was right on the money! That’s exactly what they were doing. That’s why Trump said that.”

Then there were a couple of additional things, such as Trump saying that he’s going to rewrite the electoral map because of so many people — so many crossovers in other states — are gonna end up supporting him that Wisconsin is going to be in play, Pennsylvania is going to be in play, Michigan is going to be in play. And then last night, Donald Trump… Well, let me just read to you from the Wall Street Journal: “Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to try to walk back his claims that the administration of former President George W. Bush lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war.

“During a town hall-style event hosted by CNN, when the Republican front-runner was asked about the comments he made during last weekend’s GOP debate, Mr. Trump said: ‘I’m not talking about lying, I’m not talking about not lying. Nobody really knows why we went into Iraq.’ He added. ‘Bottom line: there were no weapons of mass destruction. … Whether he lied or not, he went into Iraq,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘It was a horrible decision.'” And so the Wall Street Journal and others in the Drive-By Media are now trying to say that Trump is walking it back.

Now, if Trump is walking it back, there goes my theory. Why walk it back if you’re trying to attract Democrat crossover votes tomorrow in the South Carolina primary? Maybe you think you’ve already done it and you’ve succeeded. You got your message out. You can make a show and play at walking it back here to maintain your Republican vote. I still could be right about this, is the bottom line. Now, they think they have caught Trump in another… I don’t know what you’d call it. Flip-flop?

Because apparently Mr. Trump is saying (and you probably heard it) that he opposed the war in Iraq always forever, and people in the media said, “That’s great, but we can’t find any quotes. We can’t find any evidence of you saying that.” Trump said, “That’s okay, you shouldn’t. I wasn’t in politics back then. I was in business. I’m a businessman back then. I wasn’t being quoted for things I said as a businessman. Of course you wouldn’t. But I just want to tell you: I opposed the Iraq war.” But somebody found a tape of Trump on Howard Stern back in 2002.

Stern said to Trump, “Are you in favor of invading Iraq?” and Trump said, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” Which is an excellent point, by the way. If… do you heard what happened in Gulf War One? We won that war in 2-1/2 days. That was the Arnold Schwarzenegger — I’m sorry, the Norman Schwarzkopf victory. You remember what happened with that? We had the Iraqi Army on the run. They were in full retreat. The Republican Guard and the “elite” troops, they were on their way back to Baghdad.

Schwarzkopf wanted to wipe them out. He just wanted to end it. Go all the way back to Baghdad, get Saddam, and be done with Iraq. Colin Powell said, “No. No, no, Mr. President, Mr. Bush. Don’t do it! You will look like you are using excessive force, unnecessary force. The war is over.
The war is won and besides,” said General Powell, “Look, the UN mandate authorizing the use of force does not include getting Saddam. It just says get Iraq out of Kuwait and recapture the oil wells for Kuwait that Saddam took,” and eventually set on fire.

That happened to be true.

The United Nations resolution that George H.W. Bush put together did not include regime change in Iraq, did not include taking Saddam out. But Schwarzkopf said, a
la Patton, “What the hell are we stopping for? Let’s just keep going! Rroot the guy out and let’s be done with this forever.” Colin Powell said, ‘Nope, nope. The optics won’t look good.” And they weren’t. The optics were the Iraqi Army were on the run, surrendering every day on TV, weaving white flags. They were shoeless, they were shirtless and they were on the road back to Baghdad and Colin Powell said, “You can’t continue this!

“You have to just end this and let them get back home,” and that’s what we did. And Saddam survived to once again start threatening and bellowing about weapons of mass destruction and gave us reason to go back in. Ancient history. But nevertheless, Trump is right when he says, “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” What he means by that is that we’d just kept going and taken Saddam out. But the point is that in 2002 he did say he was for invading Iraq. So there’s… I don’t know if it’s a flip-flop, but people found evidence contrary to what he’s been saying.