RUSH: Let’s continue to cycle through the latest news developments on all this. This is a couple interesting statistics here. Ted Cruz has won more delegates than Donald Trump since Rubio got out of the race.
I’m not talking votes here, although it might be the same thing, but Cruz has won more delegates than Trump since Rubio got out. And of course this was the Cruz strategy. You know, get all of these Republicans that are not going anywhere to drop out and have all of the votes on the Republican side that are not going to Trump coalesce behind one candidate. The Cruz strategy’s always been, “Okay, Trump’s getting his 35, 37% — in some places he gets 40 and 45% — but he never gets 50%.
So whatever, there’s always gonna be more Republicans voting for somebody other than Trump. And Cruz’s strategy was to try to control people to get out so that those votes would go to him. The assumption was that none of them would go to Trump. Now, the assumption was not right, ’cause some of the votes have gone to Trump. But the strategy, nevertheless, is proving out. Cruz is doing, in a two-man race, exactly what he said. What he said would happen, is happening, and that is that he would get a majority of the not-Trump vote.
Rubio dropped out of the race on March 15th after the Florida primary. Since then, Ted Cruz has won 77 delegates as compared to 65 for Trump. Now, there’s still a 250-point spread between the two, right? It’s 200 some odd. Now the talk is… It differs day to day. And it’s really kind of funny the way it differs. For example, yesterday the conventions was no matter where you turned on the media, the conventional wisdom was it’s got to be a contested convention, ’cause there’s no way now Trump can get to 1,237.
Today, after Cruz gets booed in New York and Trump draws a big crowd, you know what they’re saying now? “Hey, we see a way for Trump to get to 1,237.” Not a single thing has changed, other than crowds and protests. That’s all that’s different from yesterday to today. There aren’t any votes cast. There aren’t any new polls out. The polls that are out show Trump at 52% in New York, Kasich at 26% and Cruz at, what, 17 or 19%. Cruz is in third place in New York state, and so now the focus is on Trump and that magic number of 50.
Can he get 50 or more and get all of those 90-plus delegates. And if that happens, then you’re gonna see the conventional wisdom shift yet again. But it’s interesting. Yesterday it was very unlikely that Trump would be able to get 1,237. If you look at the delegate map as I have, they would all say it just looks increasingly difficult for the Trumpster to get there. Many of these networks would say, “Our calculations as of today show Trump coming in 40 delegates shy of 1,237.” That was yesterday. Today, Cruz gets booed and harassed, has to cancel a rally in the Bronx or somewhere.
Trump goes to where they shot the movie The Dictator in Bethpage, has a giant rally, and the whole truth now changed. So now they’re already looking at California. California can be big. Despite what anybody realizes, there’s a pretty significant, on the Republican side, conservative contingent out there. It’s dwarfed by the Democrats statewide, but we’re just looking at the Republican universe now. Is it Cruz or Trump that’s up in California? (interruption) That’s what it is. Trump is up two overall, statewide, in the Field Poll, which is a respected poll in California.
But if you just go to LA and the Los Angeles Area, Cruz is up over Trump, and so now they’re saying, “Okay, Trump’s got the old mo back. If he’s gets his 50, 52% in New York, then that’s a catapult. Then you’ve got New Jersey, all these Northeastern states where Trump’s probably gonna do well and Cruz won’t.” But then Cruz could stop it by forcing Trump to come up short in California. So that’s basically where we are. The Politico: “Trump Soars to Majority in New York Poll — According to the latest Monmouth University poll of registered Republicans likely to vote released yesterday in afternoon [after the Rush Limbaugh program], Trump has rocketed to 52% support, which more than doubles the 25% support earned by John Kasich and 17% by Ted Cruz.
“In New York a candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote in any of the 27 districts wins all the delegates in that district, though Trump’s majority level of support is well within the poll’s nearly 6-point margin of error.” You know what else is starting to perk up? It’s slow, but there is a movement effervescing on Kasich to get the hell out. However, there’s a group out there called never-Trump (you know who these people are), and the never-Trump people want Kasich to stay in through either New York or Pennsylvania and then get out.
Because their sole objective is to stop Trump. They are making it appear, as part of the stop-Trump effort, that they support Cruz. But that’s not what’s propelling them. Support for Cruz is not the engine behind never-Trump. The engine behind never-Trump is never-Trump, whatever it takes. So if Kasich can serve a purpose for New York and the Pennsylvania primary, “Okay, fine. But then after that, Kasich, get out,” they are saying. But people are beginning to ask the questions that I have posed consistently.
There’s no earthly reason for Kasich to stay in. Number one, he doesn’t have any money left to be running around campaigning. Number two, he can’t win the nomination no matter what. Number three, this spoiler business? There’s nobody behind Kasich as a spoiler! There’s nobody looking at him, except for the never-Trumpers. But more and more people are now starting to realize that Kasich remaining in this race is a supreme act of egotistical selfishness. And more and more people are coming to that, in both camps. And Cruz and Trump both are out saying that Kasich is hurting them.
Who do you think Kasich is hurting more? Cruz, yeah. Because it’s dividing the never-Trump vote. No question about it. When Kasich says (imitating Kasich), “No, no, no, no, we’re gonna go to a contested convention. it’s gonna be exciting and I’ve got just as big a chance as everybody else.” And he doesn’t. You know the name being floated, by the way, the latest name? Apparently floating Paul Ryan didn’t float a lot of boats. So you know who they’re now floating as the establishment choice in a contested convention?
Scott Walker. Scott Walker’s name is being bandied about. Walker is saying, “Ah, ah, it’s not me. I’m not behind this effort.” But it is something that is happening. If any of you are wondering what the establishment is gonna do and what they’re doing in preparation for a contested convention, and if they are, whom are they thinking of putting up, who would they like to be the nominee, there’s a way to find out what they’re doing. All you have to do is read The Politico. That’s where the Republican Party goes to leak things.
The second thing to do is to keep a sharp eye on — I’ll give you just a list of names as an example. Ryan, Walker, Romney, Jeb. If you start seeing in the media news stories that are essentially puff piece profiles, if you start seeing news stories about what has Jeb been doing since he got out, and how is Jeb reacting to it, and what’s Jeb planning for his future. Or about Scott Walker, or about Ryan, if you see news stories where there is an attempt to build the case for somebody and you wonder, “What’s this about?” They’re floating possibilities.
This is where you read between the lines and you figure out what they’re trying to pull off. And that’s how you can identify if there is somebody that they have singled out that they do want to nominate in a contested convention, just watch and see which Republican establishment types are getting a lot of it news coverage, the kind of coverage that would serve the purpose of establishing a reputation, establishing qualifications, establishing a sense of purpose. Yes, they might not have made it throughout the primaries, but has learned a lot and has stayed involved, is closely watching events and wants to do anything possible to help the party.
If you start seeing stories like that about anybody, that will be a good indication what the power brokers are thinking. I think we’ve seen that with Ryan. We’ve seen a lot of stories about Ryan. Ryan was in Israel. Ryan this. And everyone has created or produced a Paul Ryan denial. That’s another thing. Keep a sharp eye on repeated denials, ’cause not a single one of them is gonna say, “Oh, yeah. Yeah, man. I can’t wait for that convention to be contested. I want this nomination.” No. They’re all going to deny it.
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RUSH: Here’s Bill in Macon, Georgia. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, do you think that the pro- or anti-Trump sentiment — with people saying they will or will not vote based on Trump getting or not getting the nomination — will impact the GOP from Senate down to dogcatcher? I think it will.
RUSH: You know, that’s one of those questions that is really hard to answer right now. All you can do is take what you think are polling data that’s accurate or inaccurate and sentiments as they exist now. And remember, passions are really, really inflamed right now. And there’s no unity yet on the Republican side — or Democrat side, either. So it’s hard, I think, to make that projection.
CALLER: I think it will. Too many people are calling different shows and saying, “I’m definitely opposed to Trump.” Well, I can’t get clarification. I’ve asked a couple of friends and they say, “I’m not showing up at all,” and I’m like, “Well, okay, you gotta like show up and vote and write in Mickey Mouse, but otherwise vote Republican ticket.” Because regardless who gets the nomination or how they get it, I am showing up in November. I may not like ’em, I may not like how it happened, but I will show up and vote.
I don’t think a lot of people are, and I try to point out to folks. The one thing that’s worse than Sanders and Clinton as president, is Sanders and Clinton as president with a RINO or Democrat Congress. You know, I also point out to a couple of my friends that, you know, the Constitution’s changed at the state level, not at the federal or congressional level. So you gotta think of this impact when you’re out there threatening and speaking out of anger.
If people act on it… It didn’t happen in 2012 which is what I was surprised at, ’cause you had all these people — particularly Republicans — staying home, and we lost the presidency. But we still, by a miracle, kept the Congress. I don’t know. I think maybe passions are more inflamed this the year (chuckles), and I think we got a chance of the GOP really taking it on the chin if they don’t quickly at least either modify their tone or at least shut up until the convention happens. That’s my thought.
RUSH: Well, look, I don’t dispute that right now there are a whole bunch of never-Trumpers who are claiming that they’re gonna have a big problem voting Republican if Trump is the nominee. These people are out there, you know, whispering about third party, which is just as destructive. Then you have the pro-Trumpers. If they in any way think the nomination has been unfairly wrested from Trump, then they are gonna be legitimately infuriated and may, as an act of punishment, sit out. Now, you’re right.
On the presidential side in 2012, the best research tells us there were three to four million Republicans who didn’t vote, who did vote for McCain in 2008, and we are left to conclude (there is some evidence) that they didn’t vote because they were angry at the Republican Party in general or dissatisfied with the nominee as being insufficiently conservative. But also remember that the 2014 midterms came after this and people showed up in droves again in the midterms to vote against Obama, just they did in 2010. The Republican Party has for some reason failed to welcome, to coalesce behind, to get involved with the anti-Democrat vote.
And it’s huge! The anti-Obama vote in 2010 — which was Tea Party and rooted in Obamacare and out-of-control spending (and everything else, but those are the two biggies). In 2014, it happened again because there had been lip service during the presidential campaign about stopping Obama, but that’s all it ever amounted to. So when it comes to these congressional elections in the midterms, the anti-Democrat National Committee vote has shown up in droves and has delivered two separate landslide defeats for the Democrats.
People don’t talk about this because this is a presidential election, but the Democrats, in those two midterms, lost a thousand or more seats including in the House, including governorships, state legislatures, all the way down to town councils. They just took a shellacking. And the Republican Party has yet to try to put together a working majority based on this anti-Democrat vote. It’s the most preposterous thing! Even now!
We heard rumblings yesterday that the Republican and its platform committee is urging the inclusion of a plank supporting gay marriage and acknowledging climate change. You know, you can talk about Trump, and you can talk about Cruz and the antis and all this, but I will tell you: If the Republican Party itself… I tell you, if the establishment starts trying to monkey around with those kind of things and claim, “We’ve gotta do this to get the millennial vote.” People are just gonna say, “No, you don’t!”
Those are bogus issues. There isn’t any climate change, and marriage is a values issue, and we own it, and we don’t want to be part of a party that’s gonna participate in watering it down, delineating it, or even destroying it. So there could be a lot of reasons that people might stay home in the 2016 congressional down ballot. At this point, we just don’t know. We don’t know who the nominee’s gonna be, and then we don’t know how that nominee is gonna make efforts at unification. Any number of things could happen.
You know, I like to look on the optimistic, bright side. Chris Wallace asked me the last time I was on Fox News Sunday how I thought this all was gonna end up, and I didn’t have much time to think about that, and I was blindsided by the question. I try to anticipate everything I might be asked in one of these interviews, but that one I didn’t think about so I had no answer in my head. So I just instinctively went to the positive, and I said, “We’re gonna have a nominee, and we’re gonna all unify
“Because, at the end of the process, it’s going to be abundantly clear the real opponent is Hillary Clinton or whoever their nominee is, and the Democrat Party.” And I really hope that that’s what eventuates. Now, let’s play a game here. Let’s say Cruz is the nominee. However it happens, let’s say Cruz is the nominee. We don’t know yet how well Cruz is going to perform in his unity efforts, but you know damn well he’s gonna try. Whoever the nominee is is gonna try that. They’re gonna need every Republican vote you can get and then some.
And there will be all kinds of efforts at reaching out with the Trump voters who may be upset, angry, what have you. But there would be efforts made for this. It’s gonna depend largely on the nominee’s ability to unify. And then there’s always over here there’s gonna be the establishment. Now, there’s another monkey wrench here because the establishment… Let me tell you what’s going around here. What’s going on around, the establishment’s sidling up to Cruz, but not because they really like him. He’s the lesser of two evils. Cruz getting the nomination keeps the establishment intact, is the conventional wisdom.
Trump being the nominee blows the establishment sky-high. There’s a phrase, I have it in a news story, I can’t recall what it is here, but it’s something about we don’t really lose with Cruz, or something like this. The establishment’s still more worried about Trump. Obviously, you can see the way these endorsements are lining up. But don’t discount what the establishment wants. You got people over there — these are not the nominee. We’re not talking about Trump or Cruz here. You’ve got elected officials, as things sit now, claiming if they don’t get what they want, they might vote Hillary.
So there’s gonna need to be a lot of unification taking place. And let’s say Trump is the nominee. What kind of effort’s Trump gonna make? Can he succeed, for example, in getting the never-Trumpers to lay down their arms and join the effort? And that’s gonna be a big one because the never-Trumpers are really worried. If Trump is the nominee and wins, then the never-Trumpers are gonna say, “Well, you know what? Trump’s not a conservative, and he won, and we’re conservatives, and, oh, no. What does that mean for us?”
So many different interests here, some personal, some professional, some rooted in the national interests, greatest thing for the country, some party interests. It’s all got to — or as much of it as possible be unified once that convention breaks in July. Actually, once the whole shebang begins after Labor Day, but it’s largely gonna depend on the nominee and how good at it, how inspiring the nominee is. This we don’t know yet. It’s just too soon.
But there’s also a giant, I think, a humongous unifying element out there. And that’s the Democrat Party. This is what frustrates me more than anything about the Republicans, folks. I think all this talk of unity is an indication of how woefully unserved so many people are by the party in general. The party ought to be pushing back. Even now, I’ve got some stuff in the Stack, stuff that Obama is doing. Stuff the State Department’s doing. The Republican Party ought to be pushing back against this stuff now.
They ought to be standing up and saying, “No, Mr. President, we’re not gonna do this.” They ought to be opposing it and explain to people why they’re opposing it. Because everything that happens now could be part of a presidential campaign, particularly if it’s things that help people to understand the problems associated with liberalism and the Democrat Party. It’s a golden opportunity and the Republicans simply will not push back. They will not oppose. The Republicans are almost as afraid to push back against the Democrats as western Europeans are afraid to push back against militant Islamists. Both puzzle me.
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RUSH: Let me just give you a couple of examples here. A story from Yahoo News: “Climate Forecast May Be Flawed — Predictions of unprecedented rainfall extremes in the 20th century driven by global warming turned out wrong, a study said Wednesday, casting doubt on methods used to project future trends. A massive trawl of Northern Hemisphere rainfall data for the last 1,200 years revealed there had been more dramatic wet-dry weather extremes in earlier, cooler centuries before humans set off fossil fuel-driven global warming.”
This whole thing is a scam. It’s designed to promote big government, to raise taxes, to blame freedom and capitalism, when that is the whole solution for people in poverty. The Republican Party could push back instead of saying we’ve gotta put a plank in our platform acknowledging man-made climate change, push back on it. There is a majority of American people willing to join a political party that wants to push back on this stuff. We don’t hear a peep.
“More Than 40% of Student Borrowers ArenÂ’t Making Payments.” Wall Street Journal. “More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the governmentÂ’s main student-loan program arenÂ’t making payments or are behind on more than $200 billion owed, raising worries that millions of them may never repay.”
Of course they’re not gonna repay. They’ll never be able to have the money to repay. The Republican Party has gotta come out now and say they are tired of what has been done to a college education and they’re immediately gonna take steps to reverse the trend. A college education has become almost like shackles. You graduate with so much debt that there’s no way you can repay it. So the whole point of a college education is rendered meaningless. Become the party that is going to reverse this trend and once again make a college education the value it used to be.
Who’s running education? See, this is the problem, when you’ve got these establishment types of both parties who benefit from these massive government programs and massive government growth, this is how you get a party that can’t push back.
This is another one, from the Daily Signal: “The Regulation That Drastically Infringes LandownersÂ’ Rights.” Just two days ago we learned that Obama administration, through the Housing and Urban Development agency, is going to write a legislation mandating that landlords rent to people with criminal records. But that’s not the half of it. The reason is because the American judicial system, from our nation’s founding, has been inherently racist. And this is reparations.
They’re gonna make landowners and property owners rent to people with criminal records because it’s unfair so many criminals happen to be African-Americans because of a justice system that is totally racist. You tell me you can’t push back against that? You tell me there’s not a political party that could push back, at least say you’re opposed to it instead of letting it go, not even commented on?
This one. “The Supreme Court heard arguments in US Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co. This case is one of a collection of land use cases that trickle into the Court from time to time, all representing the same problem: The Clean Water Act –” here we go with more environmental wacko regulation that punishes free market economics. “The Clean Water Act drastically limits the rights of landowners to build or develop on land that constitutes ‘waters of the United States’ (WOTUS). Unfortunately, the term ‘waters of the United States’ is left undefined.”
So the Regime is able to go in and call your backyard a swamp or a wetland or whatever, limiting your ability to do anything with it. And not just your backyard, but an entire parcel of land you might have purchased for the purposes of developing. They come in, the Clean Water Act or some other environmental regulation, and tell you can’t. It’s a straight, direct assault on private property, on free speech, freedom to associate.
The First Amendment is under assault in this country by the Democrat Party and there’s not a peep said about it by the Republicans. There’s all kinds of things to be pushing back against. And I’m sure what they’d say is, “Well, that might get in the way of our campaign. We might say something that our eventual nominee doesn’t support.” Well, this kind of stuff is universal, I think. This is what we’re talking about, opposing and stopping Obama and the Democrat Party. Whoever we nominate better be all about that. Make it happen.