RUSH: Patrick in Gainesville, Florida. Great to have you. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Love your show.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I want to point out that, although I’m not a Trump supporter, I can’t see how he doesn’t get the nomination with all the winner-take-all states that are still remaining. If you look at California, New Jersey, Delaware, and PA, I can’t see how he loses those. Then he only needs 254 votes, or delegates, then you have a couple other winner-take-all states that I think he’s gonna get. Maryland, Wisconsin, Virgin Islands, American Samoa. Now he only needs 156 out of the 377 proportional states. That’s 41%. He’s getting that but the pundits are saying he needs 60. I don’t understand their math, but would you agree based on those states that he’s gonna win those?

RUSH: I’ll tell you, there’s something that interests me more. I’ll get to that in just a second here. But I did see — I didn’t print it because it’s charts and graphs, which are worthless to me in trying to explain something to you on the radio. But the New York Times has a story, I found it last night in which, you know, using their math, with their charts and their graphs and the things that you were talking about, remaining states, the proportional delegates, winner-take-all, they have a formula there where they say that people are wrong when they say Trump cannot get to 1,237, they say he can.

In fact, they say he can hit the number exactly, according to their formula. But I’ll tell you, what fascinates me now, this whole thing’s taken a new twist now, and I can’t tell you how much I resent this Kasich situation and what he’s doing because Kasich is really gumming up the works. Well, now gotta take a break here. But, look, pal, I’ll hold you through the break so you can react to it, Patrick.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Where’d Patrick go? Did he hang up? Okay, doesn’t matter. He brought it up. There’s two stories here. The New York Times story on how Trump can get 1,237, they still say he can, and it’s because of Rubio’s exit. Rubio’s exit leaves Trump with an open path to 1,237. Everybody else is saying he can’t get there. Everybody is saying Trump cannot get there now, especially with Kasich staying in. But, no, no, no, no. And from the article in the New York Times, as I say it’s a lot of charts and graphs, which are worthless. I mean, how do I describe a chart to you? And I’m not gonna hold the damn things up on the Dittocam. But let me read to you what it says.

“If Mr. Trump maintains his current level of support in the remaining races, he would almost certainly secure the nomination. If he continues his current performance and wins a series of key states — like Arizona, California and New York — he would get the needed delegates. If Mr. Trump loses California, he could miss the delegate cutoff. But even that may not prevent Mr. Trump from winning the key states — like California — that ensure him enough delegates.”

That’s a little out of context here, but the bottom line is the New York Times thinks that he can get there. The AP, on the other hand: “Trump Still Not Doing Well Enough to Guarantee Nomination.” So who do you believe here? “Donald Trump is the only candidate with a path to clinching the Republican nomination for president before the party’s national convention in July, according to an analysis of the delegate math.”

Why isn’t that the headline? What is this “Trump Still Not Doing Well Enough to Guarantee Nomination.” How do you square that with the opening paragraph? It’s just a media question. It just flummoxes me again. The usual media flummery out there. “Donald Trump is the only candidate with a path to clinching the Republican nomination before the convention.” That’s the lead. The headline: “Trump Still Not Doing Well Enough to Guarantee Nomination.”

“But despite four more wins on Tuesday, the billionaire businessman still must do better. Trump’s rivals can only hope to stop him, forcing a contested convention with an uncertain outcome,” which is why a contested convention is all we’re going to be hearing about.

Now, I said to Patrick before the break, there’s something else about this now, there’s a new twist to this that is fascinating to me, and Kasich has gummed it up. I really was looking forward to this two-man continuation here between Trump and Cruz. We’ve had Trump anywhere from state to state, I don’t have the exact numbers, and I’m not gonna talk about this 50% business ’cause that’s, I think, a distraction, ’cause Trump’s been winning. I don’t care about 50% because there have been a lot of people in the race.

However, he’s been winning 35, 40%. But throughout this, whether it’s been 17 candidates or four, there’s always been more Republicans voting in primaries for people other than Trump. I think if you want to talk about math, that is some math, before you put personalities into it. On the one hand you’ve got Trump and his solid support, 35%, let’s say 40. But when you add Cruz and Kasich and Rubio and Carson, no matter how many, down to those final four, including all the other 17, there was a greater number of Republican primary votes, particularly in closed states where Democrats couldn’t cross over, who were voting for candidates who were not Trump.

And I know the Cruz campaign has been so eager, they have been looking so forward to this moment. They were hoping it would come earlier. They were hoping candidates would drop out earlier, like Carson, but it didn’t happen when they wished it would, but it has happened now except for Kasich. So we still don’t have the two-man race. We’re still gonna have the anti-Trump vote, diluted.

And, by the way, I’m not concluding that all of the anti-Trump vote would go to Cruz. That’s what I wanted to see. I wanted to see how much of it would. I was really hoping to see that. And we’re not gonna see it with Kasich staying in the race, and Kasich’s not going anywhere, because this whole thing, all of this has become about him now, in his mind, all of this is about him.

You go back to his acceptance speech, it was all about how remarkable a path to all this he has taken, what a remarkable career he’s had, what a remarkable and unique life he still led, and it’s taught him to tell all of his supporters, there’s only one of you, you’re special. There’s nobody like you. And there will never, ever be anybody else like you. And your mission here is to take what that uniqueness is and go make something out of it, which sounds good but in his case he’s saying it so that you’ll think of him that way.

Some people are just — you know them — self-focused, self-important. It’s deep here with Governor Kasich. I mean, the confetti, did you see that? The confetti guns, and he’s talking about (imitating Kasich), “I will go on and win these other states. I will be elected president.” You might say, “Well, Rush that’s what all candidates say, you gotta talk positive like that.” Well, yeah, but, I mean, you can’t be delusional. You can say it, but if you really mean it or think it then there might be problems. But for all of you anti-Trumpers, there was gonna be one way of finding out if the anti-Trump sentiment was a majority. I guess you still might say that it is.

Let’s say the combo of Cruz and Kasich still, in some states, is larger than Trump, it’s not gonna be the case in every state. And I know that some of this doesn’t matter in delegate apportionment because there are winner-take-all states. For example, in Missouri they still haven’t called Missouri. I’ll tell you why. The last I saw Missouri, during yesterday’s show I saw that Cruz was 2,000 votes behind, but Trump was gonna get all the delegates, 15 delegates and Cruz was gonna get zero.

Now, there are nine bonus delegates in Missouri to be apportioned based on who wins. That close, but in a winner-take-all state, that’s what happens. So the popular vote, you know, who wins states really doesn’t matter. It’s the delegate pile that does. And that’s what all these analyses of states yet to come are based on. What is it gonna take to win enough where to get a majority of the delegates to equal 1,237. And they’re concluding in the AP that Trump can’t do it in the time left. And the New York Times is saying oh, yes, he can. And everybody’s concluding Cruz can’t.

For the Cruz people I’m sure it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand with Kasich staying in, the only hope now is that Trump does not get to 1,237. But that brings up the conversation of, well, if he doesn’t, how close does he get? If he’s within 50 or a hundred, do you go to the convention contested or do you just go ahead and say, okay, he won it, the people have spoken. Well, then we next turn to Republican rules committee people who are out there saying, “Wait a minute. The voters don’t choose the nominee; we do. We’re gonna have a rules meeting. We can change the rules in April. We can change rules the day before the convention.”

I know if you watch enough TV you’re seeing enough people say that that’s all a pipe dream, that by the time we get there, all these people talking about a contested convention will have backed down and they’ll realize they can’t take it away from Trump for a whole host of reasons. I do not believe that. I do not believe this party is gonna concede this without some kind of protracted, intense fight over it. Just my humble opinion.

You’ve got like the owners of the Diamondbacks out there and the owners of the Cubs. I mean, these are big donors and so forth, and they’re saying no way no how Trump. How do you unify that? Then you got these guys out there promising to have a meeting today to come up with maybe going third party, then choosing a candidate. It’s pretty late for that, get signatures, get on the ballot, find somebody. But there’s a whole pot load of people here that are making it very clear they have — I mean, they’re making it so clear, how do they walk back their refusal to unify? The Diamondbacks people, the Cubs people, how do they walk it back?

The Diamondbacks people: We are willing to lose a hundred thousand fans by publicly stating we abhor Trump. That’s our morality. We must be true to ourselves. And if it costs us a hundred thousand fans and the related economics, fine. And the Ricketts family in Chicago is saying the same thing, essentially. Okay. So we move to July, we get to Cleveland, it’s convention time. How do people like them and others walk back their positions and unify? I don’t know.

I know I said on Fox News Sunday that I thought that was gonna happen. Chris Wallace asked me a question. I try to anticipate every question, I always do that, and he always ends up asking me one that I didn’t think of, and he said, “How’s this gonna end?” And since I don’t endorse and haven’t gone that route, I let things play out to find out who’s gonna win. I do make predictions and so forth. So I said to him, I think what’s gonna happen, what I hope happens is that by the time we get there, everybody’s gonna realize that the real threat, the real political opponent here is the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party is why all of this is happening.

No, I’m not absolving the Republican establishment. Don’t misunderstand. But the Democrat Party has been running this country. The Democrat Party and its social programs and its cultural rot, cultural invasion, everything else, the Democrat Party is why this country is in dire straits. The country is where it is because the Democrats want it to be here. They want to transform this country. They do not like this country the way it was founded and Obama epitomizes it. So you get Supreme Court nominees, that’s just part of it. Yeah, that’s big. But we don’t need a third Obama administration and then a fourth.

So I always thought that at that point somebody would realize, enough people would realize that the real objective here is to beat Democrats, which is my objective, folks. I answer the question again. However we beat the Democrats is what I’m for, as opposed to investing in various candidates or personalities. I think the task is much larger and beyond a single candidate. A presidential candidate is a person and a set of policies and issues and so forth that everybody can coalesce around to advance that objective, which is defeating Democrats.

I think the Democrat Party is the most destructive force in the country today. I don’t think the Republicans are. The Republicans, as we all know, have enabled this by not attempting to stop any of it. And, yeah, there may be individual Republicans, moderate, liberal Republicans who support it, but in general the indictment against the Republicans is they’ve let it happen while promising during campaigns that they would not.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Joe in Memphis. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. I’m a big fan. You kind of touched on what I was — I’m a big Ted Cruz supporter. I’m really upset about Donald Trump backing out of the debate. I’ve been waiting months for a head-to-head with him. And, you know, I’ve heard over the last few weeks you’ve analyzed what makes up a Donald Trump supporter, and just for what it’s worth I wanted to give you a heads-up, I’m a big volunteer for the Ted Cruz campaign, and we are made up of groups of people like myself who have been waiting 30 years for a candidate like this. And I’ve never donated before until Ted Cruz came along. I’ve never volunteered for a campaign, and I just think boy, over the next few weeks we’ve got a golden opportunity to elect somebody as close to Reagan as I’ve ever seen.

RUSH: What do you think Cruz needs to do, or you and other volunteers, aids, supporters, what do you need to do?

CALLER: Well, I wouldn’t presume to know how to direct him what to do, other than, you know, when I listen to the news I really just hear all about Donald Trump, and it seems like it’s focused on the horse race aspect, and I was really looking forward to a more or less head-to-head debate where the contrast could be laid out as far as policies. I’m really not interested in all the drama and all the name-calling and everything else. I just I feel like this is a window of time over the next few weeks where —

RUSH: There isn’t any policy contrast. Trump does not do policy. Trump does attitude. Trump is transactional. Trump doesn’t look at government as a series of policies to implement. Government is a series of transactions that you engage in —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — that end up in his view with the country winning. A debate between — I know why Trump’s not — Trump knows. In many debates, you know, Cruz has had a brilliant answer to a very detailed policy question, and Trump said, “Everything he said is right on.”

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: That’s why Trump’s not gonna do that debate. Two different worlds, two different worlds. You resent Trump dropping out and a lot of people do, but it’s like incumbent presidents. “Why should I debate this clown? I got the job, he wants it, why should I help him get it? Screw that. He wants to go win it, have him go win it. I’m not gonna help him.” That’s why incumbents only have one debate, and they don’t even want to do that.