RUSH: Okay. This is the second day in a row that I intended, you know, just to spread it around, just to start with what’s going on with the Democrats, because they had… Well, they’re calling a debate last night. It was… Well, it’s a gold mine. It’s an absolute gold mine. Many, many predictions I made to you are coming true, such as Millennial women abandoning Hillary. And some former NAALCP guy, Ben Jealous, has come out and endorsed Bernie Sanders. I think if Hillary has any hope here… You know, she does her “black dialect” when she goes to Selma. She needs to come up with a New York Jewish dialect in order to get to Bernie Sanders’ crowd. It is just amazing.

But, folks, what’s happening on the Republican side has to take precedence here over what’s going on the Democrat side. Now, I’m gonna do everything I can to get to the Democrat side of things because it’s easily half the story, and it’s fascinating in and of its own right. What’s going on on the Republican side… Holy… It’s just childish. I mean here we are, we were on the verge — I mean, we come out of Iowa, and three of the top four finishers are without doubt Reagan conservatives.

And now all of that’s been turned upside down and the winners are under assault on this crazy thing about Ben Carson and his supposed leaving the race and so forth. Let me ask a question. Has anybody in Iowa…? I bet since I mentioned this, somebody’s going to now. Has any voter in Iowa, any caucus attender shown up and said, “You know what? I wanted to vote for Ben Carson, but I saw that tweet from Ted Cruz and I changed my mind.” Has anybody said that they intended to vote for Ben Carson but were talked out of it because of all this?

And I ask you what I asked yesterday. Even if this ended up being a factor, was Ben Carson cheated out of 25,000 votes? That’s what he would have needed to tie. He over-performed! Ben Carson did better than what the polling data showed. It was Ben Carson and CNN who telegraphed this whole notion that Ben Carson was leaving the campaign going back to Florida.

Cruz is on CNN last night, and he points out to them that it was them — their reporter, tweeting out what Carson had said — and CNN was so ticked off, they spent the rest of the night calling Cruz a liar. And now Trump’s out there threatening to sue anybody that walks and to get himself back in this, and it’s just… I don’t know what it is. Excuse me. Not a circus.

And then, folks, I was so happy today. After four weeks of sheer, sheer frustration, I finally, with the help of a lot of people, solved my battery life issue. I’m not gonna bore you with the technical aspects, but what it… My two desktop computers were constantly trying to upgrade, sync, do a number of things with iCloud, which was causing… iCloud was then in constant contact with my computers and iPhones and laptops, which means their processor were always running.

Anyway, a fix was to sign out of iCloud on both desktops last night for half an hour, 45 minutes; sign back in. And it worked. And then 10 minutes ago, the churn started again. Right before this program starts, the churn started, just like it was the four previous weeks, and I’m sitting here saying, “What a lousy time for that to happen.” So there’s a lot of frustrating things going on out there, and hopefully we can bring some of it to a screeching halt and get back to the things that really matter to people here.

I know campaigns are what they are, and victory is what it’s all about, and going after people is how you do it. I understand all that. This is the big leagues. I’m an adult. But this Ben Carson thing, I mean, he started it; CNN propelled it. And Ted Cruz has apologized for it, more so than anybody else. You know, Cruz could have blamed a staffer for this. Cruz didn’t do this. Cruz could have gone out there and said, “A staffer did it,” and satisfied what Carson wanted and fired somebody. But he didn’t. What did he do? He went up there and he took the hit himself.

That’s a sign of tremendous character to me.

He didn’t take the easy road and blame some unnamed staffer and then make a big show out of firing that staffer like most people would have done, and then go on and on about how outraged he was and how this is the kind of thing that nobody should want in our politics and how he’s gonna make sure it doesn’t ever happen again. He didn’t do any of that. He went out there and said, “Yeah,” and apologized for it. He did not admit any guilt. There’s not any guilt to be found here.

Yesterday I had the advance warning of the Public Policy Polling number. It was embargoed. I respected the embargo. It was embargoed ’til today. But somebody went ahead and ran with it last night, so here are the details. I actually think — and this is my intelligence guided by experience. I actually think that polls right now are still too soon to give us an honest reflection of the post-Iowa mind-set in New Hampshire.

You know what I also read today in my voluminous show prep? I read that the people of New Hampshire consciously avoid being a rubber stamp for Iowa. I actually read this. I read a story which said the people of New Hampshire, they take note of what happened in Iowa, and they make a point of making sure to select somebody new, somebody different. Now, for that to be the case, however many thousands of people are gonna show up in a New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, they’re all gonna have to have gotten together.

Or they’re all gonna have to have received a memo. Or they’re all gonna have to have conscious, independent thoughts and agree on the same thing. They’re gonna go into that ballot box, into the polling place, and they’re gonna all say, “You know what? We cannot vote the same way they did in Iowa because that’s not what we in New Hampshire do.” Now, they may have statistics that show this is what happens. They may have statistics over the years that New Hampshire primary voters do not vote the same way as Iowa.

But to try to tell me it’s because New Hampshire voters take note of what happened in Iowa and make sure they do something different? How in the world would you coordinate that? You know, this is the kind of crazy analysis we get. It sounds really good. “Wow!” It sounds like insider stuff. You stop to think about it. Who in the world could make that happen? I know! The guy who’s in charge of gasoline prices going up and down in America. That’s who. That’s who could do that.

Do you believe that, Snerdley? Do you believe that this is how everybody’s going to vote in New Hampshire on Tuesday, is they’re gonna go in there and say, “Okay, Cruz won Iowa. We can’t be a rubber stamp for that. Even if I like Cruz, I’m voting somebody else, ’cause I don’t want New Hampshire to look like Iowa.” Come on! Yet that kind of thing gets put out there. “Yeah, man!” The stats demonstrate it. Here’s the details from Public Policy Polling. (interruption) Yeah, I saw Jimmy Carter has endorsed Trump.

Jimmy Carter’s in there endorsing Trump. So the establishment’s getting their ducks in a row here. “Public Policy Polling’s newest national poll finds the race on the Republican side tightening considerably in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise loss in Iowa on Monday night.” Note that they… Who is this? It’s Public Policy Polling writing this. Note that they could not write this: “In the wake of Ted Cruz’s resounding victory on Monday night…” Does anybody…? Have you stopped to think what Ted Cruz did on Monday night?

Have you stopped to think what Ted Cruz overcame to win the Iowa caucuses? He overcame $8.5 million arrayed against him, all of the ad money arrayed against him, all of the so-called, “He’s not even a legit candidate ’cause he was born in Canada,” all of these “religious revival evangelist nutcase,” all of that stuff thrown at him. “Phony Hispanic,” all that, and he still wins. And after that victory, Ted Cruz is the first Hispanic-American to ever win the Iowa caucus. He is the first Hispanic-American to win any presidential primary for any party.

It didn’t happen in the Democrat side.

The first Hispanic-American to win a presidential primary happens to be Ted Cruz, who happens to be a Republican — and furthermore, it was the Religious Right that propelled him to victory. And I knew this was gonna happen precisely because the establishment and everybody else anti-Cruz is arraying all of that arsenal and resources against Cruz precisely… Well, not just precisely, not exclusively. But a big reason is because the Religious Right or the evangelicals were the margin of victory.

“We can’t have that! No, no, no. We have got to destroy that. We have got to shoot that down. We can’t allow that to be the message coming out,” say the opponents and enemies of Cruz. “Oh, my God,” the Republican Party’s out there saying. “These are the people we want to get rid of! These are the people we think are causing us problems, the pro-lifers, the social issues people. Oh, no! They’re the reason Cruz won?” He’s the first Hispanic to win. What’s the Republican Party…?

I saw Lindsey Graham on TV this morning talk about why he likes Jeb. (summarized) “The reason we can’t nominate Ted Cruz is ’cause we have to reach out to Hispanics. Hispanic voters hate the Republican Party and think the Republican Party doesn’t like ’em. Hispanics think the Republican Party is mean-spirited and exclusive exclusionary,” and I’m sitting there saying, “Senator Graham, an Hispanic just won the Iowa caucus.

“An Hispanic-American, Ted Cruz, just won, and you’re sitting there saying that Hispanics don’t like the Republican Party because they don’t think they have a home, they don’t think the Republican Party likes Hispanics?” He was serious! He was going on and on and on about it. He’s pushing Jeb. Obviously the establishment is hanging together. But it was classic Establishment Thinking 101 about what the Republican Party has to do to win.

“We’ve gotta expand the base; we gotta go way beyond our base; we can’t rely on our base; we gotta reach out to Hispanics; women hate us; we gotta do something about that; we gotta change the way people think of the Republican Party; and Ted Cruz just isn’t the way.” He’s the first Hispanic-American to win a presidential primary, period, of any party — Republican, Democrat, independent, Martian, you name it — and here comes Public Policy Polling.

PPP’s “newest national poll finds the race on the Republican side tightening considerably in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise loss in Iowa on Monday night. Trump’s lead has fallen to just four points.” He’s at 25%. Ted Cruz is at 21%. Marco Rubio is at 21%. Ben Carson, who’s not there, in New Hampshire is at 11%. Jeb Bush, Kasich, and Rand Paul are at 5%. Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina 3%, and Jim Gilmore still in the race at 1%. Santorum had zero supporters in the Public Policy Polling final poll.

Mr. Snerdley, can you help me out? Who did Santorum endorse yesterday? (interruption) Yeah. Did…? Was it first reported that he endorsed Cruz? ‘Cause I remember getting e-mails from people yesterday afternoon. Remember, I was immersed for hours after the program yesterday in the fix for my battery life crisis, and it was a general… A few people knew. I haven’t bothered to bleed on you about this because, of course, it’s not important to anybody but me. But I was working on this for hours last night.

So I got an e-mail from somebody that said, “My God, Santorum endorsed Trump?” It turned out to be not true, right? He endorsed Rubio. Anyway, zero here in the Republican race. Now, PPP says Trump’s “25% standing reflects a nine-point drop” from their last national poll, which was taken the week before Christmas. They say that it “reflects an overall decline in Trump’s popularity with GOP voters. In this poll,” the Public Policy Polling poll, “Trump’s favorability has dropped to net 17 points from a previous plus 24 to now plus 7.”

The actual numbers on favorability: 58 favorable, 34 unfavorable. That’s right? I don’t know which is which here. They don’t say. (interruption) Yes, 48/41 is what it is now. (interruption) So if he’s… Yeah, 48 favorable. So he’s dropped 17 points. It says that Rubio’s “the candidate with the real momentum in the race.” He’s up eight points from his 13% standing in their poll right before Christmas.

And that Cruz is actually pretty steady in his national… This is not New Hampshire, by the way. It’s a national poll, which of course doesn’t mean much right now, with New Hampshire being the focus plus a Republican debate coming up Saturday night. As I say, I’m not sure we’ve had enough time has passed from Iowa for the polls that are like the Real Clear Politics average, the rolling average, and this poll.

I don’t know if enough time has gone by for there actually to be an accurate poll now about the post-Iowa mind-set of people in New Hampshire.