RUSH: I’ve been thinking about this. We are all inundated by each other, every day, with e-mails, phone calls, texts, what have you, of utter incredulity over what’s happened to the Republican Party. It’s just too weird, folks. There just isn’t any serious opposition to anything that the Democrat Party wants.

Remember Angelo Codevilla? He’s back. He had that great place on the ruling class that I read in its entirety to you when he published it, and he then turned it into a book. He’s back with his thoughts on Trump, and I found it at the Power Line blog post by Steven Hayward, and that’s coming up later on the program today. It’s just a brilliant, brilliant explanation of why what Trump is doing is working and what makes it stand out.

It’s nothing, by the way, that you haven’t thought of yourself. It’s just the way Codevilla explains it that makes it really penetrating and right on the money. But the Republican Party’s opposed nothing. You know, they’re not even going through the motions. Mr. Snerdley, have you noticed? They’re not even voicing phony opposition to Obama in order to placate the base. They’re actively targeting their own base. This is just too weird! The one thing to concluded here, is, I don’t believe that…

Name the names: McConnell, Boehner, members of their leadership. I just don’t believe these guys overnight have become liberals. I don’t think that explains it. I don’t think overnight they’ve become moderates. There’s something else that explains this, and that question is always, “Follow the money.” I think that is where we would find the answer to this. We could speculate, you know, what does “follow the money” mean? Is there blackmail? Is there bribery going on or promises of financial wealth after retirement or whatever?

Except these guys don’t retire and go home. They stay there. So I don’t know. But it’s just too weird. Not only is there no the Republican Party opposition — and I’m talking about the establishment in Washington, not the presidential candidates right now. But just the establishment in Washington, you can’t distinguish the difference between Republicans and Democrats there. They are all aligned. They are glued together.

But the difference now is, the Republican Party doesn’t even go through the motions of trying to convince its votes that they’re opposed to the Obama agenda. You look at the incident that happened with Ted Cruz on the Senate floor last Friday, openly calling out Mitch McConnell, and then McConnell taking his revenge on a Sunday session, which is totally predictable and understandable to me.

You know, Cruz on Friday goes on the floor of the Senate and calls McConnell a liar. McConnell later in the afternoon supposedly does a reversal on an amendment that would defund Planned Parenthood. He was originally not gonna permit that amendment, then late Friday afternoon he did a 180 and said he would, and some people credited that to Cruz’s floor speech on the Senate on Friday, had a Sunday session, and McConnell just denied Cruz and his buddy Mike Lee.

I think they couldn’t even get a roll call much less get started on any substantive debates, amendments. Republican senators, that’s what happens you violate the decorum like this. You go against the leader the leader is gonna drop the hammer on you. So people are sending me e-mails, “How come Republicans didn’t support Cruz?” and a lot of people are wondering, “Why didn’t any other Republican senators stand up and support Cruz in this?” Well, why do you think they didn’t?

I’ll give you one reason off the top. It’s not the only reason. One reason is he’s a Republican presidential candidate, and I would venture to say that a lot of Republican senators are not gonna support him. They probably think that what he’s doing is designed to enhance his campaign is or sell his book and they decided they’re not gonna help him do that. No matter what he’s talking about, no matter whether what he’s talking about is good for the nation or not they’re not gonna help him.

Because partisan politics rears its head and they either support Walker or they support Jeb or they support Rubio or they support somebody else. But they’re not gonna support Cruz so there’s no way they would mass and support him in the Senate. Plus, I don’t think a bunch of them in there want to take on McConnell, either. Not that it’s McConnell, but just don’t want to take on the leadership. So Cruz was left to hang out and dry, and to a certain extent Mike Lee with him after what happened on the Sunday session.

But my point is that selling Cruz out on Sunday’s understandable — just standard, ordinary everyday standard operating procedure rules in the Senate, the way it behaves. But even if you want to throw that in the mix, this is all just too weird. There’s not even any phony opposition. They’re not even trying to motivate the base. They’re not even trying to fool the base. I mean, they’ve had all these phony votes. For example, repeal Obamacare votes.

They’re not even going through the motions of that ’cause they know that people see through it and that they don’t mean it. They’re not even trying. I don’t care what the issue is. The big three: Amnesty, Obamacare, Iran. Nothing! Zilch! No opposition to anything. Now, can anybody say that immigration, as being policed or not policed by Obama is helping America? Can anybody? They don’t even try to make the case that’s happening. I mean, even the amnesty supporters do not do it on the basis that it’s good for America.

They do it on the basis that it’s “fair” for the immigrants. They do it on the basis of social justice and fairness motivations and reasons. But they don’t do it it’s improving the country. The Iran deal. Does anybody think this is actually good for the United States? Yet there’s no opposition to it, no serious opposition. I mean, for Corker to stand up and accuse Kerry of being fleeced? (chuckles) Who got fleeced first? Corker did, in putting together the famous now Corker Bill.

Obamacare? Can anybody say that Obamacare is making health care better? Can anybody say that anything that Obama is doing is? Nobody even makes the case, other than Obama with some words now and then — phony baloney plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roll — that the country’s better off than it has. They have to lie about employment numbers, they have to make things up. There’s not even any fake opposition to Obama. I refuse to believe as I say that these guys have become moderates or liberals overnight in our party.

So there’s something else going on to explain this. And, by the way, I don’t believe it’s just one thing. A lot of people think, “Well, it’s because Republican Party wants to finally get rid of the conservatives, get rid of its base.” I don’t doubt that, but I don’t think that’s the singular explanation for this total lack of opposition. ‘Cause none of what’s happening right now anybody makes the case is helping America. Are sanctuary cities helping America? Is any of this good for the country?

Is any of this good for the people of this c, is any of it, is any of what’s happening in America today good for, anybody in the elected political class running around and claiming, “Hey, slow down, you guys, you Americans! Take stock. We’re doing better than ever! We’re sitting tight! We’re looking at a great future.” Nobody’s telling us that. Everybody’s telling us how we have to manage the decline, lower expectations, this is the new normal, and there’s no opposition to it? It’s too weird.

And just five or six years ago there was opposition to it. I mean, for example, in 2010 there was not one Republican vote for invoke. So five years ago there was opposition. I just refuse to believe that, in the last five years, our guys have all turned to mush. Well, I take that back. They have turned to mush. I refuse to believe that they have undergone ideological transplants and have all become liberals or moderates. ‘Cause none of it makes any sense. So that has created a giant void, and who is filling it but Trump.

Trump is filling the void, which is a partial explanation for why Trump is Trump is experiencing such overwhelming support. Because the people of this country are understandably fed up. They’re fed up with all. There’s no opposition to the gay marriage agenda, and we have to listen to a Supreme Court justice tell us that if we oppose it, we’re bigots or whatever. The Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy in his opinion.

There’s no opposition to this? Admit it, folks: What has you bamboozled, what has you frustrated is you don’t see any opposition to any of it at a level of power that could do something about stopping it. There’s plenty of opposition in your neighborhood, plenty of opposition in your town, plenty of opposition in your family, plenty of opposition in your friends, but there’s none where it counts. There’s a giant void — and here comes Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sununu was on today on Fox talking about he thinks Trump’s gonna implode by the time school starts, and the ruling class, establishment, whatever, I know that they’re hoping for this to happen. Trump…

Believe me, Codevilla is right: The ruling class know that they’re sitting atop a potential volcanic explosion, and those things have happened. The House Bank, the House Bank Scandal, back in the late eighties resulted in the Republicans winning the House for the first time in 40 years. So these things happen from time to time. But it’s worse now than it’s ever been. This ruling class is so unified. It’s my point in the first hour opening monologue. There isn’t even fake opposition from the Republicans now!

They don’t even go through the motions of try to placate the base with fake opposition to whatever is happening. They appear just to have signed on to all of it, and my point was and still is: It’s just too weird! These people haven’t changed their ideological theories and beliefs and policy beliefs in five years. There’s something besides that that has to explain all this. The rise of Trump is what focused my thinking on it, because obviously the Republicans have been gotten to.

Can we admit this without too much argument? I mean, what is it? Do you really think that Boehner and McConnell in the last five years have become liberals? I don’t. I know some of you do. Some of you might think they always have been, but not to this extent. No… Not even any statements of outrage over what we’ve learned about Planned Parenthood from the Republican Party, with a base of 24 million voters waiting to be talked to about this? Say what you want about the Tea Party or call it Christian right or what have you.

There’s 24 million people out there ready to show up and vote against every Democrat on the ballot, if they’re given reason to believe the vote’s gonna matter, and they’re not making an effort to get those 24 million voters! It doesn’t make sense! If you look at this within a prism of issues, it makes no sense. But if you look at it in other ways, like “follow the money,” bribery, blackmail? I don’t know, folks.

I’m fishing, but I’m imbued, as the mayor of Realville, with an abundance of common sense, and this doesn’t make any sense, and it hasn’t made any. Furthermore, trying to explain it within the standard operating procedure of policy differences between the two parties? That doesn’t makes sense either. But if you look at it from the at some point, well, there is a unified powerful group of people within Washington made up of people of both parties, what is it that units them.

It has to be money. The Treasury is there. It’s the easiest access. Whether it’s K Street, the lobbyists, everybody’s going for the money. We now have we call it crony corporatism or crony socialism. It’s just cronyism, period. Like we discussed with Ted Cruz. What in the world is Boeing…? The Export-Import Bank is a classic example. It’s a New Deal thing. It needs to go the way of the Edsel. All it is, is corporate welfare. Let me try this on you.

The term “corporate welfare,” I first heard that when liberals used it speaking of it with hatred and derision. Now guess what? Corporate welfare is something in a Republicans, conservatives are railing against because they find their own elected officials engaging in it. Corporate welfare used to be just a standard rant from the left against capitalism. Corporate welfare was one of the ways they attempted to denigrate capitalism.

Cronyism and this kind of thing is not part of capitalism. This is big governmentitis. It’s just been decided that Big Business CEOs have found an easier route to money by getting in bed with powerful Washington government people rather than competing in the open market. It isn’t capitalism doing this. There is no “unfettered” or any other kind of capitalism going on here, when you talk about cronyism.

When you have take your pick of any big corporation getting in bed with Obama, be it the insurance business and Obamacare, be it Big Pharmaceutical and Obamacare, be it the doctors or nurses associaciated with Obamacare, we all can see what’s happens here is, people are being bought. They’re being promised exemptions from the hardest, most punishing aspects of the legislation if they’ll support it. This kind of cronyism…

As Cruz pointed, Boeing have already been granted all kinds of concessions with labor strain and so forth, being allowed to open factories in South Carolina, nonunion states. What do they need with…? Why is a corporation guaranteed loans. Well, when you realize there’s an old adage — use everybody’s money but your own whenever you can — then it all makes sense. The biggest collection of money in the country is not the Koch brothers, and it’s not Warren Buffett. It’s not Bill Gates.

It’s the United States Treasury.

That’s the biggest pile of money in the country, and if you can have a direct line to that by an association with the president or other powerful members of Congress, why not take it? And if anybody establishes that the door is open and under which deals and arrangements can be made as Obama has done with GE and Solyndra and any of these other industries he got in bed with, well, once the door is open, you can expect all kinds of people try to walk through it, too.

Remember the example I gave not long ago: Walmart.

Everybody thinks Walmart’s a big, conservative, Arkansas major corporation. A major business that doesn’t want the government involved in their business. Walmart all of a sudden out of the blue one day started supporting A, Obamacare, and, B, an increase in the minimum wage. I said, “Now, wait a minute, now. In terms of policy, this doesn’t make any sense. In the old days, no corporation worth its salt would agree with any government that wanted to force Obamacare on it and require its minimum wage to go up.”

But what Walmart decided was they’ve got the money to do both; their competitors don’t. So getting in bed with government. Supporting the minimum wage might put your competitors out of business, ’cause they can’t afford it. If you can put your competitors out of business with an alliance of government instead of having to outcompete them in the market, what are you gonna do? If you can raise your stock price by getting in bed with government rather than competing in the open market, what are you gonna do?

Well, that’s what’s happening.

I don’t mean to focus on Walmart. There’s all kinds of examples of it. But they can’t get to Trump this way, is the point. None of this… If emissaries of the ruling class went to Donald Trump and said, “Look, how about we do this?” he’s not interested. He doesn’t need their money. He doesn’t need their access. He doesn’t want it, and is perfectly content to know that whenever he’s in the room, he’s the most powerful guy in it. What more does he need? He’s sitting pretty right now. So they know this.