RUSH: Carly Fiorina. This is in TheHill.com. This is the headline: “Fiorina: Trump ‘A Gift-Wrapped Present’ for Clinton.” This, by the way, this is becoming the reason the Republican Party wants to get rid of Trump, is that they will just get wiped out by Hillary Clinton. He’s just gonna be, I mean, it’s gonna be the worse landslide we’ve ever seen. Trump is just gonna get buried. It’s gonna be a tsunami.

She said, “If Donald Trump’s the nominee of this party, she will wipe the floor with him. We will also lose the Senate, and we may well lose the House. She would be very happy, very happy to face Donald Trump.” Carly, you know we’ve spoken very positively of you on this program many, many times. You haven’t been able to wipe the floor with Trump. Why will Hillary be able to? Is Hillary that much better than you? You say Hillary’s gonna wipe the floor with Trump? Why haven’t you? If it’s gonna be so easy for Hillary to wipe the floor, why can’t you? If it’s that easy. Why can’t any of the others on the Republican side? If it’s that easy to wipe the floor with Donald Trump, how come nobody’s doing it?

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RUSH: No, no, no, I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just asking legitimate political questions. If you’re gonna run out and say that Hillary Clinton is gonna mop the floor with Donald Trump, okay, well, then tell us how you’re gonna beat Hillary. But before you do that, show us how you’re gonna beat Trump. Does this not make sense? Okay, the big fear is that Hillary Clinton, who is one of the biggest empty pantsuits — folks, this is another, you talk about a disconnect. Hillary Clinton, are you kidding me? The biggest empty pantsuit in American politics. Talk about disconnected.

Anyway, this magical woman is just gonna mop the floor with Donald Trump. Fine and dandy. Okay. Well, then, how are you gonna beat her? How are you gonna beat this formidable, almost unbeatable, brilliant, smartest woman in the world? If she is gonna mop the floor with Trump, don’t you think you better show you can do the same thing and then tell us how you’re gonna beat her?

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RUSH: Jim, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Welcome. You’re next. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, Merry Christmas.

RUSH: Same to you.

CALLER: I agree with you about 97% of the time, including your comments recently about conventional wisdom, which is of course an oxymoron, and Hillary being an empty pantsuit. But — and here’s the big “but.” Although I do share your unbridled joy with Donald Trump raising issues that need to be raised and tweaking the left-stream media, the sad fact is Trump often sounds like a simplistic sixth grader. And I just… You know, he’s almost as insufferable and arrogant as Barack Obama.

RUSH: How did George W. Bush sound to you?

CALLER: George W.?

RUSH: Yeah. How did he sound to you?

CALLER: Oh, erudite, you know, right on. And Donald Trump makes great points, but when he goes to into this, “You’re so bad and you’re really stupid and she’s an idiot,” rather than grabbing your attention with his comment and then explaining more detail… He never gets into detail.

RUSH: Let me —

CALLER: Tell me where I’m wrong.

RUSH: No, no. No. Tell you where you’re wrong? I’m not… That’s an opinion. I can’t tell you you’re wrong. That’s what you think of the way he sounds. But I do want to comment on it. I have to take a break here.

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RUSH: Now, about the last caller, I asked him what he thought of the way George W. Bush spoke for a reason. The last caller, he likes what Trump says now and then, he likes the way Trump’s tweaked the left and tweaking the establishment left, but Trump sounds like a school yard, just average run-of-the-mill, oh, maybe not bully, but there’s nothing erudite and uplifting and confidence inspiring about the way Trump talks, his voice. So I asked him about George W. Bush and he said, yeah, George W. Bush is erudite.

Folks, I have to tell you something, in case you’ve forgotten. The media, the American left and everybody who hated Bush thought that he was dumb because of the way he spoke. They acted like he was dumb. They made fun of the way he talked. They called him a cowboy and so forth. He was anything but erudite, even though he is as, if not more, educated than all of them. But here is why I think it doesn’t matter. Even if people think that about Trump, and that’s the first time I’ve heard anybody say that. I couldn’t care less. I don’t want you people get the wrong idea here. I’m not here to defend anybody. If this guy thinks Trump sounds like a buffoon, fine and dandy.

But there’s one thing here that’s undeniable. Again, over here, with everybody over on that side. And I don’t care Republicans, Democrats, commentators, media people, they all sound brilliant, don’t they? They all sound very, very intelligent and thoughtful, well spoken. They pause at just the right times to give the indication they’re in deep thought about what’s coming next, and they use several speech tricks to convey the idea that they’re brilliant, such as “hmmm and eeeehhh”, in deep thought before they commit to their next statement and so forth. They’re the people screwing everything up!

The people that seem the smartest are actually — you telling me that David Brooks, New York Times columnist, who actually said the crease in Obama’s slacks was all I needed to see to tell me he’s gonna be a great president. The people who make this country work are not caught up in all of this surface appearance stuff. They’re fed up with the mess the so-called best and brightest are making of this country. They are seriously fed up, and they are holding to account the people over there who everybody thinks are the most educated and the most well-spoken and so forth, they are the ones that are screwing it all up.

So I don’t think it matters to a lot of people the way Trump sounds; it’s what Trump is saying and the attitude that he conveys when he says it that is attracting them.

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RUSH: Len in Grant Park, Illinois. Your turn. You’re next. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Well, hello there, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: Hey.

CALLER: I am humbled to speak to the greatest freedom fighter on earth.

RUSH: Well, I don’t know about that, but I appreciate you calling, and I’m glad our out there.

CALLER: Well, I wanted to make a comment, you know, everybody talks about Trump, you know, why he’s so popular and all this stuff. And, you know, I remember back when Reagan got elected, it was the first Republican I’ve ever voted for, and he was the right man at the right time. And that’s where Trump is. He’s the right man at the right time.

RUSH: You know, it’s interesting. The establishment hated Reagan, the Republican establishment hated him, well everybody hated him but notably the Republican Party hated Reagan, they didn’t like conservatives, still don’t. And they also said Reagan was a dunce. They said Reagan was an idiot. They said Reagan was sleeping through cabinet meetings and Reagan was a B movie actor and he was this or that. It’s standard operating procedure. The way the establishment insults their opponents is to try to tell everybody that they’re dumb, they’re slow, they’re stupid, they’re unsophisticated, they’re dangerous, you can’t trust them, their finger next to the nuclear launch button. It’s the same thing, no matter who the candidate is. It could be Newt Gingrich, it could be Sarah Palin, it could be Ronald Reagan, it could be Trump now, doesn’t matter who it is, that’s the way they go after and try to disqualify people.

CALLER: Well, that’s true, but if you look at the time when Jimmy Carter was in there and with Iran making all its threats on us and everything all the time, and everything he did to try to subdue them, you know, was just a joke, the guy was an idiot. I mean, that’s the way I felt about it, and I felt that the country just couldn’t stand four more years of that.

RUSH: Well, agreed, but Carter’s greatest damage was on the economy.

CALLER: Oh.

RUSH: He just wreaked havoc on the economy.

CALLER: Yeah, I was 23 years old and I couldn’t keep a job ’cause as fast as I’d go to work for somebody, they’d close up.

RUSH: Yeah, you couldn’t keep gasoline in your tank, either.

CALLER: No. Stand in line for it.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: But, yeah, I honestly believe that with Donald Trump, I don’t think anybody’s gonna beat him, ’cause he’s the only one saying anything that makes sense.

RUSH: Well, let me ask you a question about that since I have you and since you’ve just made that statement. So you think Trump can win the nomination? You think Trump can beat Hillary?

CALLER: Ha. Yeah. No question.

RUSH: No question? Because, I’ll tell you, Republican Party is running around in apoplexy, and they’re telling everybody, “Oh, my God, if Trump wins, we’re finished. Hillary’s gonna mop the floor. Oh, my God. There’s no way Trump. The independents are gonna be running away from Trump. Oh, my God. We’re dead. Trump could set this party back 25 years if he gets the nomination.” That’s what the Republicans say. “There’s no way he can beat Hillary.”

CALLER: If Trump wins, the Republican Party as we know it is done. They’ll either have to come in line with the people or they’ll never get another vote.

RUSH: What if the Republican Party loses?

CALLER: What, this time?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Yeah, I don’t see it happening. As long as Trump’s on the ticket.

RUSH: No, no. I’m saying if Trump’s not on the ticket and they put Romney up there as a stopgap.

CALLER: That guy was ridiculous before. I mean, nobody wanted him. How many times did he run? Nobody wanted him. He was just another liberal.

RUSH: I’m just saying if they do something like that, if the Republican Party gets a nominee they want and they lose, what does that mean for their future?

CALLER: They’re done.

RUSH: So they’re done either way, that’s what you’re saying —

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: — Trump wins they’re done, and if Trump loses, they’re done?

CALLER: Yeah. I don’t see ’em recovering from this. They’ve got such a bad reputation now, you know, since this Obama thing, that nobody trusts ’em, believes ’em for anything. What’s the point? There’s no reason to vote for ’em.

RUSH: Yeah. Well, I don’t know that it’s that bad, but, I tell you what: There are a lot of people scratching their heads over why in seven years the Republican Party hasn’t found a way to disagree with Obama. That’s their purpose. They’ve run for election, they’ve campaigned on their promise to stop Obama, repeal Obamacare, all this stuff. They don’t do any of it. How in the world after seven years can you not have an identity of opposing Obama and standing with a majority of the American people?

Here, grab audio sound bite number five. I didn’t just make this up. Charlie Rose last night on his show on PBS talking to Mark Halperin. These people do talk to each other. You know, it’s amazing. On all of their shows, they all appear on each other’s shows. I mean, you talk about talking to hear your head rattle? That’s all these people do. They never have anybody on that they don’t agree with or don’t understand. They’re all just chatting with themselves, be it the roundtable on Meet the Press or you name it. There’s no outreach to anybody else who’s not already in their crowd. It’s stunning to watch this.

Anyway, Charlie Rose with Mark Halperin last night. Charlie Rose said, “Are you saying, Mark, that if the Republican Party unites against Donald Trump, that they can’t stop him?”

HALPERIN: The establishment now will not accept Trump as the nominee. They will fight him to the end, including at the convention if they need to and I think they’ll run someone else if he does become the nominee.

ROSE: Meaning somebody’s in the field —

HALPERIN: No! Someone like Mitt Romney or Mitch Daniels, someone else to step forward to say, “We’ve got a safe place to vote because we cannot be the party of Trump.” Romney-Ryan at the convention is the way the party would go and they’d say, “America, you were wrong. We’re giving you a second chance.”

RUSH: Now, he doesn’t just make this stuff up, folks. All of these people talk to each other, and the Republican Party leaks what they want certain people to know. They go to… Politico is one of their favorite sources to leak to. Halperin didn’t just pull this out of thin air. He just said that last night on Charlie Rose that if Trump is the nominee, the Republican Party will not accept it and will go back. They won’t go to anybody currently in the field ’cause there isn’t anybody that jazzes them in the field.

They’re gonna go back to Mitt Romney or maybe Mitch Daniels, and then they’ll choose Ryan as the veep again and they’re gonna go back to the American people and say, “Look, we gave you a chance to elect this brilliant team in 2012, and you blew it. We’re going to give you a second chance.” This is… My point is if he’s saying this, somebody somewhere in whatever circle he travels in has also postulated this. And not the first time we’ve heard the Republican Party thinking about reaching out to Romney.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard Romney thinking about running again. It’s not the first time we’ve heard anything. And I guarantee you something else. If Trump isn’t the nominee but Ted Cruz is, they’ll do the same thing. They won’t support a Ted Cruz nomination, either. At the highest levels Republican Party, they’re in a constant panic. ‘Cause they’re know even if they do succeed, if they were to succeed in taking Trump out, now they’re looking at Cruz. And that scares them even more. Don’t doubt me.