RUSH: As for Trump, I have to… I was surprised. I was just a little stunned when Trump starts speaking positively… He didn’t come out for single-payer health care, but he made it clear that when it comes to health care, he’s closer to the Obama approach than to the traditional Republican. I was stunned. I was stunned when I saw what Trump had said on TV, literally taken aback by it. Anyway, we’ll get into all this in detail as the program unfolds today. And, again, your host — your beloved host — is in a lion’s share of the audio sound bites today. These are somewhat interesting, actually, somewhat relevant. So I’m gonna lead off with them rather than relegate them to the third hour as I’ve been doing in recent days.

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RUSH: Look, here’s a good way to illustrate the point. And when I say I was surprised by… I was surprised that it was admitted to; not that Trump would think what he thinks. I’m not surprised by any of that. I’ve often thought that Mr. Trump may not really know ideologically the composition of his support base except on the issue of immigration, and his health care comments sort of indicated that to me. But, anyway, more on that as the program unfolds.

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RUSH: Okay. Mike in Franklin, Tennessee. I’ll grab a call here before the hour expires. How are you? Great to have you on the program, sir.

CALLER: Hi. I’m good. How are you?

RUSH: Good. Thank you.

CALLER: I listened to your opening remark about Trump and you’re concerned about him appearing to gravitate closer to Obamacare than you would like.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I hear Trump making specific comments about a small, specific segment of society and, you know, mainly the unfortunate who are having issues one way or another not being able to get health care or take care of themselves. I don’t hear him talking single-payer or mandated health care like Obamacare.

RUSH: Now, but see, my problem is that we’re already doing that twice: Medicaid, Medicare. We’re spending hundreds of billions. People are treated; they’re not dying on the sidewalks. They can go to the emergency room any time. But that is how Obama sold Obamacare. You go after emotion. See, emotion’s always gonna trump thought, sadly. And we’re gonna relive this. After we’ve got Obamacare, that was designed — and it’s interesting how it’s failing. It doesn’t work! Government running things doesn’t work.

Now we hear that, “Well, maybe the government making sure people on the sidewalk get to the hospital and don’t die…” We’ve been there, done that. It was a red flag for me. I don’t know what to tell you. It was a red flag because it said to me that the solution to this problem is Washington, and it’s not. The solution to the problems that we have in this country is get Washington out of them. I mean, all these things that are wrong. That’s why we’re in this mess. So that’s why it was a red flag. I appreciate your call and giving me an opportunity to explain that.

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RUSH: Now just to expand here a little bit, folks. To me the problems with health care are a lot like the problems with immigration. And not just those two. I mean, you can take pretty much every problem that we have in this country, and this is what’s so frustrating to me. You can tack it all, all. Now, there’s been some help, but you can tack it all to Barack Obama and Democrat Party. Everything that has happened that makes you unhappy, has you ill at ease, worried about the future — you live in the greatest country on earth.

For the last seven years we’ve been led by people who do not believe in this country, do not like the way this country was founded, and they have gone about to change it. They have set about and they have succeeded to transform it, not just politically; culturally as well. They have done their best to turn this country upside down. They have practiced from the belief that the people who have been successful in this country have not earned it, that the game was rigged and it was given to them, that it was handed to them. And that the losers, as they look at things, life’s winners and losers, they think it’s unfair, an unfair system that created that, so they want to re-rig the game and pick winners and losers.

But their objective is to create losers. Their objective is to create losers who do not see any future for them as self-reliant. Who only see a future for themselves if the government is involved in their life somehow, some way, every day. The Democrat Party no longer has any middle-of-the-roaders in it, it no longer has any centrists in it, it no longer has any moderates. Well, maybe Joe Manchin, but you can’t name more than a couple. They are total radicals now, and defined as radicals by people who have never liked the country.

They have not respected what it stood for, what it was formed to be, the ways in which it was founded, none of it. They’re angry, they’re mad all the time, unhappy, and they want to spread that unhappiness. They create chaos after chaos after chaos to keep people on edge with the ultimate aim being to have as many people as possible turn to Washington, DC, for the solution to everything not right in their lives.

Meanwhile, they are the people creating all of these things that are not right in people’s lives. It is a singular quest, and the quest is for power. It is not about improving the lives of the most people. It’s not about freedom and liberty. It’s not about the US Constitution. It’s about the acquisition of singular power for as long as they can hold on to it.

Let’s get specific. You look at the problems with immigration. If we had enforced our immigration laws, we would not have the problems, we would not be in the trouble we’re in today. We’ve got plenty of immigration law, and it’s good. And were it enforced, we wouldn’t have this problem. There isn’t a need for comprehensive immigration reform. There isn’t a need for new law. It’s all there. All we have to do is enforce it.

If we had allowed the laws of supply and demand, i.e., the marketplace to run health care instead of government for the last 50 years, we wouldn’t be where we are in health care today, either. Health care is this massively complex and impossibly expensive proposition today. But it need not be. Why isn’t the hotel business massively complex and impossible to afford? Why isn’t the airline business? Pick any business. Why isn’t it as screwed up as health care?

I can imagine all the answers being, “Everybody gets sick, Rush, everybody needs health care.” Right. But why does a Band-Aid cost 500 bucks or whatever it costs, if you’re in a hospital. You know, the market is an amazing thing that functions exactly as it should. I love using the example of hotels. We have range of hotels in this country, motels, hotels, whatever you want you can find it. You can find the most expensive five star hotel experience in the world if you want to pay for it, and if you want to spend 20 bucks a night or an hour, you can do that.

Whatever you want, the hotel business has it for you. It’s all based on ability of the customer to pay. Not everybody can afford a five-star, multi-room hotel suite, but some people can and will happily pay for it, so some of them are available. But if you’re not into that, if you want to spend whatever it is at a Motel 6 or take your pick, it’s there for you. There’s no reason health care shouldn’t be the same. But the problem began when Harris Wofford said (paraphrasing), “Well, if our Constitution’s gonna provide you with a lawyer, it ought to provide you health care. It ought to be a constitutional right.”

And then came the notion that all health care should be equal, that everybody should get the same kind of treatment, i.e., the best, no matter what it cost. The Democrat Party came along and said that’s what we’re gonna provide for you. Is it working? You know what’s happening in health care right now? The people who can afford the best are getting it. You know what’s happening? Doctors are leaving Medicare, leaving Medicaid, setting up private practice, and they’re taking on 25 or 30 customers who pay ’em a retainer like you’d pay a lawyer, against whatever you’re gonna need health care-wise the rest of the year.

So you pay to reserve your doctor, and then whatever you need health care-wise, you pay for that. But the doctor is always available for you, you know what you’re gonna get, and the market’s making it possible. Until Obama and the gang figure out how to shut that down, which they will, because it undermines their whole premise that everybody’s entitled to the same.

There’s been no such thing. There’s no such thing as total equality, total sameness when we’re talking about outcome. Because people are different. They have different education, ambition, intelligence, desire, you name it. But the desire to spread equality of outcome using class warfare and class envy, which is their stock-in-trade, creates false promises, impossible promises, which can never be kept, which keeps people perpetually upset and angry and feeling disadvantaged or what have you.

If the solution to immigration is to simply enforce our laws — and it is. It isn’t really more complicated. Well, it’s a little bit more complicated because we have to deal with the massive reality of allowing people to get away with breaking the laws for who knows how many decades now. But fix that, secure the border, enforce the law, problem solved. It is not complex. It may sound complex by people who don’t want to do it. And if the marketplace would just be allowed to work in health care, where whatever you want you can get, stop going to the doctor for hangnails and so forth, it would make a lot more sense. It may not totally reform it and fix it, but it would make a lot more sense than what we have now.

This system is unsustainable. Obamacare was not designed to succeed. Obamacare was designed to create the very chaos, the very inequities, the very inequalities that we have so that one day, in total frustration, massive numbers of Americans would throw their hands up and say, “Look, just let the government do it,” or the government would say, “You know, it’s such a mess, we’ve tried, let us fix it, we’ll be the sole provider, we’ll be the sole source.” “Yeah, yeah, man,” ’cause that’ll be seen as making it less complicated.

But it doesn’t work. It never has worked. Wherever you go in the world, this approach never, ever has worked. And our country cannot take any more of this and maintain its brilliance in its founding, it’s opportunity for the most, its prosperity, it’s just not possible. Besides that, elements of the Democrat Party are taking direct aim at that America for whatever host of varying reasons. So when I hear candidates start talking about issues that make me think I’m listening to Democrats or make me think I’m listening to people who think the solution to all this is more government, bigger government, smarter government, what have you, red flags fly high, because government — and this is not a cliche, and it’s not simplistic conservatism — government is the problem.

Who says Barack Obama’s an expert in anything? Yet he’s elected president. What’s he an expert in? He taught constitutional law, he’s not even an expert in the Constitution. Is he an expert in health care? He certainly isn’t. There isn’t a Democrat who is. And yet they are invested in by people that vote for ’em as the experts. They cause the problems, they create the problems, then they demand they be allowed to create the solution, and people go for it.

Socialism’s a fraud. I’ve been amazed. There’s something about it that’s seductive. It has been demonstrated to be a fraud I don’t know how many times. Socialism, communism, totalitarianism, whatever you want to call it, it’s a demonstrable fraud. False promises, phony promises, impossible promises. Demonstrable failures throughout human history, and yet it continues to seduce people, and I’m convinced it does so by the expert usage of the fairness and equality and compassion arguments.

It’s not so much that those work. What’s really insidious about this is that proponents of free markets, proponents of getting government out of as much of this as possible and just let the market handle it, those people are successfully called mean-spirited, heartless, cold, and nothing could be further from the truth about every one of them who is accused of being that. They are the exact opposite in fact.

If you ask me, it’s people like Barack Obama who are really cold-hearted and mean-spirited, but they get credit for all this compassion. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton pose a real threat to the future of this country. They pose a grave danger. Either one of them guarantees exactly the misery we have today, multiplied. No question about it. It’s not possible for them to make life in America better, not even for the people who are going to be the beneficiaries of whatever it is they’re passing out.

Think I’m wrong?

Take a look at their beneficiaries now and find the happiness for me. Find the happiness among those in poverty. Find the happiness among what they call the poor. Find the happiness in the minorities that vote for them in droves. Find the happiness. I mean, even their wealthy voters and supporters, you can’t run into ’em without finding people angry, mad, ticked off about something from Hollywood to academia. They’re constantly enraged, constantly angry. Where’s the happiness? Where is all of this utopia that’s supposed to have happened by now?

Bernie Sanders? Hillary Clinton? Multiply whatever you think is wrong now. Whatever you think of health care, whatever you think of spending, whatever you think of the financial system, whatever you think of the culture, whatever you think of any aspect of American life, guaranteed you’ll be even more miserable. Guaranteed you’ll be even more worried. Guaranteed you’ll be even more depressed because it’s only going to get worse. It can’t get better. What they believe in did not work. What they believe in is destructive.

So, yeah, today begins a really, really crucial year. This is the day it really begins because this is the day votes are cast for the first time. And, believe me, that’s going to change the dynamic of everything. Tonight and tomorrow is going to be much different than all the past months, because all the past months have just been speculation to fill time. Wild guesses, educated guesses, expert analysis, what have you. Tonight, reality begins. And nobody knows for sure what’s gonna happen tonight or next week in New Hampshire or beyond that.

But it won’t take long to start getting a feel for it, because after the votes are counted, for some people it’s going to be senseless to remain in the race. You’ll see people dropping out. And that alone is going to change the dynamic. The people dropping out do have supporters. They’re gonna go somewhere. Nobody knows how that’s gonna shake out. Might have experts who think they can tell you, but nobody knows. This is the year where we’re going to find out if a majority of people in this country actually want what’s happening today, this destruction, this mess, this deterioration, if they want it stopped. We’ll find out. I think they do.