RUSH: Politico story: “Insiders to Trump: No Majority, No Nomination — Republicans say it’s 1,237 delegates or bust for Donald Trump.”

Now, I have to tell you, before get into the details of this story, if you are interested in history, that has always been the way it is. In the primaries, you hit the number or exceed it, and the nomination is yours. If you don’t hit the number, it isn’t. It has never been the case. I don’t think it has. I can’t recall. The rules have never been changed to say that a plurality, if you get close enough, you’ve got to hit the number or exceed it. That’s always been the case. The powers that be in the Republican establishment are insisting it’s gonna be that way this time.
“A majority of Republican insiders say Donald Trump should not get the GOP presidential nomination if he falls short of winning a majority of delegates — even if Trump amasses more than any of his opponents.” Of course you would expect them to say that. That’s according to The Politico caucus. Do you know what The Politico caucus is? It’s a bunch of establishment types.
It’s a “panel of strategists, activists and operatives in seven key swing states. Roughly 6-in-10 Republicans said the party should nominate another candidate if Trump finishes with a plurality, rather than the required 1,237.” That’s some polling data. That’s not The Politico caucus here. Well, maybe it is. Maybe it is the caucus.

“Six-in-10 Republicans said the party should nominate another candidate if Trump finishes with a plurality –” Wait just a second. Hold it a minute. That’s not right. That’s essentially saying Trump’s disqualified from whatever they do if he doesn’t get to 1,237. Well, that’s what it is. They may not want it to sound that way. How else would you interpret this? “Six-in-10 Republicans said the party should nominate another candidate if Trump finishes with a plurality, rather than the required 1,237.”

Well, okay, let’s play this out. Trump doesn’t get 1,237, neither does Cruz, nobody else does, so therefore we go contested. Cruz and Trump are immediately disqualified from whatever the party does ’cause neither of ’em got to 1,237? Is that how they’re gonna plan to work this? That’s crazy. I know that’s how they’re gonna work it. Do not misunderstand. I can’t believe they’re admitting it.

But what they’re saying is, if neither of these two get to 1,237 — ’cause they don’t want either of these two, folks. They don’t want Trump; they don’t want Cruz. And so they’re trying to say that if, in the primary, neither candidate gets 1,237, they’re gonna take that as akin to the party rejecting both of them and then meaning, we gotta go to somebody entirely new, because the party did not choose either one of these.

Well, why are either of these two gonna be disqualified from participating in the contested convention should that happen? But make no mistake about it, that’s the only way to read this. These guys are not gonna get away with that. They may think they can. But Trump and Cruz are gonna have too many pledged and loyal delegates to just be told, “You know what? You guys, you’ve been running since last summer. Some of you even longer than that. But, you know what? You didn’t get 1,237, so you’re disqualified. So we’re gonna pick somebody who maybe didn’t even run or we’re gonna pick a guy who got four or five delegates. We’re gonna pick a guy who ran but dropped out.” Are you gonna really try to tell these two guys that? But you know darn well that’s what they’re angling at.

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RUSH: Back to The Politico story. A Virginia Republicans, like every respondent, was surveyed anonymously here, was one of the Politico sources but he’s anonymous. “‘Rules is rules. You have to get a majority,’ said a Virginia Republican who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. ‘That’s the problem with our country: No one ever wins anymore.’

“The question is central to the GOP calculus before the Cleveland convention: Should the party award the nomination to the candidate who won the most delegates in total — as Trump himself has advocated — or stick to the rule that a candidate must win at least 1,237 delegates to be the nominee? The majority of insiders who want the party to choose someone else if Trump only wins a plurality of delegates said they are motivated by questions of electability, TrumpÂ’s capricious campaign style and personality.”

Well, there you have it. Another Republican, this one from New Hampshire, said, “I’m firmly in the ‘Never TrumpÂ’ camp. The GOP gets killed if he’s the nominee. We probably get killed if he doesn’t support a different nominee anyway. So if it makes no difference to the eventual outcome, my conscience will be clear going down with a responsible nominee instead.”

So these guys are prepared to lose, exactly as I knew it. I have been forecasting it. These people are prepared to lose in order to save the establishment. Make no mistake about it. By saving the establishment they are saving themselves personally. They are willing to lose the presidential election for personal reasons is what these people are saying. I don’t want to sit here and go nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, I told you so, but that’s exactly who these people are.

They owe their very existence to this establishment, to this club, whatever you want to call it. It’s where their daily existence is. It’s where their future is. It’s where their standard of living is. It’s where their power is. Everything that tells them they’re special, everything that tells them they are the elite. And they are willing to hold onto that structure, even if it means losing the White House.

Listen to this guy, “Hey, look, if we’re gonna lose this election anyway, I want to lose with a clear consciousness, meaning I want to lose with somebody I could support rather than lose with somebody I don’t.” But they’re still talking about losing. That’s the thing here that is inescapable.

You know, I ran across a story, it’s from McClatchy. It was published yesterday. And I was frankly stunned to see this. I mean, McClatchy news, I mean, they’re way, way, way — I used to worked for McClatchy. That’s who owned the Sacramento radio station when I first went out there, Sacramento Bee.

They have a story: “America to Establishment: Who the hell are you people?” It’s by David Lightman. It’s datelined out of St. Louis. But, folks, it sounds exactly like a combination of a bunch of monologues from this program over the past couple of months. It details who the establishment is, why they are the establishment, how you get in, how you can’t be thrown out, all of this.

More importantly, it nails why people resent the establishment and why they’ve had it, why they’re no longer buffaloed by it. You know, one of the examples given in this story, Republicans and Democrats alike are asking themselves, who in the hell would pay Hillary Clinton a quarter million dollars to do a speech, and why won’t I get paid a quarter million dollars to do a speech? They know full well what this is. They know full well.

Let’s say Goldman Sachs, she did a number of speeches for banks, and her going rate was a quarter million. When it came out the Hillary camp tried to say, hey, that’s just what they offered, that’s not what we asked. Of course they offered. They’re buying you, Hillary. She admits they’re buying her. But more importantly, you know what else this is? This is how members of the establishment help keep each other wealthy. It’s how they keep each other established. It’s how they keep each other in the game. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back. This is purchasing loyalty. This is buying influence, because there’s no way Hillary Clinton ought to get $250,000 for showing up and doing a 20-minute speech, a closed speech to a bunch of bankers.

She won’t release the transcripts of these speeches, and I’ll tell you why, and she demanded that transcripts be made, she won’t release them, because she’s praising them to the hilt. Meanwhile, most of the people voting for her hate the banks, hate Wall Street, and she can’t afford for it to become known that the banks and Wall Street are pretty much bankrolling the Democrat Party, not just her, but the entire Democrat Party structure.

This idea that corporate America and Wall Street and Big Business and so forth are all part of the Republican machine is just BS. It hasn’t been the case in years. And it’s worse than the fact that just they support Democrats. There is now a very narrow, if it exists at all, line of distinction between government and business. They’re in bed with one another. The only way Obamacare could be happening is if the hospitals, the insurance companies have bought in. And there’s no way they would in a legitimate free market circumstance. But if you’re gonna offer me access, if I’m an insurance company or a hospital and you’re gonna offer me access, and you’re gonna pass a law mandating every American has to buy my product, hell, yes, I’ll give you a campaign donation.

Now, Mrs. Clinton can’t afford for her voters — and certainly Crazy Bernie can’t afford for his supporters — to find out just how in bed corporate America, Wall Street and the banks are with the Democrat Party. And this story in McClatchy details how people get this. They understand it, and they’re fed up with it. And they’re beginning to say, “Who the hell do you people think you are?” They don’t trust them as far as they can throw them. In fact, the story says that the establishment is defined now as Wall Street, Washington, and Big Media.

Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of the establishment, and practically everybody sees the establishment as incestuous and isolated. And the fact that Hillary gets a quarter million dollars over and over again from this bank and that bank to do speech? People are not dumb. They know what’s going on. There are two things going on. The banks are buying influence with somebody who might be elected president. They’re buying influence with somebody who was secretary of state and still has contacts there. And not just at state, but around the world.

But they’re also, in their own way, contributing to the Clintons’ personal wealth. And maybe even further, they’re contributing to the Clintons’ foundation. Whatever they are contributing, they are making it possible for the Clintons to stay wealthy and rich, and this happens throughout the establishment. This is how you end up getting wealthy and staying wealthy without accomplishing much of anything other than becoming a member of the establishment.

The story says: “What is the establishment? Nationally, eight in 10 people told a McClatchy-Morning Consult poll this month it includes members of Congress. Similar numbers cited the Democratic and Republican parties, political donors, Wall Street bankers and the mainstream media,” the Drive-By Media. “In essence, the establishment lives and thrives in a small world that lives and works in New York and Washington, on Wall Street, in Big Media, and in Politics, connected by the high-speed Acela corridor and often by mutual self-interest.

“Many, perhaps most, do care deeply about the common good though they are anything but common themselves. They hire each other and each other’s children.” Another example given in this story: There is nobody under the sun that doesn’t know what happens when Hillary Clinton’s kid gets hired by NBC for $600,000 a year and has never been on TV before. The story makes it clear that everybody — not in the establishment, the general public — knows full well what that is. That is everything.

It’s buying influence with the Clintons. It’s buying into Clinton good graces. It’s buying access. And it’s helping to make Chelsea Clinton rich. It’s helping to keep the Clintons wealthy. And everybody knows their kid couldn’t get such a deal. Their kid — who’s never been on TV, never had any experience at it — would never be hired by NBC at $600,000 a year. It would never happen. And then when Chelsea is hired, and then the NBC suits go out and tell everyone what a great find they’ve come up with — What a great discovery! What a natural talent! — nobody believes it.

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RUSH: One thing interesting about all of this negative news about Cruz coming out, is somebody’s getting worried about him. I mean, there’s no reason for this stuff to be coming out the way it is, with such intensity and frequency, if people weren’t concerned. But I have to tell you this. When the conversation moves to the Republican establishment and the rules for the convention, don’t make the mistake of assuming that the establishment is choosing between Cruz and Trump.

The establishment wants neither of them.

I don’t care where you look.

You can look at Scott Walker’s comments; you can look at any number of Republican establishment people. They are salivating for a contested convention. And they’re making no bones about the fact that a contested convention gives them the opportunity to pick somebody other than Trump or Cruz. I have a Politico story here which pretty much indicates that the people running the Republican Party and the Republican convention are gonna operate under this premise that neither Trump nor Cruz is qualified to be the nominee because neither one of them got to 1,237 delegates.

It’s a story about how (paraphrased), “We’re not gonna reward the candidate who gets the most delegates if he’s short of 1,237. The rule is the rule, and it’s always been the rule. You’ve gotta get a majority, which is 1,237. And if you don’t, we’re not bending the rules to give you the nomination. You’ve gotta get there, and if you don’t, then it’s contested.” Okay, fine. You don’t even have to read between the lines in this Politico story.

It is very clear that the powerbrokers at the convention — the RNC, wherever they are — are telegraphing the fact that they think neither Cruz nor Trump should be the nominee if neither of them gets to 1,237. That’s going to be treated as a defeat. It’s going to be treated as a rejection. The party clearly wants to look at no candidate getting 1,237 as a rejection; that voters will essentially be saying, “We don’t want any of these people if none of them got to 1,237.”

The party is going to then take it from there and act on the assumption that I’ve just stated, and then nominate their own guy, whoever it is. Take your pick. Jeb, Paul Ryan, any number of people will throw their hats in the ring. Kasich (which is what he’s angling for in all of this). “But, Rush, I thought you just said that if they didn’t win they’re…” Well, they will. But Kasich will not be included in that because he never even got close, so it will not even be looked upon that Kasich has been rejected like Cruz and Trump have been rejected.

You can think that I’m overanalyzing this, but I will caution you not to. You know as well as I do that the power brokers in the Republican Party don’t like Trump or Cruz. They especially don’t like Cruz. They’re much more open to Trump. But if they had their way, it won’t be either of them, and they will happily lose the election. They’re on record as saying that in any number of stories. Some of them by name, some of them speaking anonymously, but they’re making it abundantly clear that they’re perfectly happy losing the election while maintaining the existing party structure.

If losing the election and maintaining the current party structure, i.e., establishment, if that’s what it takes to hold onto the structure then losing the election is fine them, and that’s the problem with these people from the beginning of the day to the end. They don’t care about winning. It’s not their priority. Their own personal preferences, their desires are what matter to them. And that’s been the problem all along.

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RUSH: I mentioned at the top of the program and I want to get into just a little bit of detail. It’s a Wall Street Journal story. Headline: “Ted Cruz Gains in Louisiana After Loss There to Donald Trump — Donald Trump beat Sen. Ted Cruz earlier this month in LouisianaÂ’s Republican presidential primary by 3.6 percentage points, but the Texan may wind up with as many as 10 more delegates,” than Trump in Louisiana.

The reason is, “Mr. CruzÂ’s supporters also seized five of LouisianaÂ’s six slots on the three powerful committees that will write the rules and platform at the Republican National Convention and mediate disputes over delegatesÂ’ eligibility this summer in Cleveland.”

So five out of six slots on three committees that Cruz somehow ended up with because of the primary nets him 10 more delegates than Trump plus additional power over delegate allocation in certain circumstances at the convention, all because of this revised look at Louisiana.