RUSH: Why would they do that? What in the world explains it? You know what I just learned, ladies and gentlemen? Congressman Ryan, the chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus and the RNC communications director, Sean Spicer, they are all appearing on MSNBC to talk up immigration reform. Republican National Committee Chairman Priebus and his communications director and Paul Ryan are appearing on MSNBC to talk up immigration reform.

Why would they do that? Nobody watches MSNBC. I mean, why would they go to a network, the viewers of which are already committed to amnesty? Well, now, you might say, well, they’re going there to be liked and understood and appreciated, loved, whatever, by liberal Democrats who are predestined to hate them. They could be trying to show that they’re human and not aliens and that they’re nice guys and that they’re on the same page as the Democrats that viewers of MSNBC support.

There’s also a-little known fact, and that is that this program — actually, I don’t think it’s that little known. I think it’s actually widely known — that I, your host and this program, have instituted long ago a ban on any sound bites from MSNBC. And so, you know, I don’t like to think of myself in any news story, I don’t like to think I am a factor, play a role in it. I really, really don’t, but could it well be that they think they’re safe going on MSNBC because I have a ban?

What’s interesting about this is that the Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is himself launching a boycott of MSNBC over a tweet from the network that suggested the right wing would hate a television ad featuring a biracial family eating Cheerios. You haven’t heard about this, Rachel? Are you still watching Algore’s movie at home in your free time? I’ll never forget, Rachel believed it. She bought it hook, line, and sinker, Algore, Earth in the Lurch, believed it. Now she doesn’t, by the way, but some people go back to the greatest hits.

Anyway, some host, maybe it was the network at large, sent out a tweet yesterday. Cheerios has, I guess it’s a Super Bowl commercial. Is that right? MSNBC’s tweet sent from the network’s official account last night at 8:06 p.m. said, “Maybe the right wing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww,” and link to a Cheerios ad with a biracial family. So I guess it was a biracial family sitting there eating Cheerios, Cheerios ran the ad, and the leftists at MSNBC assumed that the right wing would not like this at all, because, of course, as you know the right wing is nothing but racists and bigots.

It turns out, remember, that Mitt Romney’s family photo was made fun of by MSNBC because Mitt Romney was holding his adopted grandson, who is black. An infant, maybe a little older than an infant. And the same network made fun of that by showing the picture and saying, “What is that in that picture?” They were the ones talking about a young black baby as a “that.” Oh, yeah. That’s right. It was the famous Melissa Harris-Perry — well, “the famous.” That’s who it was.

So because of that, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, has called on a conservative commentator boycott of MSNBC over the tweet about the Cheerios biracial family eating Cheerios and the tweet about Republicans not liking it.

Paul Ryan was on there yesterday. See, here it is. Priebus goes on Morning Joe, talks about immigration, tells the left everything they want to hear about it, “Hey, yeah, man, we’re gung-ho, we’re in it.” And then later MSNBC sends this tweet out insulting Republicans. What does that tell ’em? What in the world?

So they go on there, “See, we’re nice, we love immigration, too. We love immigrants and we want amnesty and we’re all for it. We’re on your side,” and later that day they send a tweet out essentially saying that Priebus and the Republicans are a bunch of racist pigs because they will not like a Cheerios commercial with a biracial family consuming the cereal. Anyway, we’ve got the sound bites.

Speaking of this, this is fascinating, too. I have it right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. AFL-CIO Chief Richard Trumka is trashing the Republican immigration plan. He says that it is unacceptable because a direct path to citizenship isn’t included. He said the Republican plan “means they would never get citizenship, never get a green card. It’s a joke. It’s a hoax, is what it is. It’s like fool’s gold. Without citizenship, itÂ’s a nonstarter because you canÂ’t fix a broken immigration system and create a vast class of millions of people living in the community and working in our workplaces without citizenship. You canÂ’t do that. They have no rights,” Trumka said.

“The labor unions are united. Our price of admission is citizenship. Republicans arenÂ’t talking seriously until they start talking about citizenship, and that means a direct route to green cards and a real path to citizenship,” and real voter registration for Democrats. He didn’t say that.
That’s what he really means. Now, I have a theory about this. You might logically be thinking, “Wait a minute, what’s Trumka doing here?” Here are these Republicans, and they can’t wait — have you seen Drudge’s page? It’s hilarious. There’s a picture of Boehner standing in the House well with a sombrero on. It’s hilarious. It speaks volumes.

There’s no doubt here the Republicans have made it plain. And Biden said that Boehner told him while Obama was doing his State of the Coup speech that they’re gonna move on immigration. So they’re gonna move on it. The news is they can’t wait to make it happen, and yet here comes Trumka — now, what’s really going on? I think in a roundabout way he’s trying to help the Republicans by acting toward the Republicans the way his base expects him to. The Democrat base would expect all of their leaders to oppose just instinctively anything the Republicans propose. The Democrat base will no doubt be suspicious of what the Republicans are offering here. The Democrat base won’t believe the Republicans really want to push amnesty.

They really don’t. So they suspect a trick. Trumka and the Democrats have to keep that base happy, so the first thing they do is they come out and they raise hell about it, which then affords the opportunity for the Republicans to say, “No, no, no! Citizenship has gotta be part of this.” You’re right. Trumka gets to win both ways. He gets to go public opposing Republicans, which the Democrat base demands, and then it looks like Trumka is forcing the Republicans into further concessions, when in fact he’s not.

I mean, they’re already on board with this. You and I know this. If this happens, nothing has changed since 2007. If there is amnesty, folks, it’s the end of the Republican Party. So there are legitimate questions that people ask. “Well, if it’s the end of the Republican, why would they preside over their own demise? Why would these guys do that?” Let me give you a real base answer, nothing to do with politics. Many of these guys, Republicans in the House, earn whatever it is they get paid, whatever their salary is.

They’re not gonna be there forever. Maybe they want to get hired by a Chamber of Commerce subsidiary when they retire. Maybe there’s big bucks down the road from a trade association or something, they do the right thing here. Maybe this is a ticket to a lobbying gig. You have to be looking at that, because it doesn’t make any sense politically. There’s no reason why people would knowingly, purposely preside over the demise of their party — and it wouldn’t be just the demise of the party, folks.

It would be the demise of the country as you and I know it, the demise of the country as founded. Look at California. That’s a one-party state. That’s what the country would be. That’s where it’s headed, and there’s all kinds of survey data that proves it. You know as a conservative, one of the things I’ve always been told over the years is that, “Well, Rush, you know, you need to change your thinking on this because these are conservatives-in-waiting!

“These are hardworking, self-reliant. I mean, they’re made to order conservatives.” That made sense for a while, but the polling data doesn’t show it. The polling data shows that they believe in government big, polling data shows they want Big Government, polling data shows they’re eager to vote Democrat. The polling data does not somehow what I have been told by other Republicans, that this is a ready made conservative voting bloc if we just go out and make a connection to ’em.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Paul Ryan was on MSNBC yesterday. Chuck Todd interviewed him on The Daily Rundown. Now, I don’t know why he went there. It could well be… (interruption)

Snerdley thinks they went there because I’ve got the ban and they don’t think that I would play audio of them on MSNBC. You think that? I don’t know. I think there’s a different reason. Remember, what are the Republicans obsessed with, at least outwardly? They appear to be obsessed with Democrats liking them. They appear to be obsessed with Democrat voters not thinking they’re whatever.

So they’re going here on a Democrat network and saying, “Hey, look at us! We agree with you on something. We’re all for what you’re for and we’re just harmless, lovable people.” Anyway, F. Chuck Todd said, let’s start with the early report that says the plan that you guys are gonna push will have a pathway to legalization, but not citizenship. Is that how you understand it?

RYAN: That’s right, but it also involved basically a probationary kind of a status to make sure that a person is not rewarded for having broken our laws and not preferenced over people who did follow the laws, meaning legal immigrants.

TODD: But is citizenship eventually on the table?

RYAN: No. No, I’m saying… What I’m trying to say is, you’ve gotta make sure that this isn’t an amnesty. We want a system where you can come out of the shadows, you can get a work permit, and you can — you can be on probation and yet to satisfy the terms of your probation while the border is getting secured.

RUSH: Okay, we just dealt with this. I just gave you every detail you could possibly need to know about this, and you just heard it confirmed here. So it’s not amnesty. “No, no, no, no. What we want to do is make sure that a person is not rewarded for having broken our laws.” But they will be. They’re gonna be here, and they’re not gonna be “in the shadows.” They’re going to be legalized, but they’re not gonna have citizenship, and that means it isn’t amnesty.

“We want a system where you can come out of the shadows, you get a work permit…” This is where Chuck Schumer comes in an hour later and starts beating these Republicans up, “Oh, yeah. You want them to go out there and work their fingers to the bone, sweat themselves into dehydration picking fruit and all these other vegetables that you people won’t do, and Americans won’t do, and they get sick and they die and there’s no health care, and they can’t vote? No way!”

And they’ll be tarred and feathered as hating the illegal immigrants or the newly legalized immigrants even then. Next up was Reince Priebus, or Reince Priebus, and this is yesterday on Morning Joe on MSNBC, and he’s talking with John Heilemann, who’s an author and liberal Democrat disguised as journalist. Heilemann said, “Where do you come in the political wisdom of getting this done in the course of the next 10 months?”

PRIEBUS: I think you have general consensus that something big has to happen. There’s a commitment among the most conservative members of our party and the most moderate members of our party that it’s something that they have to get serious about, and I think you’re seeing that.

RUSH: Uh, what did I miss?

“There’s a commitment among the most conservative members of the party, we gotta get serious…” Well, okay, if you just put a period there, yeah, “get serious” could mean let go of it. You know, forget it. Now, Reince — sorry, Reince — Priebus, by the way, appeared on MSNBC yesterday and then promptly issued his own ban. He suggested that no Republican go on MSNBC because they issued tweet making fun of Republicans ’cause Cheerios has a biracial Super Bowl commercial, a biracial family eating Cheerios.

MSNBC tweeted that the conservatives wouldn’t like that, they’d be really bothered by it, and Reince Priebus says, “Okay, we’re not going on MSNBC anymore.” MSNBC pulled back the tweet but Reince Priebus’ ban is still in effect. He’s got his own ban, and I am lifting my ban to play these guys on MSNBC. So it’s a temporary lifting of the ban. Don’t get used to this. (Now, you’ll note, you’re not hearing any MSNBC people in these bites.)

Final one. Tuesday afternoon, MSNBC Live, Craig Melvin interviewed the RNC communications director, Sean Spicer. Question: “We’re hearing the statement of principles unveiled later this week is gonna call for a path — a path to legal status, not citizenship — for any of the 11 million or so adult immigrants in the country illegally. How do you expect that particular part of the plan itself to help you with Latino voters?”

SPICER: Part of what this last few years have done is — is allowed us to have a conversation with different constituencies as far as what’s in the best interests of the country. This is not always about scoring political points. It’s trying to figure out what the best policies are for our country so that we secure our borders and we don’t end up with a problem like we had back in the eighties where we granted amnesty, and then trying to put a comprehensive plan together that ensures our border is secure and that recognizes the fact that we have a lot of folks that are here in this country illegally.

RUSH: Okay, that is the head of the RNC. He’s the communications director, Republican National Committee, and he’s basically saying, “It’s not about politics. We’re doing this for our country. We need to secure the borders so we don’t have a problem like we had in the eighties when we granted amnesty and we’re back here again. We secure the borders so this will never happen again.” On MSNBC. I wonder…

Nah. I’ll wonder silently.