RUSH: We move on to Republican presidential politics. First off from Bloomberg Politics, there is a poll here, national survey which finds that 72% of the American people say their country is not as great as it once was, which, it says here, is a central theme of front-runner Donald Trump’s campaign.

“Americans are ‘fed up’ with politics, suspect the wealthy are getting an unfair edge, and think the country is going in the wrong direction, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll that lays bare the depth and breadth of the discontents propelling outsider candidates in the Republican presidential field. The survey shows that 72 percent of Americans think their country isn’t as great as it once was.”

In this poll here are the favorites in order, Trump at 21, Carson at 16, Jeb Bush at 13, Carly Fiorina at 11. Boy, the long knives are coming out for her now. Well, the long knives are coming out for Carly Fiorina, and a lot of people are starting to defend her as well. Fox News Chris Stirewalt: ” Poll-O-Rama: Trump Treads Water As Others Rise — After more than a week wandering in the data desert, we have stumbled into an oasis of polls. Three fresh surveys on the GOP race — Fox News, Bloomberg and Quinnipiac University — give us the first reliable snapshot after the second candidate debate.”

Here are the pull quotes. “TrumpÂ’s share of the vote is the same as it was before the Fox News debate seven weeks ago. It is a flat line. But the lines beneath him arenÂ’t. TrumpÂ’s lead over his closest competitor, Carson, in the Real Clear Politics average has fallen from 14 points to 8 points in the past two weeks.”

And another pull quote. “With Bush out of the hunt for now and the field thinning, Trump has to face the reality that his real rivals now are Carson, Rubio and Fiorina and despite his attacks, theyÂ’re still rising.”

They’re excited about this. Don’t forget, in most of the mainstream media outlets there is a revulsion for Trump. And they have been predicting that he would wipe himself out ever since the day of his announcement. And that hasn’t happened.

So they have been eagerly anticipating the day they can report he’s leveled off. They then are eagerly anticipating the day they can report his support is falling and dwindling. And they are eagerly anticipating the day when they can report one of two other things, that either some other candidate has taken the lead over Trump or that Trump has decided to pull out. Those are the two future prospects that many in the Drive-By Media now are wedded to and excited about.

And in fact here at the Washington Post: “Donald Trump’s Slide in the Polls is Beginning to Look Real.” This is a story by Philip Bump. “You might have seen new national poll numbers from Fox News, released Wednesday night. … Donald Trump … remains in first place in the race … actually increasing his share of support from 25 percent to 26 percent,” but wait, but wait.

You might also have seen CNN’s new poll from over the weekend. That one had Trump at 24%, down from 32%. Trump gets real mad when you cite that poll, by the way. He doesn’t like you talking about that poll. That’s why he got mad at O’Reilly, ’cause O’Reilly cited a CNN poll, Trump got mad. And then there’s the Bloomberg poll out today, showing Trump at 21 right where he’s always been, so what gives here? So you got three polls, Trump flat in two of them and down eight points in another one.

I’ll tell you what gives here. Leave it to me to provide the answer. What gives is that the Washington Post is still harping on one poll that showed Trump’s number declining. They are ignoring all the other more recent polls that show him staying the same or going up, even if it’s just a point or two. And what gives is the Washington Post has completely given up all pretense of journalism, is now working full time in the propaganda business. That’s what’s up, since they asked, I’m happy to answer.

Here are some other articles by Philip Bump in just the last two days. “Donald Trump Says He Didn’t Speak to a Half Empty Room, But He Did.” “Donald Trump’s Long-Running Quest to Improve Our Vocabularies.” “Who Donald Trump is at War With in the Media, as of Wednesday Afternoon.” Those are other articles.

And here’s some Washington Post articles by other reporters just from today. “Trump: Rand Paul is Shrill, Too.” “Donald Trump Wants the FCC to Fine a Critical Fox News Pundit” that’d be Rich Lowry. And “Donald Trump Calls Hillary Clinton ‘Shrill.'” And then Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post yesterday had a story entitled, “Why Republicans Are Starting to Panic in One Paragraph.” Would you like to hear that? You want to know why you’re panicking, folks? Oh, no, no. Uh, not you. The Republican establishment is panicking. That’s what Cillizza is saying.

It’s a paragraph written by Pete Wehner. Pete’s a friend of mine. Pete worked with Karl Rove in the Bush White House, and before that he was at Empower America with Bill Bennett, which is where I met him. And Pete now works at Ethics & Public Policy think tank and I think at Commentary. He now writes under his own name and has for a while instead of writing position papers for others. And this is the paragraph that he wrote in a piece called, “The GOP is Killing Itself.” And this paragraph is what Cillizza cites as the one paragraph that explains why Republicans are starting to panic. Are you ready? Here we go. Three, two, one, here comes the paragraph.

“The message being sent to voters is this: The Republican Party is led by people who are profoundly uncomfortable with the changing (and inevitable) demographic nature of our nation. The GOP is longing to return to the past and is fearful of the future. It is a party that is characterized by resentments and grievances, by distress and dismay, by the belief that America is irredeemably corrupt and past the point of no return. ‘The American dream is dead,’ in the emphatic words of Mr. Trump.”

Now, that paragraph was written by Pete because that’s what he’s afraid people supporting Trump think. He’s afraid that the message you are getting and the reason why you are supporting Trump is because you think all of this. You think the Republican Party is led by people profoundly uncomfortable with the change and inevitable demographic nature of our nation. That you think the GOP’s longing to return to the past and is fearful of the future. Or that you think the Republican Party doesn’t get all of this and it’s why it’s becoming a minority party.

Anyway, the bottom line is, things that you who would normally vote Republican are supporting are things that the Republican establishment feels will kill it, is the bottom line. So Cillizza, writing in the Washington Post, read Pete’s paragraph here, “Oh, the Republicans are starting to panic.” And that paragraph that Pete Wehner wrote, that explains why.

So basically the Republican establishment is worried that the lack of support for their candidates means that Republican voters don’t want to change. Republican voters are locked in the past. Republican voters want to pretend we’re still a white country. Republican voters want to pretend they can win without the Hispanic vote, and the Republican leadership knows none of that’s true and it can’t happen.

In fact Cillizza goes on to write, for Romney to have won, he would have to get 65% of the white vote, and it was never gonna happen. And that no Republican can win with just a majority of the white vote because there aren’t enough white people anymore. That’s why you gotta go Hispanics; that’s why you gotta go Asian; gotta reach out to other demographics. And the Republican establishment thinks that Republican voters don’t want to do any of that, so therefore their party is dead.

And then when they see a poll that says 72%, like the Bloomberg poll here, 72% of the American people agree that we have lost our greatness, the Republican establishment thinks that’s not true but that you think it’s true because people like Trump are coming along and campaigning just for white people and that we can’t win with just white people and you’re gonna have to understand this and that the reaching out to Hispanic voters is not about amnesty, but it’s just about the demographic shift, and we’ve got to prove to these people that we don’t hate ’em. And when you vote for Trump, you’re telling people that you hate ’em. That’s what they’re worried about. My interpretation, anyway.