RUSH: Trump accepting an endorsement somewhat puzzled me. I just have to be honest. I look at Trump as a genuine outsider, as somebody who doesn’t do anything by the book in politics. And yesterday he did two things by the book that, frankly, surprised me. One is accepting an endorsement. I did not see Sarah’s speech, but I saw sound bites of it. And I saw Trump standing aside while she was at the podium, and he’s not the kind of guy that stands aside. He just isn’t. He’s that dominant. He is that huge to give up the podium even to somebody endorsing him, sponsoring him. I’m not criticizing it. Don’t anybody misunderstand. I’m just telling you what I think here. Do with it what you want.

The second thing that happened yesterday that really, really surprised me — again, given Trump is rewriting the manual on how to be an outsider and how to avoid all of the traps that you get into if you’re gonna play the game of politics the way the insiders play it, I was shocked to see him go all in on the ethanol subsidy. I mean, that reeks of political insiderism.

On the other hand, I understand it’s the Hawkeye Cauci. It’s the first in this whole series of caucuses and primaries, and he’s nip and tuck there with Cruz and wants to win it, and this is what you have to do. But see, that’s the point. This is how insiders look at it. You have to go buy votes. And that’s what supporting king corn in Iowa is all about.

Cruz, for his part, got into a little bit of trouble because they misreported that he also was on board but he said, “No, no, no, no, I want to phase it out in five years. I want to get rid of it. We can’t get rid of it overnight, but I want to get rid of it.” So both candidates are on board for the ethanol subsidy. Cruz, for his part, supports publicly letting it fade away in five years.