RUSH: You go over to the Democrat side, folks, I made it a point to listen to Bernie Sanders and Hillary last night. I think one of the things that happens in the primary season is that — and I think it’s true of both parties — you really ignore the other party because you have your own internecine battles going on, and the immediate objective is to win the nomination of your party, which means win the contests against your fellow party members. And what the other party is doing kind of gets shunted off to the side. You deal with that later this year, get into summertime.

And I think that is a mistake, because I think what’s happening on the Democrat side should be a dominant part of the Republican primary process here, because it was stunning to listen to these two people last night. It was scary, and it was stunning, and I’ll tell you what else it was. It was the Limbaugh Theorem on parade like never before. Both of these people, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton stood up there, and Fox carried both of them — this was kind of sad, I have to tell you. I have to interrupt myself here. Fox is trying to cover every candidate’s speech to supporters at the end of the night, and they’re trying to be fair about it, and no sooner had they gone to Jeb Bush, I’m talking 30 seconds, they had to bump out and go to Trump. And if it didn’t just symbolize this entire campaign.

Jeb was out talking about some guy that was trying to get seed money to start a business and all the regulations he was having to go through, and 30 seconds into that, “Sorry, we now leave Jeb Bush and we move over to Trump headquarters,” and that was it, and that was it for Jeb. He got 30 seconds of his speech. Hillary got all of it, Bernie got all of his, and Bernie’s was 30 minutes.

But the Limbaugh Theorem, here are these two people who have made the last seven years possible. They are the architects, along with Barack Hussein Obama, they have voted for every dime of it, they have supported everything. To listen to these people criticize the health care system with 29 million people still uninsured and to complain about the costs, the rising premiums and the deductibles, and to hear them talk about unemployment, and to hear them talk about low wage, who do they think is responsible for this? And of course their supporters, many of these young college graduate leftists who’ve been really brainwashed into the beauties and fairness and all that of socialism, it’s a potential crisis that we face ’cause these young people have not been taught critical thinking. They literally have been taught the virtues of socialism.

But I mean to listen to these people, to listen to an avowed socialist like Bernie Sanders talk about how angry he is at what’s going on now, when it’s everything in the world that he wanted in 2008. Ditto, Hillary Clinton. What is there to be unhappy about? No, folks, follow me on this. I’m dead serious. They get everything they want. There was no push-back on the Republican side. There was no attempt to stop it. The first two years they didn’t have the votes to stop it anyway, and after they did acquire the votes, after we gave them the House and gave them the Senate, they still made no serious effort to stop it, and even at that Obama’s had to use some executive orders to get what he wants, but he has done it.

There’s no stopping him, there’s no attempt to stop, there’s no pretense, there’s no image, other than during campaigns where they tell us they’re going to stop him, but then they don’t. And to listen to these two people go on and on about the status quo as though we are about finished, as though we are in dire straits, our consequences have never been more grave, and we need to do what? We need more of what has brought us here? We need more of what we’ve had to live through the last seven years? It’s like these two people got to stand up there and act like they had nothing to do with it.

The Limbaugh Theorem on parade, like Obama, the way he gets away with stuff is that he gets away with appearing to have no role in any of it. He gets to pretend to be an outsider, angry at what’s going on, fighting powerful, invisible forces, i.e., Republicans, he’s gonna do everything he can to stop it. He’s the architect of all this. The Democrat Party is the architect of all this. They’re miserable. They’re unhappy. They’ve gotten everything they want the last seven years. How in the world does this work? We haven’t done enough. We haven’t spent enough. We haven’t given away enough. We don’t have a big enough welfare state. We didn’t take over health care enough. We didn’t take over health care the right way. What in the world’s wrong with it?

You got everything you wanted. There was no attempt to stop Obamacare. They got everything they wanted in it. And to listen to these two people whine and moan and complain, you would think that all of this is the result of the Iraq war and the Bush administration and it’s time we got serious and reversed this course that we are on. It was stunning to me.

I really think, of the candidates remaining on the Republican side, they had better start listening to this, and they had better start including it, because this is what we are ultimately running against. And it all goes back… The reason all of this upheaval is happening on the Republican side is precisely because there has been no effort on the part of the Republican Party, its establishment, wherever, to stop any of this.

It makes common sense, total common sense that people who have loyally donated and loyally voted and supported — and have been told that they must support the nominee, they must support the policies, party unity and all that — have they’ve been slapped upside the head one too many times here, and so they’re now saying,” Screw you,” and they’re going elsewhere. Now, the crazy thing is the Democrats have their own version of this going on. Bernie Sanders’ supporters are just Obama supporters.

I mean, it’s almost the exact demographic. We go through all this. I mean, Hillary was humiliated yesterday. What is it, a 22-point loss? She lost virtually every group. Trump, on his side, won every demographic. It’s uncanny. Every demographic group Trump wins, and wins big, and Hillary lost practically every demographic group. Bernie Sanders today went to Sylvia’s in Harlem to have breakfast with Al Sharpton. Bernie knows that he’s out of this race once we get to South Carolina.

The Clinton machine is gonna kick in. The New Hampshire population doesn’t in any way mirror what the Democrats and Republicans are gonna find in South Carolina, and Bernie knows this. That’s why his first stop was Al Sharpton. Bernie’s only hope is to promise reparations. It’s the only way he has a chance of wresting the black vote away from Hillary Clinton. That’s what makes this kind of comical. I mean, to look at the leftist establishment media, they’re in panic.

“Oh, my God, Hillary can lose Nevada! Oh, gee! Hillary… Oh, my God, South Carolina’s Hillary’s firewall.” They’re upset because what we have is a repetition of exactly what happened in 2008. What’s obviously clear to them on their side is that their voters just do not like this woman, and they know (they’re relatively certain) Bernie Sanders isn’t gonna be the nominee. It just doesn’t work out for him, just like it doesn’t work out for Kasich.

I mean, Kasich was a one-off. He won second place. The attention paid to the second, third, and fourth place finishers last night in the media was stunning. I’d never seen that much attention paid to people second, third, and fourth. It’s because Trump ran away with it. And so that was the only drama there was, and then what that all meant. And Kasich coming in second place makes sense. It’s the only place he’s been campaigning. He been going to town halls. He’s been going to diners.

He had to say the other day that he’s further left than Hillary Clinton. He had to say the other day that he’s effectively a Democrat here and he’s running around acting like one. We go to South Carolina next where he doesn’t have any infrastructure in place and so forth, where people like Ted Cruz have been planning for South Carolina and the SEC primary and Super Tuesday on March 1st since the get-go of this.

But on the Democrat side, they’re panicked because it’s abundantly clear again that Democrat voters, when they have the chance to vote against Hillary, will do it. They don’t like her. She is not liked. She is not popular. She does not have that famous connection with people that I talk about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: But again, the Bernie Sanders acceptance speech and what Hillary tried to do in hers, it’s above and beyond the Limbaugh Theorem aspects of it. I mean, I don’t know how much ground there is to gain by pointing out to people that have been educated into the virtues of socialism to illustrate, “Hey, wait a minute. These people are complaining about stuff they did. Does that not register any?” I don’t know how powerful that is. In years past, I was of the opinion it was very powerful as a persuasive technique.

“Hey, wait a minute. Did you hear Bernie complain about health care? Yeah, yeah. Wasn’t it great?” Well, except they did it. Everything he’s complaining about, he voted for. Everything he complained about, he supported. Seven years ago, Bernie Sanders said that what we have now was nirvana. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, seven years ago all told us this was gonna be utopia. “We’re finally gonna take our country back,” they said.

They’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. They were gonna do all this wonderful stuff. And they’ve done it. They have implemented their agenda more rapidly and thoroughly than any leftist in this country ever has, and everybody is unhappier than they ever have been. They’re more miserable and they’re panicked and they’re scared precisely because these people have succeeded. And these people are running around acting like they had nothing to do with it and we need more of this.

It is one of the greatest assaults on logic you will ever find. Sadly, logic is not in this equation. What Bernie says rings emotionally true. He wants health care to be cheaper. He wants whatever it is the hell he wants, and he’s gonna pay for it how? “We’re gonna institute a 10% tax on Wall Street speculation.” Wall Street speculation? What the heck is that? Wall Street speculation? Every trade, every time, you pay 10%.

The thing about that is… (interruption) No, I know what it is. I was being rhetorical. “Wall Street speculation” means every trade’s a wild guess. Nobody knows what’s gonna happen to a stock. Everybody’s speculating every time they buy or sell something. He wants a 10% tax on every purchase. Anyway, the big banks are the foundation of the Democrat Party, and Hillary and Obama and Bernie are both trashing the big banks left and right last night.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, there they are. There’s a picture of it right now. If this doesn’t say it all. Bernie Sanders is sitting there at Sylvia’s in Harlem with the Reverend Sharpton. Seven years into the first administration of the first African-American president, Bernie Sanders is sitting with Al Sharpton, and they are whining and moaning about how it’s all gone wrong for the black community in America. And it has. It has gotten worse under Obama, I don’t care where you go to look.

Whether you go to unemployment, employment, teen unemployment, per capita income — whatever category you want to use — life in America has gotten demonstrably worse-for-practically everybody, so especially for African-Americans. Here’s Bernie Sanders. While we have the first African-American president ever who was elected to reverse this. He was elected to finally, finally fix it. After all these years since slavery in the United States of America, its government was gonna focus on the victims of this country.

It was gonna focus on the victims and the people who’ve been made to pay and build and do all this and have been ripped off and taken advantage of. The Obama administration was finally gonna get even with all those people who had mistreated minority groups left and right, and every one of those minority groups — even if you want to include women in there because the feminazis love to portray themselves as victims — they’re all complaining. It’s all worse.

This is the Limbaugh Theorem on display bigger than it’s ever been. These guys are complaining about the status quo that they built. They are complaining about the problems that they are the architects of. It’s just mind-boggling to me how they get away with this. On the one hand, we’re told that Obama has been a brilliant president. He has been great; he has been historic. Obama’s the first president with national health care, the first president to do this, the first president to do that.

He’s the smartest president, all of these things.

Yet over here in the Democrat campaign, this country’s in worse shape than it’s ever been. And somehow it’s the fault of Wall Street. Somehow Obama failed to tame them. He got even with everybody else, but somehow he has failed to get even with Wall Street. Dirty little secret: Wall Street buys, funds, props up the Democrat Party. So here’s Bernie sitting around having coffee with Al Sharpton talking about what needs to be done for the African-American community.

Seven years of everything they believe in has been implemented with no opposition. No, I don’t expect them to sit there and admit that they’re the problem. No, no, no, no. I don’t expect that. But I am hopeful that the American people see it. This is gonna be tough. I mean, you’ve got college graduates now coming out of school having apparently bought totally into socialism. They think it’s cool. They think it’s fair. They think it’s equality. And in a way, look at it from their standpoint.

Where they go to school, college campuses, for the most part they’re pretty nice places — other than the rape that they say happens there, but you can avoid that. The campuses are nice. They’re idyllic classrooms with nice people. The professors? Look at the professors. The socialists teaching this stuff, they look like they got pretty comfortable lives. I mean, they’ve got jackets with little patches on the elbows and some of them smoke pipes. But they’ve got nice offices, and they’ve got nice homes, quarters, whatever you want to call ’em on the campus.

It looks really clubby and affluent. I mean, what’s not to like? And then these graduates run around and look at Hillary Clinton, and here she is making $115 million over the years making speeches, and she’s an avowed socialist. (Well, she doesn’t admit it, but she is.) What’s not to like? I mean, if you look at it from their point of view, it’s not hard to see how socialism has been sold, including as having an economic advantage and having an economic superiority. They’re not taught, obviously, about the failures of socialism.

The failures of this country and the problem areas are all blamed on big corporations, the usual Democrat Party enemies list, and Republicans and George Bush and the Iraq war and what have you. So I know it’s a long shot, but I’m gonna keep harping on it. It’s just amazing to listen to Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders run around whine, moan, complain about this country and what’s going wrong these past seven years when they have got every they want, to one degree or another.

Here’s Bernie. A little sound bite. Outside… Actually, he had left. I guess he was on The View talking about his meeting with Al Sharpton, the National Action Network. And the cohost Sunny Hostin says we heard that you met with Al Sharpton this morning for breakfast at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem.

SANDERS: It wasn’t much of a breakfast. Half a cup of coffee.

HOSTIN: Oh.

SANDERS: We have a lot of support within the African-American community. I think the reason we’ll do well is our views on criminal justice in this country. Most Americans — black, white, Latino, whoever — understand that it is not acceptable to see unarmed people being shot by police officers. And let me just say this: When youth unemployment in the African-American community — kids who are unemployed or underemployed for high school graduates — is 51%, don’t tell me we do not need to invest heavily in the African-American community and create decent-paying jobs.

RUSH: There it is. Right there it is: Unemployment is 51% in the African-American community. It wasn’t that when Obama took office! Fifty-one percent, and we have to do what? We have “to invest heavily in the African-American community and create decent-paying jobs.” What have you been doing the past seven years? Why has Obama allowed things to get so bad in the African-American community? With Barack Obama in the White House, they run around talking about all of these innocent, unharmed African-Americans being shot by the cops, like it happens every day.

Why? How?

What’s gonna be any different with you in there, Bernie?

We’ve just had Obama, who’s every bit the socialist you are, and he’s a little smarter about it than you are. He’s every bit the committed leftist, every bit the anti-police department president that you would be. Why is all this happening, even after Obama’s DOJ takes over local police departments? Why is it they continue to behave in manners you disapprove of? And I thought Obama… How many job summits have we had here that people like Thomas “Loopy” Friedman of the New York Times participated in over the first two, three years at the White House

There were jobs seminars seemingly every month. There’s nothing the government can do to create jobs. The government is destroying jobs. The government is destroying the 40-hour workweek. The government is destroying every element of every institution that has defined this country’s greatness. And we’re living amongst that destruction. And Hillary and Bernie are running for office as though all this that has happened either hasn’t happened, or it’s somebody else’s fault.

Look, if seven years going on eight now of unopposed, unstoppable socialism, transformation, whatever you want to call it — if that doesn’t even begin to show progress — then what is it that says we need seven more years of it? These are the people who have made the problem, the problems. These are the people, the architects. They have created the problems. It is socialism. It is a gigantic and growing government comprised of all of its inefficiencies and lack of compassion, bloated bureaucracies that has led to all of this.

Anyway, one of Bernie Sanders’ big complaints is all the money in politics. “We gotta get rid of Citizens United. We gotta get rid of all the money.” You know, if you look at the people that won in New Hampshire, they probably are people who had the least money. New Hampshire combined campaign and super PAC spending: Jeb Bush, $36 million. Percentage of the vote, 11.1%. Chris Christie: $18.5 million. Percentage of the vote, 7.5%. Marco Rubio: $15.2 million, 10.5% of the vote.

John Kasich: $12.1 million, 16% of the vote. Donald Trump, $3.7 million, 35% of the vote. Ted Cruz, $580,000, barely over one half of one million dollars. Cruz got 11.6%. If big money were buying elections, then Jeb and Hillary would have won big last night, and it wouldn’t have even been close. And Bernie Sanders would not have even been an asterisk, if big money was what really wins elections. John Kasich spent $12 million to come in second. Trump spends $8 million less and comes in first and more than doubles Kasich’s support.

You want to talk about a waste of time and a waste of money. And when you run these numbers and you boil it down to how much was spent per vote, it becomes even more illustrative of the absolute waste. But where did the money go? Where does this money really, really go? The lion’s share of all of this money goes to the Drive-By Media, because the lion’s share of this money is spent to buy advertising, television advertising, radio advertising, print advertising, and the pamphlets. And you have to spend some money to hire people to run out there and knock on doors and make phone calls and so forth.

But it’s in the Drive-By Media’s interests that all of this money be spent. And it’s the Drive-By Media that keeps celebrating all the money. The Drive-By Media that keeps promoting the value of all the money in politics. Yes, because they’re the primary beneficiaries of all the money, above and beyond maybe in some cases even the candidates. I’d say that the Drive-By Media has benefited much more from Jeb’s money than Jeb did. They love all these candidates still being in. They love all this finance to go on. They love this big money in politics.

And they sit there, the F. Chuck Todds and the rest of these Drive-Bys, they love to tell you how they think it’s so pathetic, it’s so impure, this money in politics. And yet it’s what’s paying them all. Ted Cruz spent the least amount per vote than all the candidates in New Hampshire and took third place. Jeb Bush spent more than 30 times the amount of money in New Hampshire than Donald Trump did. When you break it down, Jeb Bush spent $1,200 per vote in New Hampshire. Twelve hundred, and still was unable to finish in the top three.