RUSH: Patrick in Cleveland. Hello, sir. You’re up first today, and it’s really great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It’s an honor. I’m a 24-year member of the Institute of Conservative Studies, except I’m feeling that I’m gonna have to resign my position, Rush. I’m just… I’ve been listening to you for 24 years, listening to you for the last couple months, and I just… I’m tired of hearing that any criticism of Trump always has to be framed as it’s the establishment against Trump. There are plenty of us out here who are true conservatives who are not buying the Trump bandwagon, and we’re tired of being lumped into the establishment. What have you said for the last 10 or 15 years about people in this country not knowing what a conservative is because we haven’t had a true conservative running since maybe Reagan?

RUSH: Well, exactly. They haven’t even had a chance to vote for a genuine conservative.

CALLER: Exactly. So here we go coming out of seven years of Obama socialism, and we have a golden opportunity to showcase what a true conservative would be in contrast to that, and what are we doing? We’re on the verge of nominating a con artist who flip-flops on everything and never answers the question. All he ever does is deflect and attack. The whole New York Times thing is a perfect example of that. And we’re gonna blow it. We’re definitely gonna blow it. And if he gets in, or Hillary gets in, what’s the freaking difference? It’s the same thing.

RUSH: Well, now, that happens to be an excellent question. But before I answer that, I need to tell you that I am not lumping you or me — mainstream conservatives who you say oppose Trump — with the establishment. I’m reacting to the news of the day. I’m just… You know, look at this as the nightly news at noon.

CALLER: I understand that.

RUSH: But the news of the day is the establishment is going bonkers, even more so than ever. I’m just trying to explain it, and I’ve got… We went back and actually checked my website for all the attempts that I have made in the last number of years starting back 2010 to explain to the establishment why something like this was going to happen.

CALLER: And I understand that. And, believe me, I am no fan of the establishment whatsoever. I understand perfectly why this is happening.

RUSH: Understand —

CALLER: You kind of touched on it with the Brokaw thing where Brokaw said, you know, well, it’s because we’re not working with Obama.

RUSH: Exactly. Hang on. Hold it right there. I hope you can hold on because I’ve reached the moment where I can’t let the break float. I’ve gotta take it now. I hope you can hold on. We’ll pick it up here in the next hour.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We go back to Patrick in Cleveland. If you’re just joining us, the first hour of the program I recapped with some additions, things I’ve not mentioned before theoretically to explain the Trump phenomenon. But more than that, to explain how the establishment get an get it. They don’t understand what’s hit them. They’re way off base. They’re not even close to understanding it, and, as such, they’re never going to be able to figure it out and how this is not a phase, it’s not a temporary tantrum. It represents something that’s very real and has actually been building for decades.

And Patrick here is a multiple-year, 20-plus-year listener to the program who called and said he doesn’t like being lumped in with the establishment for reasons for disliking Trump. He dislikes Trump for different reasons. He doesn’t like being lumped in with the establishment. He’s basically a full-fledged conservative and thinks the solution to these problems we have is conservatism and not Trump, that Trump is an absolute disaster.

And I’m just gonna assume you think — don’t misunderstand the tone of my voice, feel free to say I’m wrong about this, but I’m guessing that because of the way I explained this in the first hour you think I’ve thrown in with the Trumpists?

CALLER: Not necessarily thrown in, but it seems to me over the last couple of months that you give him a pass on stuff that you would never give a pass to anybody else.

RUSH: Such as? You don’t even know what happened to me yesterday. The Trumpists want to burn me at the stake after yesterday’s program. The Trumpists, the alt right, whatever you want to call them, I mean, they were ready to bury me yesterday and last night over what happened on this program yesterday.

CALLER: I understand.

RUSH: Well, then — no, no. Here’s the problem. This what happens when you don’t endorse anybody. It would be worse if I did, but by not endorsing anybody, everybody holds out hope, and it’s really tense out there right now. And I understand that clear as a bell. Let me ask you, let me go at this this way, Patrick.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Let’s deal with the reality of something here. Do you agree with my analysis of the sentiment out there with the people angry at Washington and so forth, do you agree with that?

CALLER: Oh, sure, definitely. And I consider myself one of them.

RUSH: Okay, all right. Then how come it is, explain to me — and it’s a question coming at you pretty quickly. You may really want some more time to think about it. But where did conservatives not capture this sentiment? Why was it left open for somebody that has never been in politics before to come in here and to totally captivate this segment of the population, which, by and large ought to be with us a hundred percent?

CALLER: Are you referring to normal conservatives who are buying the Trump line?

RUSH: I’m talking about everybody ticked off at Washington. We are the answer. We are the answer to what’s wrong with —

CALLER: You’re right that the reason we’re ticked off at Washington is because we’ve had two out of three landslide elections, and we sent majorities to both parts of the Congress, and they did absolutely nothing. They failed in —

RUSH: No, no —

CALLER: — their promise to halt Obama. And I can understand that’s where the anger comes from.

RUSH: No.

CALLER: The question becomes, what is the solution?

RUSH: Now, wait. I obviously didn’t explain my question, frame it properly. You have what’s gone on in Washington the last seven years, what’s gone on in the last 27 years, okay? The opposition, what’s gone on there is full-fledged, unabashed liberalism that has been unchecked and unstopped by the Republican Party which has made it clear it’s not conservative and doesn’t want to be.

CALLER: True.

RUSH: So the question is, with this many millions of people angry, upset, disaffected, feeling left out, whatever, at both parties in Washington, why wasn’t conservatism turned to by these people instead of Trump?

CALLER: Because we haven’t had a conservative candidate.

RUSH: But there’s been plenty of conservatism out there.

CALLER: It hasn’t manifested itself in the people we’re sending.

RUSH: We do. We’ve got Ted Cruz.

CALLER: Exactly! Thank you! Thank you!

RUSH: Okay, we’ve got Ted Cruz, but before that we’ve had other candidates that have run. Some of them sought the Republican presidential primary, didn’t get very far. But I know your point, that we haven’t really had a legitimate conservative candidate. Why is that?

CALLER: You know what? I don’t know. I wish I knew the answer to that because — and it’s not for lack of trying.

RUSH: See, I think the answer to that is part of this problem. The only stated — now, follow me on this before you react. The only stated opposition to Obama and Obamaism and the Democrat Party has come from us.

CALLER: True.

RUSH: From conservatism, from conservatives, here on this program, other talk radio, blogs, wherever. The conservative movement has a lot of moving parts. It has candidates. It has think tanks. It has media. Many of these people have been asking these Americans to support them with donations, contributions, the come-on has been “help us do our work, and we will convert Washington to conservatism. We are the way to get to policy makers to infuse what they do with conservative beliefs.” People have been sending them money. People have been supporting them. People have been voting. They’re going to their seminars or whatever. And I think a point was reached where they said, “Where is all this conservatism that we’ve been supporting, where is it? It hasn’t shown up in Republican Party.”

CALLER: I understand that. And we feel betrayed because we send them to Washington to do a job, and they didn’t do it. The point I’m trying to make is that anger focused on the job not being done, how is Donald Trump going to do that? How is Donald Trump not gonna be any different when he’s already said he’s gonna go to Washington and he’s gonna make deals?

RUSH: Okay, I read —

CALLER: I can negotiate with Harry Reid. I can negotiate with Nancy Pelosi. If we wanted somebody to negotiate and get along, we would have elected Democrats. I think I heard somebody say that one time. (laughing)

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no. No, no. This is important now. This is why — you know, I say sometimes I get mad, too. I put in a lot of time here working — I mean, I did nothing all night but work on this very stuff that we’re talking about. I was six hours, seven hours last night, and sometimes it gets very frustrating when I say it over and over and still am not heard.

Now, let me explain this once again. You can talk about what you just said, that Trump supporters ought to see, “My God, he’s gonna negotiate with Pelosi and Reid.” That’s not how they hear it, Patrick. They hear Trump say he’s gonna beat them. He’s gonna cream ’em. He’s gonna cream Pelosi. He’s gonna cream Reid. Whether he does it, that’s what they hear. They hear he’s gonna cream the Chinese. He’s gonna cream the Japanese. He’s gonna clean up the border. He may have to do deals with these people, but he’s not gonna cave to them. That’s how they hear it because that’s what they want to believe.

CALLER: I understand that.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: But where’s the reality involved? Go back 20 or 30 years, where’s the beef? (laughing) I can make speeches like that all day —

RUSH: I can answer — (crosstalk)

CALLER: — not going to know what the hell I’m doing when I get there. I’m not going to not work in my own best interests once when I get there.

RUSH: I can answer every question you’re asking. You say where’s the beef? Again, what are we talking about, Patrick? We’re talking about why people are supporting Trump and not Cruz, when we boil this down, are we not? Why are people supporting Trump and not another conservative, aren’t we? So those are the people we’re talking about.

CALLER: I would think so, yes.

RUSH: Okay. So when you ask these questions, where’s the beef, they look at everybody in Washington as part of the guilty, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats or not. They see Ted Cruz versus Hillary Clinton as no different than Marco Rubio versus Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney versus Hillary Clinton, because Cruz —

CALLER: If that’s the case, then I guess we could agree that low-information voters don’t just exist on the left, because anybody who’s going to lump Cruz in with those other people are not paying attention.

RUSH: Well, they think they are. But the reason that can happen — you and I both know that Cruz is a bigger outsider than even Trump.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: For all that Trump has talked about, Cruz has done.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: Okay. But yet Cruz happened to have the misfortune of getting elected. He is a Senator. He is in Washington. He is seen by these people as part of the, quote, unquote, ruling class or establishment that has routinely sold them out, talked big, sounded great, but when it got down to brass tacks, they caved. It’s totally unfair. And, by the way, this is not my theory. I read that, talked about all the stuff I did last night. I can’t remember, it was either Anglo Codevilla or Charles Murray who made that observation, ’cause Codevilla, for example, is really worried, Angelo Codevilla who wrote the original piece on the ruling class, country class that we highlighted here in the American Spectator, his main concern is that we’re just trading an Obama for a Trump.

CALLER: I agree.

RUSH: One authoritarian for another.

CALLER: Right. I see no difference between hope and change and make America great again, because neither of them are saying anything.

RUSH: Well, yeah, but they do say a lot. They allow the supporter to define it him- or herself.

CALLER: Well, sure. But my point is we made fun of the hope and changer people for the last eight years and all we’re doing is replacing it with just another empty slogan.

RUSH: No, I would argue that hope and change is nebulous. Make America great, that’s pretty simple. That’s not very ambiguous, making America great. America isn’t great anymore. It’s not great. It’s not what it used to be. It’s undergoing a major transformation.

CALLER: Well, sure, yeah, I understand that.

RUSH: “Make America great” has a substantive, real meaning to it.

CALLER: I hope.

RUSH: Codevilla’s point is that he worries that you don’t fix the mess that we’re in now by electing somebody who may be better at doing exactly what Obama does than Obama is, an authoritarian versus authoritarian. That’s his fear. He’s in the school of thought that what we really need here is just solid, straight-down-the-middle good, old-fashioned conservatism is the only stopgap and cure for this.

CALLER: I agree.

RUSH: There are opinions on this all over the place, and I amalgamate them and share them with everybody. Sometimes it’s assumed they’re my own if I don’t quote what I’m reading every other sentence from somebody. But I think the real question here is we’ve got this number of disaffected people that seems to be pretty big, and speaking to you as a conservative, I’m frustrated, too.

How did we miss them? Why in the world do they not trust us? How many times have you heard me lament that we have done a lousy job in ideological education? I am more frustrated than you are, but the problem, I can’t complain about it, you know, it’s uncool. Like you should have seen Snerdley at the end of the previous hour when I said, “You know, I’m mad at you people.”

“You can’t say that! You’re supposed to take it, but you can’t give it out.” I understand that. But do you realize if the people of this country just understood what liberalism is?

Let’s go through the things that I just mentioned. Look at how the ruling class… Let’s change that to “liberals,” ’cause that’s what the hell it is. The liberals have destroyed a college education. They’ve turned it into a step up to an anchor around your neck. The liberals have given us the financial crisis. The liberals gave us the bailouts. The liberals gave us all of these things that have destroyed the economy while they promised it would rejuvenate the economy. Liberalism is why the culture is rotting in the midst of a transformation.

But the Republican Party won’t say that. The Republican Party won’t even blame it on the Democrats. The Republican Party won’t even acknowledge any of that’s happening. But we know that it is, and so do people who are ready to abandon the entire political class for an outsider because they think the entire political class is entirely corrupted. Well, it is, because it is liberalism that’s corrupted it. And I wish there had been ongoing ideological education so that people knew that when they saw liberal or listened to a liberal, it automatically meant vote against ’em.

But we’re not there. I have been after that, I have been wishing that, and that’s what this program sought. This program is a solution to everything. Every day, this program amounts to solutions to every problem that’s out there, and the first thing I do is explain, define the problem, illustrate why we have it and so forth. I’m as frustrated as anybody. This is a golden opportunity. I can tell you, there’s a lot of people in the conservative movement who are not really conservative, not like you and I. But they claim to be, and they are sitting out there and they’re wondering.

They’re telling themselves, “We owned this. We had the best field of candidates. All they had was Hillary — and Bernie gets in later. We were set! This was our year.” And then Trump gets in, and they think all is lost cause. They’re blaming Trump for screwing up the best opportunity they’ve ever had. And they need to ask themselves the question: If you guys have all the answers, then why did nobody hear you? If you guys have all the answers, why did nobody listen? Why didn’t anybody believe you?

And that gets translated as, “Where is all this conservatism you guys have been talking about? Where is all this conservatism you guys have been selling? You’ve asked for my money, you want me to read your position papers, you want me to read your policy analysis, but where is it in my life? Where is it stopping anything?” And they don’t see it. So here comes Trump just like here came Perot. And the parallels to that are interesting, too, even more so with Trump, because Perot really didn’t want to win. But Trump does. Anyway, Patrick, I appreciate your holding on all this time for the top of the hour, extend the conversation.