RUSH: Hey, folks, how are you? You know, I’m old enough to remember when people said, “Go ahead! Go ahead and vote for Bill Clinton! Things can’t get any worse. You go ahead and vote for Bill Clinton. Let’s show everybody how rotten the Democrats are. You elect Bill Clinton. You vote for him. You vote for Clinton and we’ll finally demonstrate for the people what a bunch of rotguts the Democrats are!” Now, the people that used to say that are average, ordinary voters. Today, it’s the Republican establishment saying it!
It seems like every election there is somebody out there saying, “Go ahead! You vote for the Clintons,” and every time we did it, it’s supposed to demonstrate to the people how rotten and horrible the country becomes when the Democrats run it. I’ve been doing this for 27 years and that refrain has been heard in every election. And could we say here that with the election of Obama, and after two terms of Bill Clinton, the country’s not getting the message on how bad the Democrats running the country is?
Some of the country is, obviously, but they keep getting elected. Anyway, folks, great to have you here. We are gonna do a major dissection today. Everybody is bursting with all kinds of questions. Ted Cruz getting out last night was a shock to a lot of people. They weren’t expecting it. Apparently the decision was made by Senator Cruz long before Trump came up with his Lee Harvey Oswald comment. I’m not saying that isn’t a factor, don’t misunderstand here. This is gonna be one of those programs that you’re gonna want to spend the entire three hours here with us.
We’re just loaded and there’s a whole lot of things that I want to say and get into, and I don’t want to try to have to pack it all here into this opening segment. I got so many emails. “You know, you’re gonna have the biggest audience maybe you’ve ever had tomorrow.” And then people tell you, “Oh, wow! Okay, you better pack it all in the opening segment!” I’m not gonna even try to do that this time. It can’t be done, and I don’t want to do it in bullet-point or headline fashion. Plus, I’m curious to know what some of you think happened.
What went wrong (if you think it did go wrong) and why you’re happy if you are. What you think the future holds, and how many of you really never thought that Trump was gonna get the nomination, but you didn’t really work against it. You were kind of fascinated by it. You really didn’t think this day was gonna come, and then you watch Ted Cruz drop out last night and you’re shocked and you’re stunned and you can’t believe it, because somewhere in the back of your mind all along has been this thought.
It may be comforting to some, to others just a thought, that Trump’s not gonna really do this. “When you get to the end of this, it isn’t gonna be Trump,” and now it is. I mean, I think the number and the types of reactions out there are infinite, and the attitudes about the future are multifaceted as well. We’re gonna explore here what happened, why it happened, what went wrong, where do we go from here, what does this all mean. But again, folks, I can’t do this in one show, can’t do it in the opening segment certainly.
But — and this is not a trick or a hook to get you to listen to all three hours, ’cause you do anyway ’cause it’s a good show. I just… I don’t want anybody laboring under the false impression that whatever I say here in the opening segment is it, ’cause it isn’t gonna be. I’m sure that those of you who get through today on the phones are gonna inspire things that I think and haven’t even realized yet, which is really what makes a great caller. By the way, our phone number: 800-282-2882. I didn’t know Cruz gonna drop out.
I had no inside advance information. I read Byron York today, who did a little bit of a postmortem on what went wrong, and the basic element is that Cruz just lost too many elections prior to Indiana that he chose to sit out too many states like New Hampshire. He didn’t put full-force effort, as opposed to Trump who sought to just win every state. Just blanket, shotgun the country. Win every state. Appear to be competing in every state. That created momentum, constant media presence. It doesn’t even count the media loving putting Trump on.
But it’s… Trump forced him his way into this. He forced the media coverage, even though the media loved covering him. Too many states that Cruz sat out in that Northeastern sweep just a couple of weeks ago, that Trump won every county in five states. In Byron York’s opinion, you just can’t lose like that and expect to go to the next state and sweep it. You just… It’s unreal expectations. People want to vote for winners. You know, losing is one thing. Landslide losses are another thing.
Even if it is the Northeast and you’re not expected to do well. Even if it is New York where you’re not expected to do well. People don’t want to vote for somebody that’s not expected to do well some places. They want to vote for somebody they think is gonna win. So that’s just one theory. I’m just sharing it sharing it with you. York also does have some insider information that Cruz had made his decision to get out even before Tuesday morning.
And if you knew that Cruz was gonna get out and you listen to everything that Cruz said and did on Tuesday, it makes total sense. He unloads on be Fox News, unloads on Ailes, unloads on Murdoch, unloads on Trump, just gets it all off of his chest. And then here comes Trump on Fox & Friends with the Lee Harvey Oswald comment. That might have been the icing on the cake, but Byron York’s point is that the decision had been made long before that. I’m watching Cruz last night with his acceptance — acceptance! — his exit speech.
And as is the usual case, the speeches that people give when they leave a campaign are often the best that you’ve heard during a campaign. That certainly was true of Cruz’s. And I was a little sad and I was melancholy over it, and then I got a text. I got a text from somebody who I thought was my friend. I got a text from somebody I thought knew me. And the text said — this is after the Cruz speech was concluded — “Thank God Cruz is done. I couldn’t be happier. Listening to his sap makes me sick.”
I wanted to write back, “I didn’t know I made you sick.” But I didn’t. I didn’t reply to it. I thought, “No, no, no. Don’t do it here in the emotional heat of the moment.” But it just struck me the hatred for Cruz and how irrational it was all the way from the Republican establishment. There are reasons for it. There are reasons for people to be opposed to Cruz in the Republican establishment, but this raw hatred I think has a message and implication for people way beyond Ted Cruz.
I’ll go into an examination of why there’s such focused, such intense hate. People don’t even know why. And it’s more than just Cruz. It’s more than just whatever people think his personality is. We’ll get into that as the program unfolds today. The establishment got their wish. They didn’t want Cruz. I mean, half of ’em did and half of ’em didn’t. You know, I made a point earlier in the week in explaining how I… Depending on how the establishment lines up, I said, they’re looking at Cruz — and there’s a reason I’m bringing this up.
A New York Post column today by somebody whose name I can’t remember, makes the exact same time point, and it’s this: That Cruz is gonna be around forever, and the establishment wants him vanquished forever. But Trump is an ephemeral, one in a million. There’s not gonna be another Trump that either party’s gonna have to deal with. Trump comes out of nowhere. Stop and think of what’s happened here: A genuine, real outsider with no polling unit and no real fundraising — no campaign management, no speechwriting — has come to just blow out the Republican Party.
And, of course, there’s postmortems in the Republican Party today, too. Postmortems. “Yeah, Trump’s come along and killed the Republican Party.” Trump didn’t kill the Republican Party. The Republican Party did itself in, which is why Trump was able to come in and do what he did. But the point about Cruz and the reason the establishment really… There are one of two things they wanted: Either a humiliating loss in the primaries or a humiliating loss for the White House.
They want Cruz to lose so badly that he will never, ever try this again. Nor will anybody else who thinks what Cruz thinks try to get in. Do not doubt me on that. They are so unalterably opposed to conservatism, and Cruz embodies conservatism and can explain it. He can articulate it, and makes him a really reviled figure! To all of Washington and much of Hollywood and much of the media that runs and controls pop culture, he is a huge threat. So the more humiliating the loss, the happier they are.
Because they think it vanquishes Cruz and anybody else that might be thinking of trying what he tried. They are less concerned about the effect of Trump ’cause they don’t think there’s another Trump out there. So once Trump’s done and done, however long it takes — four years, eight years, or he gets defeated — they don’t have to deal with Trump again. But there’s all kinds of people that might try being Ted Cruz Jr. again, or at least try to get elected with conservatism. So that’s why the pile-on. That’s why the glee. That’s why the happiness, irrational happiness over Ted Cruz’s defeat.
And it was not hard to predict that that was going to happen, either — and pretty much everything has happened here. I’ve foreseen it and given voice to the possibilities throughout the course of the past six or seven months.