CALLER:  Yeah.  Wonderful to be here, Rush.

RUSH:  Thank you, sir.

CALLER:  Thanks for having me on.

RUSH:  Yeah, you bet.

CALLER:  The rules committee at the RNC is meeting today and tomorrow, and the Dump Trump crowd is hopefully going to put through something that will not permit some of Trump’s delegates to vote on the floor for him.  One of the rationales they used to try to dump him was covered in a Politico article on Sunday.  Briefly the rationale is, as it says in The Politico article, is Trump thrived on crossover voting by independents and even some Democrats.

That is totally bogus.  There were 39 primaries in which people, rank-and-file people got to vote.  Trump won 33 of them, or 86%.  And among closed primaries, where only Republicans can vote, Trump won 14 out of 16, or 87%.  So Trump overwhelmed the opposition in primaries where only Republicans could vote.  He overwhelmed them in primaries where Democrats were allowed to vote.  There were 14 open primaries.  He won —

RUSH:  Wait a minute.  I have a question.  So what?  What if Trump — forget your stats here for a second, which we acknowledge.  What if Trump succeeded in winning the Republican nomination with crossover voters, isn’t that what the Republican leadership’s been telling us we need to do anyway?

CALLER:  That’s exactly right.  What’s wrong with that?  You remember Reagan and the Reagan Democrats?  Well, apparently we have Trump Democrats now, and yet nobody’s talking about it. But it’s in the numbers if you look at ’em.  He won crushing victories in every primary where people got to vote.  Now, where he took a beating was in caucuses where party functionaries — and some would say “party hacks” — primarily get to vote. He won less than half of those.

RUSH:  Right.

CALLER:  Eight out of 17.  So he’s had trouble winning in contests where party followers and hangers on vote, but among voters he’s run crushing victories.

RUSH:  Well, this is clearly an insider-versus-outsider battle, establishment versus outsider.  The last I heard on this (and it may not be the most recent, but the last I heard on this) is that the Never Trumpers are still working on a number of fronts.  They are trying to have some success changing rules to unbind delegates on the first ballot.  The latest count that I saw in this effort… You know, the number remains 1,237.

Trump has to get that on the first ballot or any ballot, if he doesn’t get it on the first.

Now, toward the end of last week I saw a story saying that they thought they had whittled the number of delegates — who, on their own, would acknowledge and willingly vote for Trump — down to 900.  And that, of course, wouldn’t get Trump there. So that story was made to look like the Never Trumpers were succeeding if they could prevail at the rules committee to change the rules and permit delegates to vote their conscience on the first ballot rather than have to vote the way their states did.

Now, the next number I’ve seen is… What did I see?  It’s 1,500 that Trump now has, that the effort is failing, falling short (at least the effort on rules), and that the number of delegates now that they’ve surveyed that would vote for Trump on the first way over 1,237 now. It’s 1,500 or some such thing.  But they’re not giving up.  And they are… I’ve even seen… What is it?

I’ve got a story here in the Stack somewhere that they’re trying to maneuver John Kasich back into position to eventually become a compromise choice if they can succeed in stealing all this away from Trump.  I’ll find that during the break, which I have to take here pretty quickly.  I had it at the top a moment ago and it’s vamanos’d somewhere else here in the Stack,

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s the story on Kasich.  It’s a Fox News story.  “The Stop Trump movement isn’t dead yet — and Ohio Gov. John Kasich could be their last hope. Republicans opposed to Donald Trump’s 2016 bid reportedly are making a fresh pitch for Kasich to step up as an alternative candidate ahead of the party’s convention in Cleveland. Former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon Humphrey asked Kasich allies Sunday to contact the former presidential candidate and urge him to offer himself as an alternative at the convention, according to Cleveland.com.

“‘Given our shared effort in the Kasich campaign, I am sure you agree,’ Humphrey reportedly wrote. ‘But, John needs encouragement to make the move. Please email John and offer him your encouragement and continued backing. … It’s not going to get better than this, but time is of the essence,'” meaning the opportunity.  This month some time ago when Trump was supposedly flailing and drifting… (interruption) They’re supposed to email… No, no.  No, no.  They’re supposed to email “Kasich allies,” not Kasich.

“Gordon Humphrey asked Kasich allies … to contact [him] and urge him to” do it, but there’s an email going out to Kasich allies, which says, “John needs encouragement to make the move. Please email John and offer him your encouragement and continued backing,” and points out: “It’s not going to get better than this, but time is of the essence.”  Now, this is a Fox News story.  Humphrey’s email highlights a key difficulty the anti-Trump Republican have faced — they don’t have an alternative candidate waiting in the wings as a rallying point for those opposed to [Trump]’s nomination.”

Well, who needs an alternative candidate?

I think I remember a number of establishment Republican types saying they’re gonna vote for Hillary instead of Trump.  That hasn’t changed, has it?  I mean, I haven’t seen anything lately from those people, but it’s out there.  There’s something else on the tip of my tongue here.  Oh!  Reince Priebus is out there calling these people sore losers.  The chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus. (interruption) Why are you laughing?  It sounds funny saying it? Reince Priebus, he’s calling ’em sore losers out there.  Wow.

So we got some Hillary sound bites that just came in from speech here.