RUSH: Here’s Ryan in Ironton, Pennsylvania. Welcome, sir. Glad you waited.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. Mega dittos from Allentown, Pennsylvania.

RUSH: Allentown. Sorry.

CALLER: No, no. No biggie. Hopefully my battery holds. It drains energy like excuses from the mouth of Hillary. Listen, I don’t believe for a moment that the Republicans are gonna get this done. These are the same people who told us we can’t do taxes until we do health care, and then they bumbled around like stumbling boobs and they weren’t able to get health care done and now we’re back to taxes. So I predict December they’re gonna come, they’re gonna vote, it’s gonna fail, and then they’re gonna say, “Well, we’ve already penned in for January to restart health care. Let’s do health care and then we can get to taxes.”

RUSH: Well, you know, I can’t blame you for your snark. I can’t blame you for your suspicion. I can’t blame you for your doubt. I can’t blame you for your lack of trust. You’re only using intelligence guided by experience. I don’t know what’s gonna happen with this. Your guess is as good as mine. The thing that confuses me — well, it doesn’t confuse me because I understand this, but it still does confuse me in a way. Here’s why.

We have a circumstance in Washington that I’m telling you nobody on Election Day ever thought would happen. Nobody thought Donald Trump was gonna win. On election night nobody thought Donald Trump was going to win. Everybody in the establishment, because they believe their polls and they believe their experts in the media and they believe their own instinct, do not doubt me, they were convinced that Trump was gonna lose and lose in a landslide.

That means that the Republicans in the House were preparing to govern on the defensive. There wasn’t a one of them that thought they were gonna win and therefore there wasn’t a one of them that was thinking joyously with their hands rubbing, “Oh, man, look what we’re gonna be able to do after Trump wins.” Nobody was thinking that. They were all thinking they were gonna have to play defense, that their job was gonna be stopping things or trying to stop Democrat things. And I frankly think that’s a position that they really rather have.

I’m not convinced they like the power of governing or the pressure of it, but I do know they weren’t prepared for it. I thought Trump was gonna win. Many of you out there thought Trump was gonna win. They thought we were nuts. They think and thought Trump is nuts. They didn’t think Trump was gonna win. Then Trump wins, and you know what I didn’t see? Joy. I didn’t see joy on the Republican side. There was some, but a lot of it was perfunctory.

A lot of it on election night and Election Day and in days after featured Republicans running to the microphones, clearly shocked and stunned that they had won and just being effusive in their praise for Donald Trump, crediting him with everything. They were shell-shocked. They didn’t expect to win. They knew that they won because Trump won. That they didn’t like, folks. They don’t like Trump, they didn’t like Trump. I don’t know about now, but they didn’t like Trump. They couldn’t imagine Trump. He’s an outsider, they’re inside, they couldn’t imagine any of this. And they weren’t happy by it.

But they couldn’t act that way. They couldn’t go to the microphones and tell you what I just told you. They couldn’t, “Man, we didn’t expect this. We’re not prepared, oh, my God, this pig won? Oh, jeez, now what?” They couldn’t tell you that. They had to say great things about Trump, and they had to talk about “Now we got no excuses, we got no excuses.” Reince Priebus came on this program the Friday after the election, and before I got a question out he said, “I know. I know. We have no excuses.” I said, “That’s right.”

But there wasn’t any joy. I didn’t see a lot of Republicans happy and excited. And the reason all of this matters to me and the reason I’m spending time dissecting this is because I think that the day needs to be saved. I told Hannity today in this interview something that I’ve been saying the last couple of days.

But, folks, there’s always something cool about seeing it said on TV. You don’t want to miss it. I said, “We are never gonna have this opportunity again in our lifetimes. We are never going to have the White House and the House and the Senate. We are never, in our lifetimes, gonna have this happen again — and I can’t believe how little is being done with it, even from a party standpoint. Forget conservatism. I don’t even see the Republican Party trying to take advantage of this, and we know why.

This is not what the donors wanted. This is not what K Street wanted. This is not what the establishment wanted, and just like the NFL owners are having to choose, “Oh, my gosh, who do we side with, our players — who are disrespecting the game, disrespecting the flag — or do we side with our customers?” They’re siding with the players, on balance. Well, the Republicans are not siding with their customers, the voters. They are siding with the people they are more afraid of.

And that would be donors and influential, powerful policy makers. Kingmakers. We don’t know who these are. These are invisible people. The real power in the establishment is not an elected person. We don’t know who it is. We might know who it is. But my point is, they’re not seeking fame, they’re not leading, but they have a lot of power over who does and says what. The establishment is a very, very old and tradition, and it’s steeped in all kinds of legacy and tradition.

It believes that it and it alone runs that town — and, therefore, this country. And they weren’t prepared for Trump, and they don’t want Trump. And since Trump was elected, they have been trying to destroy Trump. And they still are, with the Mueller investigation, with the deep state intel leaks to the Drive-By Media. All of this is the establishment essentially saying, “We don’t like what the voters did, and we’re gonna try to overturn it.

“We don’t think the voters know what they’re doing. We don’t think the voters have the brains to do what needs to be done, and this election proves it.” So they are in the middle of a process to try to get rid of Trump or render him ineffective. What could be… The Republican Party could see the benefit to the party from all this, if the Republicans would simply… If they would have in the past six months — or in the next six months, future, three months! Just work for three months at moving Trump’s agenda. That’s what the people want.

That’s what American people — the majority of the American people, the voting public. That’s what they voted for. Move on tax cuts and make it real. Move on repealing Obamacare and make it real. If they wanted to do it, they could do it. I mean, to fall back on the excuse, “Well, we only have 52 votes in the Senate…” Even now with this tax cut, do you hear what they’re saying? “We’re gonna do it via reconciliation so they can’t filibuster it.” They’re not even… It doesn’t seem like they even want to take the fight to Democrats on ideas in the arena of ideas, and the Democrats are smokable right now!

This circumstance, this alignment is not gonna happen again in my lifetime — and it’s being squandered like I can’t believe.