RUSH: I did not have cable TV on last night. I didn’t. I was reading. I watched a couple of movies, but I did not have the TV on last night. (laughing) I take it back. One clarification. I did turn on Fox at about 7:55pm ’cause I wanted to hear O’Reilly read the e-mail. That’s my favorite part of his show. And O’Reilly wasn’t on. They were doing coverage from New Hampshire, and they were proclaiming Romney the victor. It was over. So Romney had his seven electoral votes. Okay, the only thing that interests me now is how does Ron Paul finish. That to me was the key, where does Ron Paul finish, ’cause anybody can vote, Democrat, Republican, pick up a ballot and go in there and vote. And Rasmussen has some interesting data that I’ve gotta double-check.
But Ron Paul, the majority of people that voted him were not Republican. And in another poll, the percentage of Ron Paul voters who say they will vote for the Republican nominee is… like 80% of Tea Party voters in New Hampshire said no matter who the Republican nominee is they’re voting for it. The Ron Paul number is 40%. Now, as I say, I’ve gotta double confirm. It’s ostensibly Rasmussen and we’re double-checking this, but what I know so far, or what I’ve been told is that Ron Paul supporters, 40% say they would vote for the Republican nominee, 23% said they’d vote for Obama, and 31% of Ron Paul voters said they would vote third party. So the Ron Paul voters cannot be counted on, and most of Huntsman’s voters and most of Paul’s voters were Democrats who walked into the New Hampshire primary, picked up a Republican ballot, also according to this polling data. Or maybe not majority. I don’t have it right in front of me but it’s close. It’s a very high — since I brought it up, let me see if I’ve got it in this particular stack. I’ll find it. It’s nothing that you don’t know.
Here we go. It’s the exit polling data from Fox, and it is on political matters, “Do you consider yourself very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, very conservative?” You go to Ron Paul, 33% of his voters, according to exit polls, were somewhat liberal; 24% were moderate; 0 were very liberal. So 57% of the voters that voted for Ron Paul were not Republican conservatives. And that’s one of the things that I wanted to see because with this big push — what is happening here, the final push now that’s on to get Romney the nomination, Newt and Perry, with their attacks, have made it impossible to defend them. I hate to tell you, folks, but you just can’t put your name to what they’re out there saying, vulture capitalism and so forth.
Romney, however, wants Ron Paul to stay in. Everybody is urging everybody else to get out of this except for Ron Paul. They want Ron Paul to keep pounding away at Santorum and Newt. They want Ron Paul to continue to get big numbers and take away any high second- or third-place finishes from Santorum or Gingrich or Perry or anybody else. So the powers that be realize the monkey wrench that Ron Paul represents. Ron Paul is a conservative killer. Ron Paul kills the conservative vote, and the Romney camp wants him in there, encouraging him to stay in there.
And, in fact, depending on where you go, depending on what you read… Even Sarah Palin said it’d be a big mistake to reject those Ron Paul voters. The Republican Party would be making a huge mistake to reject the Ron Paul voters. So the effort is being made here to encourage people to reach out to Ron Paul’s crazy, anti-defense supporters. A lot of his supporters are simply college kids who like his ideas on liberalizing drug laws. A lot of his supporters are young college kids who like his idea on gay rights. You know, they’re the young idealists who have only their own personal interests here at stake, and he’s out there representing it. Plus there is the awareness on the part of some Ron Paul voters that he’s the giant monkey wrench and they enjoy playing that role.
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