RUSH: This hour is dedicated to those of you say you’re never again going to listen to the program. I want to grab this guy Nick. Nick’s on the phone from Southaven, Mississippi. He’s been holding for a while, and his call relates to something we were just talking about here, what happened in Colorado with Cruz securing all of the delegates without there having been an actual primary. Hey, Nick. Great to have you on the program. How you doing?

CALLER: I’m doing good, Rush. Thank you. How are you?

RUSH: How am I doing?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: I’m always good. I’m fine. If I’m not good, nobody would listen, anyway. So I’m always good.

CALLER: I just wanted to share an idea with you, and that is that I don’t think that Cruz won anything beyond the delegates in Colorado. He will never now become president, and the reason he won’t become president is because the supporters of Donald Trump are not Republican supporters; they’re Trump supporters. And they have been a long time before this nomination process even started. Like you said: For seven years they have been steaming over the way things are. And they view Trump as the only person who can turn things around. And they’re definitely concerned that Trump will not get the nomination.

RUSH: Let me tell you something, Nick, because you’re closer to something here than you may even realize. And I’m sure you realize how right you are. I heard from a number of ardent Cruz supporters last night who were very, very concerned about how I was gonna deal with this today, because they know that Cruz isn’t cheating. But the way the media, the Drive-Bys, and certain conservative blogs and websites are reporting it, they are deathly afraid that people are going to be convinced that Cruz has cheated to make this happen and therefore there’s gonna be so much anger.

You couple that with Trump running around with the “Lyin’ Ted! Lyin’ Ted!” and they’re worried that that has stuck. So you got Lyin’ Ted, and now Ted being accused of cheating. Their point was that could be very bad for us if people are not disabused of the notion that Cruz has cheated here, and he hasn’t cheated. There hasn’t been any cheating going on. And if you want to say there hasn’t been, you gotta get mad at the GOP in Colorado for changing their procedure out there and then not telling everybody. But, of course, they did. It’s been known since October. But, nevertheless, you’re talking about perceptions, and perceptions will trump reality every time.

CALLER: Well, I think it goes further than that. I think it goes to the reality that people never really understand how the nomination process goes in either the Republican or Democratic parties. For the first time they’re realizing it, and they don’t like what they see. They view the parties as much corrupt as the national government is.

RUSH: Well, they are the national government.

CALLER: Well, that’s true. I’ve been to China three times, and this more resembles what the Chinese Communist Party does in terms of electing its people.

RUSH: Well, but, look. This is the point. You’ve gotta be —

CALLER: The only difference is —

RUSH: Look, we’re not the ChiComs. You gotta be real careful. That’s all going on here. It’s not complicated. You have a bunch of wealthy, powerful interests who are not going to sit idly by and let a bunch of people they consider idiot outsiders come in and just take over! The ChiCom leaders are not gonna let that happen with a guy standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, and the Republicans are not gonna let Donald Trump do it, if they can stop it.

CALLER: That’s not —

RUSH: But you’re right. You’re right that people are seeing how this all works. “It looks rigged.” You call it rigged? No. This is just people who are in charge of something wielding their power.

CALLER: Well, I think this is the first time people have realized that they are honestly don’t live in a republic and they don’t necessarily see their vote as being part of the democratic process.

RUSH: Well, what… Yeah. I think what they see is that there’s nothing democratic about this nomination process. You know, Trump’s out there. He said, “We don’t have a democracy.” He’s right. We never have been a democracy; we’ve been in a republic. This may not be the time to go into that with Trump, but this is a clear illustration of it. He thinks democracy has been denied in Colorado, but we don’t have a democracy. We have a representative republic. And the powers that be… You know, we elect people to represent us. We do not have a direct democracy.

And all Colorado has done is say, “You know what? We’re gonna elect the people’s representatives but not use the people to do it.” But they clearly announced it up front. They said so. Your theory is that because it’s widely known now, with everything else that’s happened, people are realizing that this whole primary system may not be anything like what it appears to be. It may be an entirely — for lack of a better word — rigged process so that the powers that be end up getting what they want when it’s over, right?

CALLER: That’s part one. Part two is, as I mentioned, that there are people who support Trump who believe that Trump is the only one that can bring the country back to a period of greatness it once had.

RUSH: Are you one of those people?

CALLER: I most certainly am.

RUSH: Okay. What happens to your movement and everybody in it…? Playing a little hypothetical game here. If Trump doesn’t get to 1,237, doesn’t get the nomination, what happens to you? Let’s say you… I mean, you’re half of the electorate here. You’re at least 35 or 40% of the electorate on the Republican side. What do you do? See, my point is, Nick, I think you guys are bigger than Trump. I think Trump is obviously the receptacle and he has a deep connection with people. He’s very charismatic. But you’re gonna survive long after Trump does, right, if that’s the case?

CALLER: Well, I think what’s gonna happen is, again, the emphasis is upon Trump. He is the beginning of a movement. Unless Trump goes out on his own, beyond the Republican Party, all that you’re going to have is simmering resentment within the democratic process, and we’re gonna be much worse off than we have been under Obama. And the president who gets elected is not going to have the support of the people, because they believe — and I believe — that we’re on the track that will lead us to ultimately the decline and fall of the United States. You have the Soviet Union, you have China, you have the immigration process, and the advocacy of ISIS —

RUSH: No, no. I get all that. What I’m asking you is: Right now Trump is the vehicle for people supporting him to get started on taking back the country. If Trump doesn’t win, what happens to you all? What do you do next? You need somebody.

CALLER: Unless a new leader arises, there’s simply not going to be interest in what goes on. They’re going to look at it as being totally lost. There will be no recovering the country. We will be totally lost to our future. We will be a substandard, um, second-rate country.

RUSH: So wait a minute. So you’re saying that the Trump…? For lack of a better word, the Trump movement will die, and all —

CALLER: (interrupting)

RUSH: Wait a minute. All you’ll be is a bunch of disgruntled people sitting idly by, angry at what’s happening?

CALLER: That won’t be (garbled). What there will be is, when you get to a point where people do not believe there is a solution for a problem, depression sets in. Not depression in an economic sense but in an emotional sense. They get to the point where they say to themselves, “There is nothing that we can do to bring this country back to where it was. Everything is lost. The future is lost,” and that may evolve into something more dangerous.

RUSH: Oh, you don’t want to go there. I see what you’re saying. I know. You’re tiptoeing. You’re talking revolution, Beatles, whenever it was, that’s what you’re talking about. He doesn’t want to say it. Look, I should preface the question here. We got Pat Buchanan, who’s written two or three times now that this movement is alive and for real and it survives Trump, that it is going to be growing, it is going to be demanding things, it’s not going away. The people who support Trump will not just vanish if Trump doesn’t win.

Doug Schoen has written a piece today basically saying the same thing. Trump has disrupted politics and shown that outsiders can make inroads and maybe one day one of them can win, even though they don’t know anything about governing, he writes, that one day they might be able to win. Well, that presumes that the Trump movement and all of the people that make it up survive Trump if he doesn’t win this. That’s my only question. Because you people have been out there long before Trump came along. You’ve been angry at trade deals long before last July. You’ve been upset at NAFTA since 1992, ’94, whenever it was. Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Immigration goes way, way back. I mean, the people that support Trump, from wherever they come, have been out there long before Trump came along. Trump has mobilized them. So the question, what becomes of them if there isn’t a leader? Now, Schoen’s point is that another leader will pop up, that another outsider will see, hey, you know what, if we do this differently, do that differently. Like let’s not insult this person, let’s not insult that person, maybe we’ll win the next to.

My point, the establishment is scared to death that this is not gonna go away. I think there’s another — will Trump go away? Let me ask you this. Again we’re speaking hypothetically, and I’m not predicting anything. Just anticipating. Let’s say that Trump does not win the nomination but he is aware, he knows how many millions of people are behind him. He knows how many millions of people support him. He knows how many millions of people invested their hopes and their dreams in him; what does he do?

Does he go back to sitting high atop Trump Tower, building hotels and buildings and dealing with the ChiComs and the Mexicans? Or does he attempt to mobilize and grow this political movement that he now leads and heads up? I think a lot of establishment people, a lot of Republicans think that Trump will take his marbles and go home if he doesn’t win. And I think they might be misjudging things. I think Trump’s gonna be hard-pressed to let go of this in the event that he doesn’t win the nomination because there’s a movement there, and it’s serious, and it’s large, and it has the potential. It’s only gonna grow.

If the Democrats win it’s only gonna grow. It may be idly sitting by, frustrated and angry, but it’s only gonna grow. This is too important to people. Their kids, their grandkids, the people are fed up. You don’t sit idly by and just let it happen when you’re not earning any more money, when you’re not able to keep your job, you don’t just sit idly by and let it happen. So I think there’s much more going on here than maybe some in the establishment think. I think they think they can vanquish this by denying the Trumpists the nomination. And I think they are woefully misunderstanding.