RUSH: Bill, great to have you on the program today. Hello, sir.
CALLER: It’s an honor, Rushbo. Thank you.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: You know, sometimes, you know, this Colorado thing, sometimes we, the American people, need to be protected from ourselves. You know, we have the most uninformed electorate, and they are — I can’t believe it, but it’s almost the same as if my 12-year-old child wanted to pilot a jet airliner that we were getting on, I would stop him. And I think that’s what we need here, is some people stepping up, trying to stop somebody who I believe is not ready for the presidency.
RUSH: That’s a dangerously elitist view, to suggest that disenfranchisement of voters makes sense because the voters may be a bunch of Nimrods. That’s a dangerous beginning. Where does that stop? I mean, I could make the case that everybody that votes for a Democrat’s an idiot and ought not be allowed to because they’re placing everything in great peril.
CALLER: Well, yeah, you just said it Rush. (laughing).
RUSH: (laughing) You’d go for that, huh?
CALLER: But the thing is that we need someone who can run this country at this time, not on emotion, but with a real knowledge of the Constitution and to get us out of this —
RUSH: Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait. Hold it just a second now. You’re obviously speaking against Trump, but can I ask you who, in either party, in recent years do you think has done a good job of running the country?
CALLER: Well, I’m gonna have to go back to the old default, Reagan, because other than that, I see we’ve really strayed —
RUSH: Well, look, this is the way Trump supporters are looking at it. No matter who the establishment throws up it’s just gonna be more of the same. It’s gonna be more out-of-control spending. It’s gonna be more empowerment of the federal government. It’s gonna be bigger and bigger government. It’s gonna be less and less freedom and liberty and less money to be made by people in the private sector. They’re tired of accepting promises. They’re tired of holding their nose and voting for the lesser of two evils. They think they’ve got nothing to lose by going with somebody that you describe as a know-nothing.
CALLER: Well, we have a lot to lose. I am a Cruz supporter.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: But the thing is is that we don’t just sink the ship just because we have an axe to grind against —
RUSH: That’s just it; they don’t think they’re sinking the ship. Why do you think, honestly — don’t detect any combativeness in my voice. I’m just impassioned here. There’s no contentiousness or argument here. Why do you think Trump supporters are supporting him? Can you give me two or three reasons? Is there a number one overriding reason that you think they’re supporting him?
CALLER: I think this is a backlash as far as in your face. It’s just a way to get back. It’s a reaction more than it is an actual thought process.
RUSH: Okay. I have read the learned theories of the learned members of the commentariat in both conservative and liberal enclaves, and there seems to be some agreement with that sentiment, which is boiled down to, you basically have a bunch of people, Trump supporters who are fed up and totally ticked off with the fact that they keep losing, and they think it’s cause the government’s picking winners. And so they’re mad, and they want to take it out on somebody, and they’re gonna vote for Trump because they think that’s the best way to show how mad they are. That is a pretty commonly held view of the average Trump voter.
Now, I’m here to tell you, there are a whole lot of Trump voters that I know who are not angry in that way. They don’t blame anybody. In fact, many of the Trump voters I know are pretty successful. They’re not running around bent out of shape about that. Most of the people that I know supporting Trump do so for two reasons — and I’ll tell you what they are when I get back — and not one of them has anything to do with conservatism or liberalism or anything of the sort.
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RUSH: Okay. The two reasons, primary two reasons I have detected people I know who are supporting Trump. And, again, there’s a conventional wisdom out there. And it comes from many in conservative media. It comes from establishment types, that the Trump voter is an idiot, white, middle class, lower middle class, almost in poverty, fed up, has made rotten life choices and wants to blame everybody else and is running around enraged, filled with rage, and just wants people to know how mad they are, and that’s what Trump is.
And, I’m sorry, that’s your average Democrat voter. Your average Democrat voter is exactly described that way: somebody filled with rage, somebody that wants to get even with somebody. They’re fed up with not having their lives have any meaning, not mattering, and they’re fit to be tied about it. And they believe the Democrat Party is gonna punish people for ’em by raising their taxes or whatever else. And they’re made happy by other people suffering. That is not your Trump voter. There may be some people like that, but that’s not who they are, the vast majority of them.
I’ll just tell you, the ones I know who are for Trump, some of them are reluctantly for Trump. Some of them are adamantly for Trump. But the two reasons are — and one of them is gonna shock you. The first reason — and not in any priority here — but they just have had it with the Republican Party, call it the establishment or whatever. They just lost total confidence. The last seven years there has been no opposition to the things the Democrat Party has done that have wrought, tremendous, real, measurable, demonstrable damage and change, for the worse, to this country.
The cultural depravity that’s going on and being normalized is one thing. The economic destruction. There’s no economic growth. There can’t be. The government is taking all of the growth and absorbing it. It’s getting bigger. The private sector cannot create enough growth to keep up because it’s getting smaller and smaller, and 94 million Americans in it are not even working. So there is no GDP gain of any substance, and that is maddening. It is frustratrating. These people all have kids and grandkids. And government is not where fortunes are made. Well, see, if you’re Solyndra, if you’re GE, if you’re a corporation engaging in corporate cronyism with government, you can make a fortune, and even some individuals can do it.
But for the most part the way it’s always been done is the tried-and-true way defined as the American dream. That’s getting more and more limited as time goes on because the economy is shrinking because the government’s taking. This worries people tremendously. And it’s not, by the way, folks, it’s not that they think Trump — I want to be very clear about this — it’s not that they think Trump is eminently qualified.
They just have had it with these so-called experts trying to run everything and screwing everything up, from the economic system to the health care system to targeting private sector industries as the enemies of America, they’ve had it, they’re fed up with it. Not to mention immigration and what’s happening to the demographic makeup of the country. It’d be one thing if this were happening with controlled assimilation and the definitive American culture that there’s always been was being maintained and sponsored and grown. But it’s not. It’s being eroded, on purpose and by design. And the Republican Party’s not lifting a finger to stop it and, in fact, in many ways wants to join in it when it comes to immigration.
So they’re fed up. They’ve been told one too many times to hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. And that leads into the second reason, and the second reason is — and I think this is the one that’s gonna shock you — they think Trump’s the only guy that can beat Hillary Clinton. They think Donald Trump, matter what the polls say, no matter what all the learned commentary says, they don’t care about all these polls that show disapproval and high negative numbers. They think Donald Trump is the only guy who can beat Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders, whoever it’s gonna be. But it’s likely gonna be Hillary, and that’s another thing. They don’t want any part of Hillary Clinton.
Which leads to another thing. When they hear elected Republicans say they would probably vote for Hillary instead of either Cruz or Trump, that’s another reason why they don’t want any part of the establishment. They don’t want to support people who are actually out saying that kind of thing. The problem is, the election of Democrats does not hurt Republicans living in Washington. The election of Democrats does not harm the Republican establishment, except maybe they don’t hold onto Senate committee chairmanships, and maybe they don’t run the House, but outside of that, these teeming hordes of illegal immigrants are not living where they work.
The social and political and business cultures of Washington, DC, and the parts of New York City where they hang around doesn’t change whether Democrats or Republicans are elected. But you get outside Washington, you go to any state in this country, and it matters to people. When a Democrat gets elected to the presidency, it’s not good for most people, particularly most Republicans. It isn’t good. And the last seven years are prima facie evidence of it.
So they look at the establishment and they say, for crying out loud, these guys, the light goes off in their head. It doesn’t matter to them when the Democrats win. It doesn’t really negatively affect their lives any. Life still goes on for them. But when Democrats are elected and run the 
White House and run the House and Senate, start getting hold of all these regulatory agencies and bureaucracies, start passing laws left and right, all that happens is that government grows and grows, freedom and liberty are becoming more and more limited, economic opportunity gets stifled.
They’ve had it. Seven years of not even fighting back against it. Seven years of not even opposing any of it. It doesn’t take much for somebody to come along and say he’s gonna fight back or whatever, even pass himself off as a combative, street fighter kind of guy. You could throw conservatism, liberalism out, in terms of some of these people that I’ve known that are supporting Trump.
And, by the way, they’ve got their concerns about him. They worry he doesn’t know what he’s doing. They worry doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They worry he’s not in-depth, a policy guy, but in many cases that’s even a plus for him, ’cause they so detest. They’re just fed up.
Remember, these are people in their sixties, folks, kids and grandkids. They’re fed up. They’ve had a lifetime full of, and particularly the last seven years, of the most radical Democrat Party expansion that we have seen in our lives not be opposed, not be stopped, not even campaigned against in a serious way. So the levels of frustration are reaching a maximum point. So it’s not just one reason. Two reasons are primary, but I can just illustrate here how they are related to so many other things.
And I’m surprised by some of it like you are. I’m surprised when Trump illustrates he doesn’t know what he’s talking about on a policy or some in-depth matter that most people are familiar with. It amazes me that it doesn’t matter. But I have to keep reminding myself, that’s not why he’s supported. In fact, that kind of in-depth understanding and ability to discuss policy like it’s discussed in Washington is itself a negative.
It just sends the signal that it’s gonna be more of the same. A lot of people are serious that Washington needs to be rebuilt. Not the country needs to be transformed; it’s Washington that needs to be transformed. There’s nothing wrong with the country other than what the Democrat Party primarily is doing to it, but the Republicans are culpable because they’re not stopping it. It’s a big, big deal.