RUSH: From a deeply — when you read this, folks, you can just sense the desperation and the sadness on the page from the Washington Post, headline: “Republicans Are A Lot Closer to ‘Maybe Trump’ than ‘Never Trump.'” This is a piece written by Philip Bump.
“In CBS’s polling, Trump’s lead over Sen. Ted Cruz has dropped since March. Last month, he led by 20 points. Now he leads by 13. But that’s where the good news for the never-Trumpers ends. First of all, Republicans are slightly more likely to say that they would support Trump’s nomination ‘enthusiastically’ than they were last month. Overall, two-thirds of Republicans say they’d support him enthusiastically or with some reservations.
“What’s more, the number of people saying ‘never Trump’ literally — that they’d never vote for him — is essentially the same as the number of people who say that about Cruz or Kasich.”
So there’s no, shall we say, disadvantage in the never-Trump column because it’s no higher than it is for Cruz or Kasich. So in that vein, let’s hit the Karl Rove sound bites. This is from this morning, America’s Newsroom, Bill Hemmer talking with Karl Rove. He says, “Politico says that you have warmed up to Trump, that you’re thinking now of moving closer to Trump. Is that right?”
ROVE: It was a story in yesterday’s Politico, and it is third hand reporting on a conference call we had with our donors. The answer is no. We had a conference call in which we breached our donors. We’re involved in a continuing set of research, focus groups and polls focused on Hillary Clinton and how to beat her. The evidence was that as weak as candidate as she is, he can’t exploit those weaknesses. Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, they don’t come into play.
HEMMER: What’s your conclusion, then? Can he beat her in a national election?
ROVE: The purpose of the call was not to identify that. My personal view is he can’t.
RUSH: That’s Rove disputing that he’s moving closer to Trump and then saying in answer to a question that he does not think Trump can beat Hillary. So we go to Fox on the record with Greta last night talking to Rove, and she says this. “Okay, let’s assume that he gets to 1,237 and he wins, but he’s got this bad number against Clinton, November polling data. Between July and November do you think the Republican Party and Donald Trump could whip up the party to vote for him and get all the needed voters they need to beat Hillary by November? Can he turn this around?”
ROVE: The real question is, can Donald Trump unify the Republican Party? Bob Woodward said, you know, you’ve broken a lot of eggs. Don’t you think it’s time to, you know, stop and unite the party? He said I think I got two more eggs to break. Later on they said to him, you know, don’t you really want to have the support of these people? Do you want the support of Ted Cruz? He says, I don’t want it. He says I think unity is overstated. The nominee of the Republican Party, whoever he is or she is, has to take the principal responsibility for uniting the party. That’s gonna tough for Trump to do if his mind-set is, I don’t need these people.
RUSH: Well, maybe, like our caller said, maybe Trump doesn’t care about uniting the Republican Party. Maybe his objective is to start a whole new one, called the Trump Party, and he’s the nominee of the Trump Party. I mean, an official break from it at some point. If Rove is right here. Only time will tell.