RUSH: We go to Elkton, Virginia.  This is Darrell.  Great to have you with us, sir.  Hello.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush, thanks for taking my call.  I wanted to get your take on Ted Cruz’s coming out supporting the Republican nominee and said he would vote for Donald Trump.  I heard him on Beck this morning and it got pretty contentious with Beck and Beck pretty much said that it was a calculated decision.  What’s your take on it.

RUSH:  Well, of course it was calculated.  Does it bother you that it was calculated?

CALLER:  No, not at all.

RUSH:  So you don’t have a problem with him endorsing Trump?

CALLER:  Absolutely not.

RUSH:  Okay.  I think Ted Cruz is a great conservative, and I always have.  And I think he’s trustworthy with conservatism.  This was not handled well.  My take on this, I couldn’t believe that he didn’t understand — I’m not comfortable putting it that way, ’cause I don’t think he’s dumb.  Okay, Trump offers you a prime time slot at the convention.  You have to figure, if you’re Ted Cruz, that that offer means that there is an expectation that you’re gonna join the party, that you’re gonna endorse, and if you don’t endorse, you’re at least going to say you support, that you are gonna vote for the nominee. 

I think it was a miscalculation to think that he could go to the convention and stand on principle as he was trying to do and not endorse. Because you talk about the calculation, the calculation that he was making was to stay true and loyal to the conservative base for his future.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  I mean, that’s what politics is.  He wants to run again.  He’s Mr. Conservative, and he wants to maintain his credibility, and he decided that endorsing Trump at Trump’s convention would not be appreciated by the conservative base. 

I think he thought he would have many more accolades doing what he did than what he ended up getting.  I think he got the exact opposite of what he was expecting to get.  So I think that was a miscalculation, because he ended up — I mean, after all, this is about winning the White House now, not in 2020, winning it now, it, for a host of reasons, chief among them is keeping Hillary out of it.  And doing it the way Ted did, he managed to upset some clearly conservative donors, and he got a lot of Trump people mad at him.  And if he was going to endorse Trump anyway, as he did, then what he did at the convention wasn’t necessary.  He could have avoided all of that. 

Now, it’s easy to look back in hindsight and be critical, but he could have.  If he was gonna endorse anyway, if he knew he was gonna endorse anyway, and at some point he’s still a Republican, whether he’s estranged from the Republican leadership or thinking conservatism is a branch of the party, still at election time, you come together.  But this has a lot of moving parts.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

One thing on the Ted Cruz situation.  The way things turned out, Ted Cruz ended up being for some, I don’t know how many, but for some the last great hope of conservatism.  There are many out there who believe that other conservatives watered themselves down, diluted their effectiveness by supporting Trump or by not opposing Trump. 

And in the process I think Ted Cruz believed and considered, maybe calculated, that he was indeed the last viable remaining conservative in the elected political realm.  And because of that, thought that if he maintained his principles and steadfastly refused to support Trump, for principled reasons, plus the continuing honoring of his father and others, his wife, who’d come under criticism or defamation, as Cruz saw it, that this would redound to his benefit, to the rock solid conservative movement in the country. 

But if he knew all along that he was going to endorse Trump, then the play he made at the convention by saying vote your conscience and having that interpreted as vote against Trump or don’t vote Trump, however it was interpreted, he went through a bunch of things that turned out to be not necessary to go through. If you’re not gonna endorse at the convention, don’t go.  That was not the place to make a principled stand.  Not the Republican convention, when at that point in time the enemy is Hillary Clinton.  Donald Trump has ceased being the enemy at that point, except to — well, you know, some conservative organizations and so forth.  But in terms of, the vast majority of the American people are not in the conservative movement.  Wish it were otherwise.  There are a lot of conservatives, don’t misunderstand, but the conservative movement and the people who think they define what that is, it’s not a majority club.  Wish that it was, but it isn’t. 

And at the convention, the focus obviously had become on beating Hillary Clinton and Trump was the vessel for that, and a lot of people were unhappy with it, obviously so, that Ted tried to establish his principle bona fides there.  And now he’s got people questioning whether he is principled.  And I think it’s unfortunate.  Some of the reaction that he’s gotten is, “Oh, my God, we don’t have anybody now. Oh, my God, we’ve lost Ted.”  And it’s not that dire.  It isn’t that dire at all.  Except to some it is.  But I don’t believe that it is. 

Anyway, I don’t want to get too far in the weeds on that, that’s another subject.  As far as Ted Cruz is concerned, I have no question about his conservative credentials, bona fides, commitment, principles, any of that.  I just think he made an error in his political calculation over how to deal with things at that convention.  If he wasn’t going to endorse I think it would have been better not to go, pure and simple. I don’t know what he knew then.  I don’t know if that night that he spoke, if he knew that he eventually was gonna endorse Trump or not.  But if he did, if he knew that eventually he was gonna have to — and look, he’s still a Republican.  There’s still demands on Republicans. 

Let me tell you why — let me find something here.  I’m gonna have to find this after the break because we’ve got things out of order here, but I’ve got a great example in front of me.  Here it is.  This is why there’s still a future for Cruz and any number of conservatives.  This little blurb, it’s a tiny little story here, it’s from the Washington Examiner, and the headline of this piece:  “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing.”  And I’m just gonna read a couple of excerpts from it to really get to the point of this. 

“The summit, backed by groups representing young conservative and Christian voters, will hear from a number of Republican lawmakers who support renewable energy and want conservatives to take back leadership from the left on the subject, and to some degree climate change.

“Former presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tops the list of Republicans addressing the Conservative Clean Energy Summit being held Thursday on Capitol Hill. Graham will be joined by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a key Republican advocate for wind energy subsidies and senior member on the Senate Finance Committee.

“Michele Combs, founder and chairwoman of Young Conservatives for Energy Reform, said the summit will be mainly focused on educating lawmakers and voters on the issue, and that “it’s OK for a conservative” to support clean energy from wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass and other resources.”

Now, some people are gonna look at that, and they’re gonna think conservatism is dead.  The conservative movement is dead.  If this is what it’s become, that we have got, on yet another issue, we have got to join the left. We’ve gotta get ourselves involved somehow in the climate change movement by showing that we are for renewables, because we are desperate to get ourselves in the conversation where people understand we are for sustainable. Sustainable, by the way, don’t doubt me, “sustainable” is a keyword in the vocabulary of Millennials. 

The way to reach them is through sustainability. It’s the reason they believe in global warming, by the way.  Aside from the fact that they have been inundated with it from the time they’ve been watching Captain Planet cartoons on Saturday morning — thank you, Ted Turner — they have just been deluged with all of this propaganda on climate change.  And a huge number of Millennials, 18-to-34-year-olds, seriously believe that by the time they’re 65 the planet might not be habitable.  It’s absurd. 

I have a story in the Stack today.  All of these little islands like Diego Garcia and some others that were thought to be dwarfed by rising sea levels are actually expanding.  The square mileage of some of these islands — remember you’ve seen the pictures and the predictions, in a few short years this little island will be overrun by rising — none of it’s happening!  But they think it is.  And they think their parents are to blame for it by not caring and destroying the environment with driving certain cars and all of the things that they’ve been told their parents have done and their grandparents.

So sustainability is a keyword to Millennials, or young conservatives.  And if you tell them that something’s not sustainable, then they will not be for it.  So you tell ’em fossil fuels are not sustainable, you tell ’em modern day capitalism it’s sustainable, they fall for it because they’re afraid that their parents and grandparents have damaged the plantet so bad it may not be able to support life by the time they reach retirement age.  I’m stunned when I found out just how many of them think this. 

So obviously here’s an effort to get in on this, not by informing them of the truth, but by trying to convince them that, yeah, we think what you think, too, even though we really don’t and even though we know they’re wrong, we’re gonna get in on it, we can’t afford not to.  Well, that’s not what conservatism is.  But that’s what it’s become in so many damn ways. It’s become that way on immigration for some leaders, not all.  Take your pick. 

There are any number of issues like this where you combine electability with conservatism and what ends up being compromised is the conservatism.  And this is why there’s still opportunity for principled conservative leaders, but the pressure is on to join the Democrats and the left on all of this wind, solar, renewable stuff.  Not that there’s any wrong with it, folks, but the motivation behind it is all wrong and how far along we are in it is all wrong.  There’s no money to be made. 

Anyway, I’m way long here, and I don’t have much time, and I’m not really gonna be able to say everything I want to say about this so I have to do it another day.