RUSH: One other little note of comparison. People are trying to get their arms around this enthusiasm for Trump, the size of his rallies and so forth. I’ve even heard some people comparing it to Obama in 2008. There’s a stark difference, folks. I believe it’s a seminal point. The crowds that Obama was drawing… You know, he goes to Germany, and wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate as a citizen of the world in 2008. Wherever Obama went, there were huge crowds, back in 2008. I really think the crowds were there for Obama and not a movement, because Obama didn’t represent a movement.
Obama represented the fact he was not George Bush. The media and the Democrats had successfully ginned up so much hatred for George Bush and the Republicans that all Obama had to be was different. All he had to do was represent “change.” Obama, in fact, was an empty canvas, if you recall. People could make Obama whatever they wanted him to be. He could be postracial. He could be postpartisan. He could be whatever people wanted. He was the first African-American.
A guy took out a second mortgage on his home to pay his Obamacare health insurance premium. The Democrats did not get one Republican vote for this. There was no bipartisanship; there was no consensus. The thing was rammed through using parliamentary tricks, delays, budgetary tricks and all kinds of things to make it happen — and lies, such as, “If you like your doctor, keep your doctor! If you like your plan, keep your plan! Your premiums are gonna come down an average $2,500 a year.”
None, absolutely none, of that was true.
If Barack Obama had campaigned honestly about what was to become of the American health care system, he would not have been elected. If Obama had campaigned on what his economic plans would result in, he would not have been elected. If people had known what was to become of our health care system. If people were to know that 94 million Americans were not gonna be working. If people would know that the borders were gonna remain open for all kinds of ill-educated, unskilled, un-English-language-speaking people to storm the gates.
I don’t think the issues driving those people are gonna go away. I don’t think the Republican Party is just gonna be able to pick up where it left off before Trump got the nomination and resume its practices as though nothing has happened here. Those people who came out or who are going to come out and vote for Trump and attend his rallies, are there because of substantive issues that his candidacy represents. That’s not like it was in 2008 with people supporting Obama.
He was not Bush; he was whatever you wanted him to be. He was not the Iraq war, he was not torture, he was not Abu Ghraib, he was not Club Gitmo. Whatever the left and the media has succeeded in making the American people hate, Obama was not. But he did not campaign on anything other than platitudes: Lowering the sea levels, having the United States loved and respected around the world, ending all wars, free health care for everybody. None of it happened. We are not more loved and respected.
We are more disrespected and laughed at by nations around the world, and we are a great nation at greater risk than ever before in the world today. We are in more wars than Obama could count when he assumed office in ’08. You get to Mrs. Clinton, and look what we have learned about her. Look at what we have confirmed that we thought we knew about her. A serial, untruthful liar. A person who is driven solely by ambition. She and her husband’s primary objective in remaining in public life after his presidency was to get personally wealthy, to get personally rich — which they’ve done operating a charity.
The things that are propelling people are substantive, issue-oriented items that relate directly to the kind of country we are going to have, the kind of people and country we are going to be. And that movement — whatever you want to call it: Populism, nationalism, conservatism light, whatever it is — isn’t going anywhere. I’m unable to tell you how it will manifest itself going forward. It’s gonna be fascinating to watch the Republican Party deal with this, because the Republican Party, folks, is gonna have major problems whether Trump wins or loses.
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