RUSH: Here is Tim in Houston. It’s great to have you, sir. I’m glad you waited. I appreciate your patience.

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: Is Rand Paul and all of his running buddies over there naive enough to think that if they go against this declaration, that a Democratic president in the future wouldn’t do it regardless of what he did? I mean, nothing… You know, when gun control comes up, climate change, they’re gonna say, “This is so dire, this is so important, it precludes anything a Republican did,” and they’re just gonna do it regardless.

RUSH: Yeah. I think Senator Paul here is basically a man of principle, and on this I think he sees a freebie. He can take a stand on this for his constituents and be on the right side of it and know that his vote’s not gonna affect anything.

CALLER: Well, to believe that you’re setting a precedent so a Democrat president won’t do it is very naive thinking on my part.

RUSH: Well, you know what I don’t like about that thinking — I know what you’re talking about. (impression) “Well, we can’t do the nuclear option ’cause what happens if a Democrat gets…?” Well, ask Harry Reid about that. Harry Reid triggered the nuclear option and guess what? It did come back to bite the Democrats in the rear end. They did it anyway! We’ve got to get rid… You know what we expect? Let me tell you exactly what we expect. This is the Never Trumpers, this is the RINOs, and I think this has to do in large part — not totally, but, in large part — with upbringing.

There is an element in American culture that says good behavior and proper manners and comportment will always redound to your benefit down the road. So the theory is that if you demonstrate that you are honorable and of good manners, that you will be rewarded down the road by people who will recognize your decency and your goodness. Well, that may work in church, and it may work with certain elements, but it doesn’t work in politics where you have nothing but vipers who are willing to take advantage of anything they see as weakness.

So the Never Trumpers. The Never Trumpers have always believed that if we lose with honor, that eventually we will win because people will see that we are the ones with virtue and that we will be supported and our ideas will be supported in time, because the voters will see that we are the ones with virtue. Well, the Never Trumpers’ magazines are closing down, the Never Trumpers’ websites have gone broke, the Never Trumpers are now forming new websites that will go broke, all the while believing that they have virtue that will be rewarded somewhere down the road.

The way it’s looking, they may have to get to the Pearly Gates before that virtue is recognized — and many of them don’t believe in the Pearly Gates, so they’re really up between a rock and a hard place. The way that manifests itself here is, “Okay. We have a genuine crisis at the border. We have an illegal immigration crisis, and we have a political opposition that doesn’t want to stop it. We have a president who does want to stop it, but we hate the president because he embarrasses us. So we’re not gonna help the president.

“And we hope somewhere down the road the people that hate the president are gonna reward us for being virtuous in also hating the president, and that we will somehow benefit.” That’s their thinking. It’s a defensive way of thinking, and it’s incorporated here. “If we stand fast…” I’ll tell you, the best way to illustrate how this manifests itself is Supreme Court picks. The Democrats, when they are in the presidency, nominate these radical left-wing lunatics as judges. And look at the confirmation rates. It’s 88, 92 votes to confirm, because the Republicans say, “Well, they won!

“The Constitution says the president gets his judges. We will be virtuous. We will show the American people that we are people of honor. We understand the president’s party won and the president gets his judges,” and they think that the American people are then going to reward them the next time their party is the president, that the Democrats are gonna behave the same way when a Republican president nominates his judges. Except it never happens, does it? Take your pick. Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor? They skate through.

They end up with 75 to 82 to 92 votes, and then you get Kavanaugh, and you see what happen to Kavanaugh. And then you get what they tried to do to Gorsuch. Well, they kind of took it easy on Gorsuch because there was nothing much to do. It wasn’t changing the balance of power on the court. But you saw what they tried to do to Alito and so forth. It never works out! There is never a repayment for the virtue.

So if Rand Paul thinks that standing firm against this use of executive power will somehow mean that the Democrats do not use that similar power the next time they’re in the White House, it is just sophistry. The Democrats aren’t gonna care. The Democrats are not gonna sit there and say, “You know what? We better not declare this national emergency, because remember when the Democrats joined us in opposing Trump? We owe them.” (Snort!) It is just a frustrating, defensive posture, and it relies on something that just doesn’t exist. It used to!

Folks, it’s part of what we lost.

There used to be these rewards for virtuous citizenship.

Not anymore.

It just doesn’t exist.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s David in Boca Raton in Florida. Great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you. Hey, Rush. I don’t think that Rand Paul is naive enough to think that if he votes against the emergency declaration that the Democrats won’t use it. The Democrats were already thinking about how to use it the next time they get into power. I think that Rand Paul just likes to be seen as the voice of reason, and it’s no skin off his back to vote against it right now because it’s gonna pass anyway. Not just that, but I think —

RUSH: Well, that’s right. So he can appear to be man of principle with his constituency there in Kentucky.

CALLER: Right, and I think that it will make Trump look even stronger because rather than the Senate just going along with him, he gets to override the veto. You know, he gets to veto the thing and they can’t override it. So he’ll win and people will think, “Hey, look, you know, Trump’s really standing up for us.”

RUSH: Well, yeah. Trump, I don’t think, has any danger of losing his base on any of this. That would be, you know, icing on the cake. “Look, Trump is really…” I don’t think people believe that Trump is defecting or even thinking of defecting on the whole issue of immigration. The larger point here is, to me, the Republicans in the Senate anyway, and what they think they’re doing. Folks, I can’t emphasize enough. You’ve got Mitt Romney in there, and you know that Mitt Romney is a Never Trumper. He doesn’t like Trump.

I just saw there’s a little session in the Oval Office moments ago. They had the videotape. A recently rescued or released prisoner from somewhere in the Middle East is being recognized and feted in the Oval Office, and Mitt Romney’s sitting in there along with Lindsey Graham and some other people. And the press, by the way, was asking Trump, “What do you think of the new satellite photos that show the Norks are developing a new nuclear installation?” I don’t know what Trump said to that.

But I’ll guaran-damn-tee you that that’s one of the reasons Trump walked out of the negotiations over there. That’s all it would have taken, for them to learn that the Norks are going back on everything and are in fact building a brand-new nuclear installation. Why in the hell hang on? This is clear indication that North Korea was never on the up-and-up about any of this. So there was no reason to stay, no reason to go through any of the motions on it. But anyway, about the Republicans and this. (Sigh)

You get back to losing with honor.

It’s the best that I can describe what seems to be the prevalent Republican attitude, that if they behave with what they consider to be honor, what they consider to be virtue, that because of long traditions and mores and morality in America, they are ultimately going to be rewarded for their virtue and for their honor. “Honor and virtue” usually is translated as the Democrats getting what they want; Republicans saying, “Well, what the Democrats want is reasonable, and we’re not gonna stand in the way of it.”

And it oftentimes also becomes opposing their own president. Somehow there seems to be honor — or the seeking of media approval or something along those lines. It’s just… It’s the frustrating thing. Trump is doing what he can, I think, to have as much unity in his party behind his actions for a host of reasons, not the least of which is to have a wall of opposition to any impeachment conviction in the Senate. So there’s a lot of moving parts to explain all of this. But there’s no question there’s an emergency.

There’s no question there’s a crisis. There’s no question that we have an invasion going on. Do you realize all of this is still over a measly $2.5 billion to $3 billion dollars? When you stop and think what all of this is really all about, it’s senseless. In a federal budget of $4 trillion, people are taking a stand on all this for $2.5 billion? It’s the power of whoever these donors are that want open borders. Both parties who want amnesty. It is abundantly clear that they are the ones pulling the strings.