RUSH: Mel in Reno, Nevada. Welcome, sir. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. Hey, I want to make a point about the next election here. I think that Trump is definitely gonna win this next time around. My concern is who’s gonna be our bench guy? Who’s gonna be the next guy or girl that takes it over and keeps these programs going, builds on it? I’m thinking Ted Cruz, maybe. I want to get your thoughts.
RUSH: Well, it’s an interesting question. (crumbling up paper) This is the Lisa Murkowski press release. I’m throwing it out. I already know what it says. I don’t mean to be rude here. I just need to clear the clutter from my desk. My question to you is, Mel, do you think…? So Trump… Let’s hypothetically Trump wins and serves the next four years. Do you think at that point, the Republican Party will then be Trump’s party? Or do you think that maybe the Republican Party will not want any more Trump and might want to go a different direction?
CALLER: I think they’re gonna want to be like Trump. I think four more years will bring some more people along. You’ve seen the Rand Pauls and other people turn and get on his side.
RUSH: I agree with you. I think if you look at the young, energetic Republicans in Congress — the Jim Jordans, the John Ratcliffes (gosh, I don’t want to leave anybody out here), Lee Zeldin — there’s all kinds of them. I’m leaving some out. Kevin McCarthy. There’s a bunch of them here that are a new breed. They are brawlers; they’re fighters. They’re not the typical Republicans afraid of the media, afraid of what’s gonna be said about them if they stand up. I think that this is… It has been a while. It’s been a long time coming.
But it’s a trend, and I think it is gonna be more and more obvious the Republican Party is Trump’s party. Take a look at this unity. You know, this is something that has a lot of people in Washington — even people on our side, folks — really, really kind of puzzled. The Republican Party… If you go back to Trump being elected 2016 and he gets inaugurated 2017, remember the first nine months? They couldn’t get anything done. They couldn’t agree on reforming, getting rid of Obamacare, nothing. You know why?
Because a lot of House Republicans, A, resented Trump or hated him, and B, believed this Russian story, and they thought he was toast. They thought it was only a matter of time. They fell for that whole hoax hook, line, and sinker. As such, they didn’t want to make any investment tying themselves to Trump because they didn’t want to be sent out of town with him — and then nine months into 2017, things began to change as it became obvious…
See, and to most of us it was obvious from day one. But to these Republicans, they began to see that maybe this Russia thing is made up, that maybe it’s a hoax, that maybe the whole thing is a gigantic coup. Well, you go back to the first nine months 2017 to today, the fact that not a single Republican in the House of Representatives has voted with the Democrats once on anything regarding this impeachment. Not one Republican has fallen out.
Do you realize how unique that is? The Republicans haven’t had that kind of unity. They didn’t have this kind of unity back in 2015 after they’d won the House for the first time in 40 years. You still had some Republicans back then that didn’t like Newt, didn’t like the incoming House freshmen, and it’s uncanny to have this kind of unity. I’m telling you, there are people in the media (even on our side) in Washington who still can’t believe this. In the Senate, you kind of expect it. We’ve got the usual suspects.
There’s three of them of them over there that we all make jokes that we can count on them voting with the Democrats — Murkowski, Susan Collins, a couple others depending. But in the House, not one. Not one in this. So it is Trump’s party, particularly in the House. And in the Senate, do you realize how normal it would have been for a few Republicans to vote for witnesses? That would have been perfectly normal. That’s who they are, voting against their party for whatever reason. It isn’t gonna happen.
What’s the reason for this unity, do you think — and if it holds and Trump does serve a second term, then it’s clearly gonna be his party. And whoever ends up seeking to replace him, whoever runs for the Republican nomination 2024, I don’t think they’re gonna be squishes. I mean, you might have a couple. You’ll have some Never Trumpers out there all the time (sniveling), “I just object totally to the mean-spirited nature of our party, and we must get back to the well-mannered party that got rolled all the time. That’s when things were more normal.”
You’re gonna have those people out there all the time, but they’re not gonna be prominent.
It’s astounding when you stop and think about it.
Not one defection, folks.
Not one!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: John in Tacoma, Washington. I’m glad you waited. I appreciate it. Welcome back. How are you, sir?
CALLER: Very well. Hello, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: Just wanted to let you and your audience know what happened last week when I went to the March for Life over in Olympia, Washington. First there was a good crowd there. The news outlets that I read said there were around 5,000 people gathered around the steps of the capitol building. But there was a change in what happened this year that really caught my attention. See, in past years as the anti-abortion demonstrators would walk around to the steps of the capitol building, there would be a group of pro-abortion activists shouting obscenities and kind of carrying on in the way you normally see crazy leftists do, you know, with their profane, loud, stupid chants as we would walk past them.
But this year there was just one counterdemonstrator there — just one — and it struck me so much that I went over and took a picture of ’em, but I couldn’t tell if this person was a man or a woman hiding behind their sign. They kind of looked like a Kilroy, you know, looking over their sign. There was none of the regular screaming, none of the regular chants, just that one person standing on the steps of the supreme court building, and they just stood there. And the reason that I wanted to talk to you this, Rush — well, one of the reasons —
RUSH: This is Olympia, Washington, where this happened?
CALLER: Yes, sir. Yes, sir — and that’s part of my point, because this is Washington. I mean, we had legalized abortion by popular vote before Roe v. Wade. But now it seems like the hardcore people who are supporting this have just kind of withered away and gone away. They just weren’t there. The thing is, as far as I could tell, none of the mainstream media covered this at all. I mean, they did cover that there was a march, and they did cover that there were about 5,000 pro-life people out there.
But nobody seemed to cover that there was just one counterdemonstrator out there. I’m hoping, one, that this is an indicator of how popular opinion is going in the country. But also I was thinking about with this backdrop… I mean, right now we have the most pro-life president that I’ve ever seen. I think the most pro-life president that we’ve ever had. So my impression is, we gotta keep supporting this guy through all the garbage he’s going through. I mean, this impeachment is just one of the last things. But we gotta keep supporting him.
RUSH: Right. Okay. So your question has to do with where have the pro-aborts gone, where have the pro-choicers gone? It’s a good question. I would have to speculate. In the state of Washington, you would be far more quick to answer that than I would be. The only thing I can tell you about this is the way it has changed the Republican Party. Look, in 1992, I went to the Republican convention in Houston, and it was known — that convention was known — for the pro-choice Republican women that were demanding that the Republican Party get rid of this pro-life position.
Interestingly, the leader of Women for Choice in the Republican Party was Ann Stone, the wife of Roger Stone at the time. It was a huge deal. It was also this convention where he the Republican Party was raked over the coals by a woman who had acquired AIDS through a blood transfusion. The Republican Party was being told left and right what a bunch of bigots it is for not having the right attitude about homosexuals and AIDS and then pro-choice. Now look! There is no pro-choice Republican coalition to speak of.
The pro-life contingent of the Republican Party owns it. They have totally beaten it back. There isn’t any. This is a major, major political victory and achievement for pro-life political groups and forces, because in addition to the morality of the issue, they also fight it in the political arena. So it’s a political success that they’ve had — and, as an issue, it’s no longer dividing the Republican Party. It used to be a huge thing.
I couldn’t go anywhere without these establishment Republicans getting all over me, telling me I had to get the Christians in line, or I had to get the pro-lifers in line. “Get ’em to calm down! Get ’em to shut up! We’re never gonna win an election again if these people don’t shut up.” Now look. It’s the pro-aborts and pro-choicers who aren’t even around, and your story in the state of Washington makes it sound like… The question is, “Why?” You know, Trump has not been a pro-lifer his whole life.
Trump was a New Yorker and pro-choice only because it was the path of least resistance. “Yeah, I believe in a woman’s right to choose. Leave me alone. Go away. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.” That was the position you had to have as a New Yorker, if you were gonna be popular in New York, pop culture popular, politically popular. But now Trump is the first sitting president to attend the March for Life in Washington in person. There isn’t any Republican president that’s ever done that.
So it represents a massive political victory and achievement on the part of everybody in the pro-life movement in the Republican Party. It’s a slam-dunk win, and the party is now known for it, and guess what? Guess what? Something we’ve said prior to your all along. It doesn’t hurt. It’s not why Republicans were losing elections back then! The pro-life movement is not why Republicans were losing. You couldn’t win an election as a Republican without those voters. There are that many of them. It was never true that they were costing the Republican votes. In fact, it probably was much more true stated the other way.
Anyway, John, I appreciate the call.