RUSH: Here’s Robert in Roanoke, Virginia. Welcome. Great to have you here. Hello.

CALLER: Good afternoon, sir. Prayers to you and Kathryn, and this is an honor that was second only to shaking Trump’s hand.

RUSH: Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate that. I really do. Thank you.

CALLER: Now, to my point. I — I told Snerdley what my question was. May I add a roll-on question after that one? I don’t want to break the rules.

RUSH: Sure, go ahead. There’s no rules. Whatever you want.

CALLER: (laughing) Well, now that the GOP’s turned their back on, well, Trump and the rest of us — for the most part, not all of them, but for the most part — and we see how elections can be manipulated and done with at will, is there any reason to vote for the GOP again? And, furthermore, even if a third party comes out of this, is it just as fruitless?

RUSH: You know, this is a… (sigh) It’s a tough thing. I think it’s a personal decision for about everybody that’s gonna be involved in this. There needs to be an organized opposition to the Democrats. There needs to be a place where the fruits and labors of the organized opposition can vote. There has to be some mechanism for the opposition to have a chance.

I’ve got a couple of stories here that I can share with you that I think will maybe give you some clarity on this on what other people are thinking about it. I got a story here from Joel Pollak at Breitbart and John Nolte at Breitbart, and they’ve got a couple theories or answering your question. I also got a note from a friend who basically is voicing the same question that you’re asking, only in an opinion.

The email that he sent me says, “They turned their backs on it when it matters. But today, they’re sending out press releases and being interviewed in local media complaining about what Biden is doing with the Keystone XL, Paris climate accords, immigration.” Now, what this means is that Biden gave his inaugural address, and the Republicans in Washington did what they know how to do.

They went out and created some fundraising letters to send to their massive mailing lists, and they begged a bunch of people to give them money. They expressed shock and outrage that the Democrats would ever try to go back in the Paris climate accords, or that they would shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, or that they would get rid of the wall — and this is what irritates people.

“Where were you? We had a guy to stop this! We had somebody that was perfectly capable of stopping all of this. His name was Donald Trump, and all you had to do was support him. But you couldn’t because it’s an establishment thing, and you didn’t think he belonged (and you do). So you enable the forces in opposition to Trump to win, and now you’re sending us fundraising emails asking us to help you stop Biden and the Democrats?

“If you want to stop Biden now, why didn’t you want to stop him in October? Why didn’t you want to stop him in September?” I don’t know that these people understand the level of sophistication of the average Republican voter today. What I just voiced is by no means educational for you. You feel it yourself. You don’t need me to tell you what’s going on here.

These are the very same people who are sending you fundraising letters asking you to help them stop Biden and the Keystone pipeline and the Paris accords. You’re scratching your heads (or worse) and saying, “We had a guy in office that had stopped all of this! We weren’t in the Paris accords. The Keystone pipeline was running. It was up and running.

“Immigration was in the process of being fixed. We had the guy. You helped get rid of him! Why in the world…?” It just doesn’t compute. So your question: “Should we be supporting the Republican Party?” It would be… Man, I… Why would you? But it’s up to you. You know, maybe they should have done something about election fraud.

Maybe they should have been concerned about all this so that Biden wouldn’t win. But when you get right down to it, they wanted Biden to win; they wanted Trump gone, because they are establishment types themselves. I just… I find this mind-boggling. After Biden’s inauguration speech, here come the emails. Have you seen these fundraising emails, Mr. Snerdley?

I mean, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s so unnecessary. We had the guy in place who had stopped it all. He had stopped them in the Paris accords and the Keystone pipeline. He had shut them down. Oh, man, you talk about frustrating. Now, here’s Joel Pollak in Breitbart: “Where Trump Supporters Go from Here.” I’ll just share with you some pull quotes here to give an idea of what his piece is about.

“Unlike his predecessors, [Trump] never broke the law (Clinton), or the rules of the Constitution (Obama), but he tested the limits of democracy by trusting his ‘movement’ to impose its will. [Trump’s] boldness made him an extraordinarily successful president — until [the] disastrous January 6 challenge, which has left the Republican Party divided and dispirited.”

If that… Aw, that should never have happened. None of that on January 6 should ever had happened. Another pull quote: “To a large extent, Biden’s sweeping promises will be defeated more by reality than by Republicans. ‘For a left-wing party in power, its most serious antagonist is always its own past propaganda,’ George Orwell observed.”

Exactly. What he means is, they’re gonna raise their expectations so high that they’re not gonna be able to fulfill them for anybody, and they’re gonna overstep in the process. They’re going to, in essence, essentially sabotage themselves more than the Republicans will. See, if you’re asking me, “Well, Rush… Rush, what do we do?” I would actually give it a lot of thought, because what if Orwell is right?

What if, at the end of the day, the Democrats are gonna end up sabotaging themselves? Then you don’t have to give any money to Republicans to make that happen, ’cause it will. Don’t doubt me. Another pull quote: “Rebuilding without Donald Trump must include his policies,” it must include “the MAGA agenda.” Well, do you think that the Republican hierarchy in the House and the Senate right now are in any away desirous of incorporating the MAGA agenda?

They want no part of it. They are looking forward to the Mitt Romneys of the world reconstituting the Republican Party as it was in the early 2000s and the mid-2000s, before Trump came along and corrupted the whole thing. They don’t want any part of MAGA. Now, why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they? What in the world is so off putting about Make America Great Again?

Mr. Pollack says, “The GOP should also retain Trump’s approach to free trade, which was astonishingly successful, and insist on reciprocity with our trading partners. … Republicans can also challenge Democrats’ claim to be the party of ‘science.’ The pandemic has proved that boast [to be the party of ‘science’] to be a farce, as Democrats imposed unnecessarily harsh lockdowns, and the teachers’ unions in big Democrat-run cities and states forced children to stay at home when they were at minimal risk of transmitting the coronavirus or suffering” from it.

So those are a couple things from Joel Pollak. John Nolte: “[W]hen I say the ‘Republican Party,’ I’m not talking about Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. I’m talking about us, we the people, those who call themselves Republicans, but only because that was the party Trump chose to run with.

So ask yourself, are you a Republican because of Ted Cruz, of Rubio, of McConnell, Paul Ryan, or are you a Republican because of Trump? Because there are different kinds of Republicans. “In just five years…” This is profound, here, folks. I’ve made this point myself countless times. “In just five years,” starting in 2015, “the Republican Party had become the party of the working class,” the party that [backed] private unions members…

“The party fighting for civil liberties and [fighting] against the suicide of free trade. We’re the party standing side-by-side with legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez to stop illegal immigration. We’re the ones opposing endless wars, the corporatizing of America, Big Mergers, Big Consolidation…”

In other words, we used to be the party of Wall Street, the party of big banks, the party of Chamber of Commerce, the party of all that. We’re not. Trump turned the Republican Party into the party of the people. Now the Democrats are the party of the rich. The Democrats are the party of the idle wealthy and of Wall Street.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, you really have to ask yourself, why are you a Republican? Now, you can start your answer, “Well, I was a Republican because of Reagan, or I was a Republican because of Bush.” But I think you’re a Republican because of what the Republicans promised you they would do if elected. You believed what their stated agenda was, and you elected them on that basis.

So then more often than not after they were elected that agenda vanished. It just didn’t happen. There was always some excuse. There was always some reason after they were elected that they discovered that was gonna make it really, really hard like Mitch McConnell say, “Well, we need 60 votes here in the Senate. We don’t have ’em.”

And then the big kahuna came along, Donald Trump. What did Trump do? Why, he began to implement that very agenda, and he called it making America great again. It was like a renaissance. Finally people said, thank God there’s somebody that actually wants to do these things. And then he started doing ’em. He kept every promise. He kept promises he didn’t make. Even in the midst of trying to destroy him, he kept on. It was an amazing thing to watch. A four-year effort to destroy Donald Trump, and he kept on.

That’s how he developed the reputation as a fighter. People loved him for it. They loved him for all of the right reasons. And that’s why they’re loyal to him, and that’s why they hate to see him go. But then, as I just mentioned, the very Republican Party whose agenda he helped implement, four or five of them were around, but most weren’t. They didn’t like him for implementing the agenda. You’re not supposed to do that, don’t you know, Trump? The agenda’s supposed to be something we always promise but don’t quite get there so we can continue to raise money.