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March 7, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:37
March 7, 2016, Monday, Hour #3
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Yes, Mr. Snerdley has just been throwing the Bernie Sanders line back at me that white folks don't know what it's like to be poor in this part of the world.
In this part of the world, you know, every there's towns here where the economy is basically the first week of the month, because that's when the food stamps kick in.
And that's when the general store arranges for all the shelves to be groaning with all the delight.
That's how it's reoriented the entire ordering system.
The shelves are full for the first days in the month when the food stamps kick in.
And that's Bernie Sanders, Vermont.
You go from me to Bernie Sanders' home, and you're going through one loser town after another.
But Bernie Sanders says there are no poor white people in Vermont.
And you go to some of these general stores and they don't actually know what kind of, you hand them a food stamp, the food stamp card, whatever they call the EBT card or whatever it is, and they know what that is.
You'd like fish out a $20 bill and they say, oh, sorry, we don't take Canadian currency here.
They've never seen it.
They don't know what it is.
That's Bernie Sanders, Vermont.
There's no poor people, no poor white people in Bernie Sanders, Vermont.
It's the magical land of Oz.
And he's the king of the Emerald City.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
Rush is at a charity engagement.
He is a man of honor and he is a man of his word.
And every year he does this charity engagement and he's out.
So even though it was a turbulent weekend on the political front, he honored his charity commitment and he will be back because he's busting to talk to you about where the race stands right now.
And he will take you through the rest of the week with full strength, authentic, all-American excellence in broadcasting.
And it's a very strange race.
Matt Schlapp was talking about the way a year ago people were talking about the strong bench, the 17 candidates and all the rest.
So it's come down to a final four now.
It's going to be one of these guys.
But one of the things, by the way, that has changed since these election results, when you've got 70 to 80 percent of the vote going to Cruz and Trump, they're an interesting pair to me because I get the sense that actually when they insult each other, neither of them really cares about it one way or the other.
I think that's just sort of strictly business.
I think Trump has called Cruz lion Ted and says he's not eligible to be president.
And Cruz has pushed back on that fairly hard and mocked his failed ventures and gotten to the right on him and immigration.
But I wouldn't rule out a Trump and Cruz actually getting together before the convention.
These guys aren't stupid.
And they've got more in common than not getting on and letting the party parachute in some so-called acceptable candidate in a brokered convention.
So the net result of the winnering of the race may not be a stop Trump candidate, but actually be the means by which Trump and Cruz wrap this thing up going forward and come to some kind of deal.
I don't know.
I don't know.
If you look at the actual votes, if you look at states where they're getting 70 to 80 percent, that's basically the ban.
All four of these states, except for Puerto Rico, where Marco Rubio got 70 percent, and none of those guys can vote in November.
But in the places where people can vote in November, Cruz and Trump got a combined 70 to 80 percent.
I talked about that big L. When George Bush II won in 2000, he had a kind of big L going down to the Rockies and out through the South to the Atlantic.
It wasn't a perfect L because he didn't win New Mexico.
So it looked like one of those heeled boots that Marco Rubio favors.
But he had just that little extra blip up in New Hampshire, the four votes that took him to 270.
And that's the minimum.
That's the minimum.
So we can have conservative purity tests.
But in the end, in the end, you have to ask yourself, whoever you go with, has got to be able to put New Hampshire or Colorado in the back just to reassemble that bare bones 270 that George Bush got in the year 2000.
You've got to have New Hampshire.
And a lot of those states, a lot of red states have gone awfully purple, like Virginia and New Hampshire.
A lot of states have gone awfully purple since the year 2000, and some purple states have gone blue.
And the choice is, can Ted Cruz put Colorado or New Hampshire in the bag?
If you're a Cruz supporter, I'd love to hear from you on that.
Because Rush was talking about this the other day.
He watched Cruz's speech on Super Tuesday and Cruz's debate performance, and he wondered whether he was, particularly after Super Tuesday, whether he was kind of narrow casting rather than broadcasting.
In other words, if he was too focused on his strategy was supposedly to appeal to two groups, ideological conservatives and evangelical Christians.
And evangelical Christians basically gave him the bums rush on Super Tuesday.
And Rush, who knows Ted Cruz far better than I do, I've had, I think, you know, a couple of minutes of engagement with him.
That's all.
And he seems a very nice fellow and all the rest of it.
But Rush's suggestion was that Cruz has a broader appeal and that he's kind of putting himself in a kind of slightly narrow box at the moment.
And he's got to be able to broaden that appeal because come November, as I said, it's very simple.
It's all about arithmetic.
If you're going to get to 270 electoral votes, you've got to have Colorado or New Hampshire in there.
The other version of history is that that model, that's basically the Karl Rove model.
Karl Rove basically thought that George Bush Sr.'s victory, where you win California and you win two-thirds of New England, that that's all over.
That's gone.
That map can never be put together again.
California and New England are lost to Republicans in perpetuity, and that you win by maximizing your turnout into a much narrower group of states.
40, this century, this century, 40 states have voted the same way in every presidential election.
So there's two approaches to presidential elections.
Either you're like you focus on those 10 genuine swing states, and they're all that matter, and you try and find enough soccer moms in this or that county to get to the polling station before 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and that'll give you six of those swing states and put you over the top.
Trump is promising, he's saying, oh, I'm huge, and so my victory will be huge.
And all these big delegate states that have been in the Democrat bag for ages, like New York State, I'm going to put back in play.
The evidence for that is, well, you'd have to say it's pretty mixed, but that's what he's promising.
The question for the other Republican candidates is: can you put Colorado or New Hampshire back in the bag?
Even on the anti-Trump side, they're now anti-Trump factionalism, some anti-Trump factions against other anti-Trump factions.
Glenn Beck on ABC compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler in 1929.
Everyone said, well, who is it?
Andy Warhol said in the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes.
I feel I forget that.
Hitler.
So Glenn Beck has said that Trump is a lot like Hitler.
Kathy Schadel, who is a Canadian blogger, said that she was a lot more worried that Trump would turn out to be like that other Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turned out to be a completely useless governor of California.
He couldn't terminate.
The Terminator couldn't terminate a single thing.
He was completely useless as governor.
Left no trace, left no footprints.
There's no sign the Terminator was ever there.
And so the question is, which Austrian, sinister Austrian is Trump more like?
Glenn Beck says Hitler.
My compatriot Kathy Schadel says she's worried he'd just turn out to be another Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But Glenn Beck has said he doesn't want a closed convention, a contested convention.
He wants Cruz, and Cruz himself has said this, that he wants to win out there with the votes of the people.
You know, everyone keeps talking about these brokered conventions.
They like it.
They've seen it in old movies.
You've got the guys in the smoke-filled rooms horse trading, and it all sounds great.
But you can't have the smoke-filled room and the horse trading after you've had six months and millions and millions and millions of votes.
And in that sense, Glenn Beck is now being attacked by the never Trump people because he's saying he doesn't want a contested convention.
And Cruz himself has said he doesn't want a contested convention.
He wants to win votes.
And Trump keeps talking about winning votes while not quite winning enough votes.
And that's the best way to kill all this uncertainty is for someone to be unambiguously the people's choice and win a majority of delegates at the convention.
I looked at the arithmetic when we began this show, and Trump is about 80 votes ahead of Cruz.
But Trump won two states, and Cruz won two states on Saturday.
Fact is, Cruz came out ahead with more delegates.
So Trump can't present himself as this movement, as this phenomenon, if his results are getting less and less phenomenal.
And that's why Michigan is going to be such a critical state.
Michigan is a state that Trump ought to do well in.
It's one, if you're talking about ideological conservatives and you're talking about evangelical Christians, it shouldn't be fertile ground for Ted Cruz.
So if Ted Cruz winds up giving Trump a run for his money in Michigan tomorrow, it will be a sign of weakness in the Trump camp.
We'll talk about that and take your call straight ahead.
1-800-282-2882-Mark Stein in for Rush.
Hey, Mark Stein for Rush.
I'm getting tons of complaints saying, hey, Marco Rubio won Minnesota.
Where do you care?
I was very careful in my choice of words.
I said Puerto Rico represented his first primary win.
Minnesota is a caucus, one of Cockamami caucus things.
And Puerto Rico is a primary.
So I know whereof I speak.
I'm lawyered up to the hilt.
I'm being sued by big climate guys for $9 million.
So I understand how to choose my words.
I'm not quite in the Clintonian state.
It depends what the meaning of the word primary is.
But I said that Marco Rubio had won his first primary.
And that was true.
Puerto Rico is the first primary that Marco Rubio has won.
Minnesota's one of those Cockamami caucus things.
Let's go to Dee in Memphis, Tennessee.
Dee, thanks for waiting.
You're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm calling because I've been very concerned lately that I'm really seeing history repeat itself, and it's kind of a sad history.
My fellow conservatives and Christian conservatives, when you're a conservative, you're a conservative.
But in 2012, when they didn't like the nominee, you know, they just didn't come vote.
And I've always been taught not to vote is to vote, number one.
And secondly, I wanted to point out one other thing.
I believe that God's given us one more chance here in this country to stand up for the right thing.
I'm a Ted Cruz supporter because he is who he says he is, for sure.
It's proven and been proven by him.
And I just don't understand if in 2012 Ted Cruz had been out there, my fellow Christians would have voted for him in a New York minute.
So I just wanted to be able to urge them to really any of you that are voting for Trump, because he is pressing all our buttons, that's for sure.
I want you to consider, please, voting for Ted Cruz.
We could wrap this thing up by the two weeks from now and not have a mess in a convention.
Yeah, let me ask you this, though, Dee.
Why do you think that prominent evangelical leaders, such as Jerry Falwell Jr., for example, have chosen to back Trump this time round?
Rip this oppressive government to pieces than to have someone that wins because, oh, he's mad like we are.
Okay, Dee, let me just ask you.
I'm not sure you heard the question I asked you last time around.
Why do you think evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr. have chosen to support Trump this time around?
What's up with that?
Hello.
Hello.
Oh, yeah.
I'm sorry.
I had trouble hearing you say again, please.
Yeah, I'll give it a third go.
Jerry Falwell Jr. is one of several evangelical leaders who've endorsed Trump.
Why do you think they're doing that?
Well, you know, that was such a disappointment to me, Dr. Jeffries.
People I've always thought were, you know, great.
And I'm not saying they're not.
But I remember Mr. Falwell's reason.
He stated that there were so many social issues that we as Christians have always cared about, but they made a decision to just put those aside because he said now we need our economy more than anything for jobs, etc.
And as I sat there thinking, well, as a Christian, I don't want those other things forgotten by any means.
But what makes us turn to someone, I'm sorry, I just can't love Donald Trump.
I'm so sad for him.
He really is a narcissist at the highest level.
He'll make Barack Obama look like a wallflower.
So you, as far as you're concerned, it's actually the self-absorption.
It's that Trump is about Trump.
This business where he walks around with the Bible and he says, you know, all those two Corinthians walk into a bar stuff and he doesn't, he makes it clear that he's got no group.
I'm going to check on him, Sir Kane, when he couldn't give his favorite scripture, you know, quote.
And I thought any fool that's been to a football game in New York or somewhere is going to see John 3.16 on the screen.
Yeah, why couldn't he just fake it?
No, as Mr. Trump would say, that's John 3.16.
It's like the relaunch of John, as the computer guys would say.
Dee, thank you very much for your call.
That's very interesting.
Dee is an evangelical who is backing Ted Cruz, as most evangelicals were meant to be doing.
And it didn't work out that way on Super Tuesday.
Most of the states with high evangelical populations went to Trump and Cruz wound up winning places like Alaska.
At the weekend, Cruz won Maine, which is no hotbed of evangelicals.
So things are weird.
And the traditional targeting votes and putting together coalitions, all the turnout model stuff, doesn't seem to be quite working this time around.
But if you are, I'm interested in this phenomenon because evidently, Jerry Falwell Jr. is an influential guy, and a lot of other evangelical leaders have made the choice.
There was one, I think, down in New Hampshire, actually, during the New Hampshire primary, that this time they would like to win.
They've made their accommodations with various candidates before, or they've often backed a candidate who's explicitly evangelical, and they've said that this time they'd like to win, and this is the guy they feel will win it for them.
If you disagree with that, I would love to hear from you.
An interesting – we were talking about the immigration issue.
And the interesting thing about this is that this is one of those issues that was introduced to the campaign and everyone was shocked by it.
A new poll today in Bloomberg Business Week says 61% of Americans agree that, quote, continued immigration into the country jeopardizes the United States, unquote.
Now, they're not doing the Trump thing.
They're not just talking about Mexican rapists and Muslim terrorists.
They're saying all immigration in this poll.
And this is a remarkable survey.
And what's interesting to me about it is that on issues where even Democrats have concerns, the bipartisan elite will not talk about the issue.
Rush will return live, live tomorrow for full strength.
Authentic all-American excellence in broadcasting.
Today is March 7th.
This weekend saw the death of a great lady, Nancy Reagan.
It saw five contests on the Republican side and three on the Democrat side in the slow march toward finding the candidates who will face off against each other in November.
But it was also this weekend the 70th anniversary of Winston Churchill's great speech in Fulton, Missouri, in which he coined a phrase that defined the world we live in for the next half century.
He stood there and told his audience in Fulton, Missouri, from Stettin in the Baltic.
I don't know that I can keep up my impression of Sir Winston for the full soundbite, but I'll give you a go, from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe, Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia.
All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.
And that phrase he came up with, the iron curtain that had descended across the continent, defined global politics for the next half century.
And it is important to remember when we get annoyed about little things, to keep your eye on the prize, to keep your eye on what matters to you, and to keep your eye on the things that will still seem important, not necessarily in 50 years' time, but at least in 10 or 20 years' time.
This country is the brokest country in history.
Barack Obama has run up as much debt as all 43 of his predecessors combined.
He will have done by the time he leaves office.
That is a remarkable achievement.
And the world will not let it continue like that for another eight years.
There will be consequences to normalizing the word trillion and to accepting permanent multi-trillion dollar debt and accelerating multi-trillion dollar debt as a permanent feature of life.
There will be consequences to that.
There will be consequences to not regaining control of the border, because Trump's right about that.
If you don't have a border, you don't have a country.
There will be consequences to not reshaping and reorienting foreign policy.
In essence, the last eight years have seen drift and retreat from the world.
So where do you go?
Nobody, there seem to me to be few takers for a re-engagement with the kind of foreign policy that George W. Bush had.
George W. Bush felt that the countries that America invaded could be remade into civilized societies.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban will be retaking control.
And in large parts of Iraq, the fellows driving around in American military equipment are members of the Islamic State.
America needs a foreign policy.
America is, in a sense, a paradox in global history.
It's a non-imperial superpower.
So it's not interested in moving into countries for 50 years.
And some guy who's a lawyer in Chicago isn't interested in going and being assistant chief justice in Kabul or Mosul for a couple of years.
Americans don't want to do that.
They're a non-imperial superpower.
So you've got to find a way of advancing your interests in the world and containing and destroying your enemies in the world.
People don't like the George Bush model, which is actually, I think, one reason why Marco Rubio has trouble, because Marco Rubio is essentially, in some ways, offering George W. Bush's third term.
You've got to come up with something else.
But keep your eye on things that are going to be important still in five or ten years' time, like the debt, like the foreign policy, like immigration, like the economy.
And don't get distracted by any of this flin flam.
This non-Saturday Night Live was doing a thing called Racist for Trump.
You know, how many people are in the KKK?
If you're a KKK listener, give me a call.
I'd love to know where you are.
There's what?
There's 237 in a population of 300 million.
We're the KKK holding rallies.
We watch these stupid things where, you know, the Ku Klux Klan for 48 hours is suddenly the biggest issue in an American election in 2016.
It doesn't matter to anyone.
As I said, half the country doesn't follow politics because there's two parties and one of them is talking about transgender bathrooms and the other is worried that it's going to be associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
And so they don't go to the polls.
And if somebody figured out how to get 10, 15% of those people to the polls, the entire consultant class, donor class, turnout model experts would all disappear in a puff of smoke because it'd be a whole new game.
Let's go to Chris in Tallahassee, Florida.
Chris, you're live on the Rushlinbaush show.
Yeah, hi, Mark.
Long time listener, first time caller.
It's my birthday today, so this is a great birthday gift and an honor to speak to you.
Hey, happy, happy birthday to you, Chris.
I hope this isn't the extent of your birthday gift, that you're having a spectacular dinner and a huge cake with showgirls popping up out of it.
I certainly hope that's all taken care of.
I wanted to call in to talk about what happened over the weekend.
You know, Cruz had huge victories in Kansas and Maine.
I mean, big victories.
And I think we're really witnessing a turning point right now in the campaign.
And that turning point started in the debate, I think.
You know, Romney coming out and doing his whole statement about Trump, you know, that didn't sway anyone.
If anything, that helped Trump, in my opinion.
But what Cruz did on the debate floor that night was masterful.
I mean, he just pointed out how intellectual he is, how great of a lawyer he is, at being able to break down and dissect Trump's record and really expose, pointing out time and time again: you know, you gave X amount of money to Hillary Clinton four times in a row for her presidential election, to John Kerry, to Senator Harry Reid.
And look, you could understand if he was giving money to liberal Democrats who were in charge of zoning.
That sort of corruption you could understand, he said, which was really great.
And then he goes on to say, he actually said that.
I understand.
The electorate is angry right now.
But Trump is part of the very corruption that you are so angry about.
And right then, when he said that, I said to myself, oh my gosh, he just changed everything.
He said it perfectly.
And I think that's the turning point.
And that's why you see him getting the momentum he's getting.
Well, let's explore that a bit, Chris, because Trump, everyone knows that Ted Cruz is a brilliant prosecutor.
He has a sharp, lawyerly mind.
The great Cruz moment was that one last year in whatever debate that was.
I think it was the terrible, appalling CNBC debate, where Cruz stood up and he mocked the first 10 questions.
And the brilliant thing about it was that he remembered every question that the moderators had asked of all the candidates.
Donald Trump, is it true that you're just a comic book villain?
Jeb Bush, why don't you just get out of the race?
All this kind of stuff.
And he remembered it all.
Brilliant.
No one would be better than him if he was prowling in front of the jury in a courtroom.
He had brilliant, brilliant, loyally prosecutorial mind.
What I thought, and Rush will say if we're wrong about this, but what I thought Rush was hinting at the other day is that, you know, in a presidential candidate, you need to make a kind of visceral, primal, emotional connection with people, which Mitt Romney never succeeded in doing.
Do you think Ted Cruz can do that?
You there?
Yeah, I'm there.
Do you think Ted Cruz can make that kind of emotional connection, Chris?
Where'd Chris go?
Are you still there, Chris?
I can hear some.
Yeah, he's gone.
That's a shame.
I wanted to know about that.
But if you've got a view on that, I don't know what's happening.
This is like Trump would say, the Chinese are killing us on the phones.
Our phones are terrible.
It's embarrassing.
I don't know what happened to it, but the piece of wet string connecting this corner of New Hampshire with the rest of the world failed us there.
So I'm sorry to Chris and Taylor Hassey.
We'll take more of your calls straight ahead.
Mark Stein, infra rush.
And as I said, the circular firing squad of the Republican Party is like, it's basically, if you saw stuck in the middle with you, Quentin Tarantino using it in reservoir dogs, the Republican Party has turned into a kind of Quentin Tarantino finale where one of those Mexican standoffs where we're all just shooting each other.
But at the end, somebody's got to be left and sufficiently non-discredited to put together a winning coalition this November.
Just before we go any further, I use the phrase circular firing squad there.
I hope it's not becoming literal.
There's a very bizarre story out of Idaho today.
Idaho pastor shot in the skull after praying with Ted Cruz.
A manhunt is underway for a former Marine.
This is Pastor Tim Remington.
Ted Cruz held an event in Idaho, just like 10 minutes south the Canadian border on Saturday.
And Tim Remington, Pastor Remington, put his arm around Ted Cruz and then delivered a rousing invocation.
He was shot in the skull and the back after his Sunday sermon.
And authorities are now looking for a 30-year-old local man and former Marine named Kyle Andrew Odom.
It is, perhaps it is just coincidence.
Pastor Tim gave the invocation, put his arm around Ted Cruz at Saturday's rally, and then was shot in the skull and the back after the Sunday sermon.
And I hope it is, our prayers are obviously with the pastor and his family.
And we are glad that he is alive, and we wish him well with a recovery from that.
But in the meantime, it is certainly, if it is coincidental, it is a bizarre coincidence.
I'll repeat the arithmetic I laid out at the beginning.
You know, you can't win without Trump supporters.
You can't win without Cruz supporters.
You can't win without Kasich supporters.
You can't win without Rubio supporters.
And even if you get all four of those groups, you then got to add millions more just to get to 270 in the Electoral College in November.
People have to get a grip on themselves with all this.
Oh, he's not a real conservative, and you're not a real conservative.
And parties are coalitions.
Parties are coalitions of shifting interests and shifting priorities.
And you have to determine what your priority is.
And in a fixed two-party system, you vote for the least worst guy.
You vote for the least worst guy.
Let us go to Scott in El Chayon, California.
Is that how you say it, Scott?
El Cajon.
El Cajon.
Oh, I know that.
There's a fabulous song about El Cajon, about somebody having a romantic weekend in El Cajon by Dave Frischman.
Well, it's great to speak to you, Mark.
You're my favorite Rush guest host.
Well, thank you for that, that, Scott.
That's nice to hear.
What's on your mind today?
Well, you know, you addressed it a little bit at the top of the hour, and I called for a sanity check.
I really believe if Trump is the nominee, he might carry New Jersey and New York.
Well, you know, I think he puts them in play.
I mean, let's back up a minute here, Scott.
I think what the Democrats don't like about running against Trump is that none of their playbooks work.
They've got to figure out another playbook.
And what it means is that Hillary will be having to hold rallies in states that she thought were in the bag.
So you might have a point there.
She certainly won't want to assume that New York is in the bag, so she'll be having to campaign there and in New Jersey.
Well, I think the New Yorkers probably look at her as a carpetbagger.
Well, I think that's true.
Hillary is from whatever suits their purpose.
And I think Trump can certainly give her a run for money there.
But the other point, Scott, is it would be actually better if we didn't have permanent red states and blue states, but some of these ones changed hands in ways that we hadn't expected.
I mean, in other words, it would be good if whoever's the nominee this November wins big by putting some of these states back in the Republican column, Scott.
Yeah, I'd love that.
I think a vote for Trump is a reset button.
Yeah, maybe.
We don't, I mean, that's his argument.
We don't know that.
And the other argument in favor of that is that he's brought lots of, he claims he's brought lots of millions of extra people in, and the turnout in these Republican primaries is phenomenal.
We'll see about that.
But certainly Trump's argument that if he's the candidate, New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania and some of these other places are suddenly competitive all over again.
Thanks for your call, Scott.
We'll close things out in just a moment.
Mark Stein for Rush, it was the end of an era this weekend with the death of Nancy Reagan.
She and Merv Griffin, of all people, had the same birthday.
And I was told by a mutual friend that many years ago, what she most enjoyed in those tough final years of her husband's illness was getting together with Merv at the piano to sing songs that she and Ronnie had loved.
They are in a better place today, and I hope they are enjoying some of that music, music of the spheres, if nothing else.
She was the young actress that Ronald Reagan met almost seven decades ago when she had a bit of a problem with a false rumor of communist associations.
And she turned to him as the union head to see if he could help her out.
And he did.
And then he asked her to dinner, and they did that movie thing, movie star thing, when movie stars have dinner, they claim that they've got to go early because they've got an early call in the morning.
So they were going to pretend they'd both got early calls in the morning.
And then they enjoyed each other's company so much that they stayed yakking away until late in the small hours.
And from that dinner, American history changed.
Treat yourself to a screening of Hellcats of the Navy tonight.
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