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March 15, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
March 15, 2016, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 Podcast.
Okay, I need I need some guidance here.
I need some assistance.
I just had to walk out of the studio.
It's part of getting set up and ready for the big program, folks.
Getting set up, wired up and all that.
And I'm walking out, and I I out of the corner of my eye, I see a big headline on CNN.
And the headline, and I stopped and looked at it, but the sound was off.
I I wasn't I didn't have time.
I had no idea what they were saying.
I only saw the headline, and I had to keep moving.
The headline said, conservative host colon.
The future of the GOP hangs on Ohio.
Do you know who's saying that snurdly?
Do you have because I don't want to step into something here before you have any Anna Navarro was speaking at the time on CNN, but she's not a host of anything.
I have no idea.
But this that's in the future of the GOP hangs on Ohio.
You know what's happening out there, folks?
It's incredible.
The establishment is once again demonstrating exactly why they are being rebelled against.
Greetings, great to have you.
800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address.com.
So what happened between the time we were last here and this moment when the program begins.
There's a story out there that says both Kasich and Rubio are thinking now of revising their pledge to support the nominee.
Now take the context and details out of this for a second and ask yourself a question.
Isn't that exactly why the Republican Party is in trouble?
It has elected officials who go out and make promises.
They make promises during campaigns, they make promises all the time, and then they break them.
Now you might be saying, well, this is a pledge they should break Russia.
I mean, trust is Trump is really dangerous.
We can't afford to have Trump in there.
And you know, the panic has really set in now.
I've got we've got a great audio soundbite roster today that pretty much tells the whole story of the day.
Uh from all aspects, uh, some great opinion pieces out there on the absolute end of America if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.
Uh and I'm gonna share all of this stuff with you.
But here again, uh, you know, and Carly Fiorina is out there warning people, you you all of you anti-Trumpsters, you better stop attacking his voters.
That's not the way to do it.
If you keep attacking his voters, and if you succeed in defeating Trump for the nomination, you're gonna have gazillions and gazillions of ticked-off Republicans that are not gonna vote for whoever it is you engineer this nomination for.
And she's exactly right.
If it at all perceives that Trump is the de facto our or actual winner of this thing, and they find a way to take it away from him.
There's gonna be hell to pay.
Um and his voters, who knows what they'll do, and who knows what Trump will do, go third party or what have you.
But she is exactly right about this.
Uh I know everybody's struggling.
Well, then how do if we can't attack his voters and we can't attack him?
How do how do how do you defeat Trump?
Well, you know, you could have taken him seriously earlier on.
How many people thought Trump wasn't in it for real up until February?
How many people thought Trump was going to implode?
How many people stood aside?
And how many people chickened out?
How many people refused to attack Trump because he's just gonna turn around and attack you?
Didn't want to deal with it.
By the way, you don't think the Democrats are afraid of that?
I've got two stories.
This is in this is amazing in itself.
I have that was Buck Sexton.
Buck Sexton, who's the host on CNN, who has been a guest host on this.
That's why I said I gotta be careful who it is they're talking about.
It was Buck Sexton.
I guess he wrote a piece for CNN, which they put up about an hour ago or a couple minutes ago.
Anyway, his point is the future of the GOP hangs in Ohio, which means the future of the GOP hangs on John Kasich.
And that's what they're setting up today.
Let me tell you, you cruise people, you ought to be fit to be tied.
Because the drive-by media and even some people on Fox News are suggesting if Kasich wins Ohio today that he's a new hero.
He's bigger than Cruz, he's more important than Cruz.
Has he won a state?
He has not won a state, has he?
Rubio's at least won a state.
Cruz has won nine or ten or eleven states.
Kasich, does he even have 50 delegates?
I don't have the delegate count, but look what they're doing.
If Kasich wins Ohio, that means he beats back Trump, and that means the race.
It's why I said yes, you you if if you really want to beat Trump, you need Trump to win both Florida and Ohio today.
You need Kasich and Rubio out of this race.
If that's that's the last best hope that people who want to defeat Trump have.
Keeping Kasich in this thing is not the answer.
All they're doing with that is angling for a contested convention where the establishment can work their magic, quote unquote, and deny the will of the people as expressed by votes in the primary season.
That's what Kasich represents.
Now, if you happen to believe that Trump represents the end of the Republican Party, if you happen to believe that Trump represents the end of the United States of America.
But more specifically, if you believe that Trump represents the end of the Republican Party, then I guess you can do whatever you think you have to do to save the party.
But if you ask me, and nobody did.
What the heck has the party been doing lately to recommend itself to people?
We've got some incredible Kasich sound bites.
He says he just recently learned all the things Trump's been saying.
He's been so focused on his own campaign, so focused on running Ohio, so focused on being a good governor and so focused on preparing for the debates that he hasn't really, he's not familiar with all these bad things Trump's been saying.
That's why he hasn't been out there condemning them.
But I'm serious.
The only guy that has a chance to beat Donald Trump is Ted Cruz, folks.
At this stage, and if people's votes are going to be the determining factor, and believe me, that's what the establishment's trying to set up is the erasure of your votes by going to a contestant convention.
Look at this.
This is from the Daily Caller.
RNC rules committee member.
Every delegate at Republican convention, not bound on first ballot.
Oh, really?
We've got a committee member on a rules committee saying, no, delegates don't have to vote the way the voters did in the first ballot.
Well, then what the hell are we doing here?
Kasich has 63 delegates.
Trump's got, here's the latest.
These numbers float because there's so many different ways of apportioning or assigning delegates.
But the ballpark numbers are Trump 469, Cruz 370.
99 behind.
Rubio at 163, Kasich at 63.
And the future the Republican Party hangs on John Kasich.
Who, by the way, George Soros just donated two or three hundred thousand dollars to?
You didn't know that?
Oh, you didn't know that.
Well, we find out here in the Soros Associate gives 200,000 to Pro-Kasich Super PAC.
Scott Bescent of Soros Fund Management investment firm founded by liberal megadonor George Soros has given more than 202,000 to help John Kasich's presidential campaign, according to FEC records.
I saw this, I saw this developing on the news today that Kasich's gonna be the big win.
All Kasich has to do is win Ohio, and he is the big winner of the day today.
North Carolina's got more delegates than Ohio has, but it's a difference in a winner take all and apportionment of how they're divvied up and so forth.
I think it's 75 in North Carolina.
Ohio gets a lot of attention because of its importance in the in the general election.
A Republican National Committee standing rules committee member told the membership last Friday that convention delegates are not bound to cast their votes at the convention according to primary vote results in the first round of voting.
Curly Hogland of North Dakota, longtime member of the RNC Standing Rules Committee, sent a letter to the RNC membership at large about the issue.
He explained how he came to the conclusion that all Republican delegates who participate in the 2016 convention are unbound on every ballot, including the first.
But now we've got a rules committee guy asserting it.
Here's the excerpt from the letter.
As most of you know, I've been defending the right of the delegates to the convention to vote according to their personal choice in all matters to come before the convention, including the vote to nominate the candidate for president for several years.
Here's something I recently discovered that most of us did not know, including me.
Binding delegates to the results of presidential preference primaries first appeared in the rules of the Republican Party in 1976.
Without the use of force to bind the votes of delegates to the results of the primary process, primaries are nearly worthless beauty contests.
These guys admitting it.
I'm just, I want to remind you, there's no way John Kasich.
If you if you believe that the primaries matter, and if you believe that the primaries are where we nominate or choose the nominee.
And if you believe that a well, if you believe that, there's only one thing you want to hear.
You want Kasich and Rubio eliminated today.
You have to coalesce all of the anti-Trump support behind one candidate would be Ted Cruz.
That's the only prayer you've got.
Those of you who are anti-Trump, the only prayer you've got.
Because I guarantee if they go this contested convention route, uh, and that's clearly what they're aiming for.
You think they're going to put Cruz in there if after they deny it to Trump?
No way, Jose, little Spanish lingo there.
The established going to put one of their Northeastern moderate liberal guaranteed losers in there.
In fact, the way I'm reading things, there are some Republicans thinking it is worth losing for 25 years in order to deny Cruz or Trump the nomination because of what that would mean for the Republican Party.
So I'm gonna take a timeout.
We're gonna come back, we're gonna start with the audio soundbite roster, which tells a huge detailed story today, and will include your phone calls in it, so hang in there, be tough.
We're back in just a moment.
Your guiding light, Rush Limbaugh here at the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies on whatever they're calling this super duper Tuesday, super Tuesday two.
It is what it is.
I want to read to you an excerpt from a column that ran, I believe it was Sunday at the New York Times.
Ross Dothet is a uh a brilliant conservative columnist.
He's uh has a piece, I think it's once a week, maybe twice in the New York Times.
And he's in the uh he's in the group of people that's very, very worried about Trump and what his nomination would mean, not just for the party, but for the country.
Here's the excerpt.
Trump, though, is cut from a very different cloth.
He's an authoritarian, not an ideologue, and his antecedents are not Goldwater or McGovern, meaning people that preceded him, guided him, people you might consider are in the same league.
Trump's antecedents are people like George Wallace and Huey Long.
No modern political party has nominated a candidate like this.
No serious political party ever should.
Because such figures speak, as did George Wallace and Huey Long and Ross Perl and others to real grievances.
The process of dealing with them is necessarily painful.
I mean, their complaints are legitimate.
The grievances they cite are real and people are experiencing.
So it's tough to deal with these candidates like Trump.
It often involves a third party bid and a difficult reckoning thereafter.
Trump would be no exception.
Denying Trump the nomination would indeed be an ugly exercise, one that would weaken or crush the party's general election chances and leave the GOP with a long hard climb back up to unity and health.
Okay, now that sets up the three-point shot here.
But if that exercise is painful, denying Trump the nomination, if denying Trump the nomination is painful, it's also the correct path to choose, writes Mr. Doutit.
A man so transparently unfit for office should not be placed before the American people as a candidate for president under any kind of imprimatur save his own.
And there's no point in even having a party apparatus, no point in all those chairmen and state conventions and delegate rosters if they cannot be mobilized to prevent the 35% of the Republican primary elected from imposing a Trump nomination on the party.
So this probably suffices as a opinion or thought shared by many in the establishment.
And that is that whatever we do, we cannot allow Trump, and we've got to use everything at our disposal.
Hell, it's our party.
We run the party.
We run the chairman of the delegations, we own the states, we run the National Convention, we run the state conventions, and hell's bells, we're not going to sit around and let 35% of the Republican primary electorate nominate this guy.
If we're worth anything, if we're worth our salt, if what we do is Republican leaders and establishment kingmakers, if it matters, we have got to deny this man the nomination of our party.
And that's what's going on out there right now.
It is what is informing pretty much every bit of thinking from Mitt Romney to Kasich to everybody else in the establishment.
And they go on to say that they would much rather end up being a minority party for many, many moons, drifting aimlessly in the wilderness rather than have Trump be the standard bearer and the nominee.
So it's, and that that's why all of these people are focusing on Ohio today, and John Kasich.
John Kasich winning Ohio, they all believe gives them the power, the right, the necessary energy and indication of support that they can go in and take control of this entire nominating process and do what they ever they have to do to deny it to Trump.
So that's why they're all claiming the future of the GOP today hangs on Ohio.
And what Kasich represents for them.
Mitt Romney's in there running around doing appearances with him, get out the vote efforts and so forth.
And I don't see, I don't see how this ends in a in a in a positive way, no matter what the outcome is.
If Trump succeeds and gets a nomination, what are these people going to do?
I mean, they're gonna they're gonna be homeless.
And here's another thing to think about.
This is very this is something I think everybody has to think about within this context.
Let's say they succeed in taking it away from Trump.
Do you, does anybody, do they think that Trump's gonna say, okay, well, that was fun.
That was a fun six or seven months, and go back to Marilago and Trump Tower and resume his life.
Or is he going to realize that he has assembled and put together a pretty significant political movement that could be used to redefine the Republican Party or start a new party?
My point is that if these people are not careful, no matter what happens here, they're gonna lose the Republican Party, or a significant percentage of it if they're not careful the way they go about this.
And the way they're going about it is fraught with danger because they are once again, as many Republican voters think.
The establishment is once again maneuvering itself to take away the voice of American Republican voters.
That's how it's going to be seen, and that's not gonna stand them in good stead.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm gonna get to the audio sound bites on your phone calls here El QuickO, but here's something else.
Now I'm just I can't I can't I can't glance at TV without seeing somebody whining now about all the free media Trump has gotten.
And I have here my formerly nicotine stained finger.
It's a uh it's a story from uh Media Quant.
It's a firm that tracks media coverage of every candidate and computes a dollar value based on advertising rates, and it's uh been published here in the New York Times.
And according to this study, Donald Trump has earned close to two billion dollars worth of free media during the campaign.
The pull quote from the story, Mr. Trump earned 400 million dollars worth of free media just last month.
That's about what McCain spent on his entire 2008 campaign.
Paul Senator, Media Quant's chief analytics officer, says that Trump has no weaknesses in any of the media segments.
In other words, he's strong in every type of earned media, from TV to Twitter, you name it.
So now everybody, isn't that fair?
Isn't that fair?
Trump's got a free media.
It's Republicans saying this.
Naturally.
And they ever ask themselves why.
It's sixteen.
Maybe we're learning something else here, too.
Maybe we're learning that why does all this stuff have to fall on me to be said?
I is no, I'm gonna end up being universally despised and hated by everybody, no matter where I go.
How is it that in 2016 a major political party still doesn't understand modern media, how to use it, instead of complaining about it being unfair?
The media?
Really, when did when did that realization hit you that the media is unfair?
When did you figure out the media does not like you, Republicans?
When did you figure out the media does not like you, conservatives?
Did you ever stop to ask why all this is happening?
Why does Trump command all this?
Why do these networks, I don't care who they are, televise hours and hours of Trump appearances when he pretty much says the same thing, maybe just not in the same order.
Everything to me is a teachable moment, a learnable, if you will, opportunity.
But to complain about the unfairness of it.
I'm sorry, I don't have a sympathetic ear for that.
I have a phrase I use, it's become a cliche.
I really believe in it.
It is what it is.
It's not what you wish it was.
It's not what you hope it was.
It is what it is.
And that's what that's why I'm the mayor of Realville.
Okay, to the audio sound bites, which tell a story.
You may have seen excerpts of this.
Mark Halprin, who has a TV show on the Bloomberg Network with his buddy John Heilowan?
Went to Showtime and pitched an idea.
And the idea is resulted in a program called the Circus, inside the greatest political show on earth.
And the premise of the show is that Halprin hangs around with a bunch of Republican establishment guys during this campaign.
And gets them on tape, reacting to what's happening in the campaign, which is pretty much getting their reaction to Trump.
And the cameras follow them around as they're in cars, they go to dinner.
Anywhere these establishment types gather, the cameras are there.
The establishment types are, for example, and many of them are from the George Bush 41 days.
You have Vin Weber, former member of Congress of Minnesota.
You have a fundraiser and strategist by the name of Rick Holt.
Former George H.W. Bush advisor Ron Kaufman from Boston.
And there's some others like Ed Rogers, depending on the event to get thrown as four or five of these guys.
Oh, and Mark McKinnon.
Mark McKinnon, who is a renowned media expert who ran all of George W. Bush's media in 2000 and 2004, and thus is heralded as a great media guru.
He's also the guy that started the revered and exalted no labels movement.
With a bunch of other liberal Republicans who don't like labels and who don't like conservatives, and thought that they could separate themselves and not be identified with the redneck hoi polloi by calling themselves no labels.
He's part of this group, too.
This is going to air at some point.
It may be airing on Showtime, I don't know, but they have released excerpts of this on YouTube.
And we have some of them for you.
It's uh March 6th, Showtime's the Circus, inside the greatest political show on earth.
This is during a dinner gathering of Republican establishment fundraisers and strategists.
Everybody around this table that I know, we've been in every presidential campaign, probably since 1980 in various degrees.
And in Trump's problem, he doesn't have a comp.
You don't know what his compass is.
I talk to people all the time, because I'm sure everybody on the table doesn't say, why don't you Republicans do something about this guy?
I'm sorry, this is not the Soviet Union.
We can't call a meeting and decide Trump is out.
And we hate that.
Trump is doing well for one reason.
He understands the climate and the culture of America today better than anybody this day.
That's Ron Kaufman, uh, who also said we hate the fact that we're not the Soviet Union Politburo, we just can't decide that Trump is out.
But that's what they're doing.
I mean, maybe not these guys, but that's exactly what they're they're doing, folks.
They're trying to figure out how to take it away from Trump right now by going to a contested convention, and with this rules committee guy now publishing a story saying, hey, there's no way delegates are not bound to a candidate on the first ballot.
They can vote for anybody they want.
You can't clear as a bell what they're setting up here.
Now, this next one, this says it all.
Same dinner gathering, same people, but a new voice.
Ed Rogers is a former George Bush 41 advisor.
And that's whose voice you first hear in this bite.
Shellshock, bewildered.
Republicans are hierarchical, respectful of authority, smaller.
We fall in line, and Trump has interrupted that cycle.
Donald Trump.
Nobody thought of him as any kind of political leader until six months ago.
He's not articulate, he's not poised, he's not informed.
All he has going for him is a lot of votes.
Why hasn't any of that hit home?
Here we are.
I mean, does it does any all he's got is a bunch of votes?
What is this about?
He's not articulate, he's not poised, he's not informed.
All He's got going for him is a lot of votes.
Why hadn't any of that hit home?
Here we are.
So why haven't you idiot voters realize that Trump's got nothing?
There's nothing there.
All he's got's a bunch of votes.
When are you gonna wake up?
And believe me, that's what the establishment is asking.
They're asking.
And in the first part of this bite, Ed Rogers describes them all.
Shell-shocked, bewildered.
Republicans are hierarchical.
Respectful of authority.
We fall in line.
And Trump has interrupted that cycle.
Meaning there's a succession process here.
Hierarchical, everybody knows their place, falls in line, you move up when it's your turn.
I mean, these guys are making the case for any Republican voter who is wary or distrustful of the establishment.
These guys are clearly demonstrating here that the current construct of the party is antiquated.
It's an antique.
I mean, it's not responsive.
It doesn't relate to anything but itself.
And so Trump's not playing along with the game.
He's not not going along to the higher of a hierarchy would be Trump runs for dog catcher, then gets elected first city councilman, then runs for Congress.
And then after 30 years of that gets to the Senate, and then maybe we let you think about being president.
And Trump's at hell with that.
He's going for the top job right off the bat.
Who does he think he is?
Holy's God, it's a bunch of damn votes.
When are people gonna wake up?
And there is one more.
And Ilrushbo's C I told you so moment.
Same dinner gathering, same people.
Ed Rogers, Vin Weber, uh, and all these other guys.
And Mark Halperin says, Do you know for sure that Trump would be a better president than Hillary Clinton?
No, but it's a risk that I'm willing to take.
If we get off into splitting our party, we can't put it back together.
Umpty Dumpty won't come back together.
That's that's the great dividing line in that question right there.
Because you care more about it being president.
I'm scared of it, Mr. President.
I think he's an authoritarian figure.
To deport 12 million people, build a wall on the Mexican border, and impose a religious test on people coming into this country.
The soul violative of everything I believe about America and the Republican Party.
I travel around the world a lot.
And Trump is a laughing stock.
The world, whatever that is, is at peace with Hillary Clinton.
I've never voted for Democrat or any, I've never voted for anybody other than Republican.
President I said, this would not be an easy thing for me.
That was Ed Rogers.
I'll travel.
That's the guy, he's the same guy who said, Well, when are people gonna wake up?
Oh, Trump's got a bunch of votes.
He says, Here, I travel around the world a lot.
Trump's a laughing stock.
The world is at peace with Hillary Clinton.
These guys are openly thinking of voting Hillary instead of Trump.
They're talking about it.
I'm just here to tell you, it looks like if there's not the standard operating procedure of we have a nominee and then unity and everybody coming together and realizing that Hillary is the enemy, the Democrats or the opposition.
If that doesn't happen, then the Republican Party, as you and I have always known it.
It's gonna be there, but it's not gonna look anything like it does today or like last year.
And these guys are pretty much telegraphing that that's what's at stake here.
Okay, a few words about what we just heard.
I had to go to the break real quick to stay within the uh confines here, the programming format.
I'm stunned by what I've heard in these words, and by the way, apparently this thing's been on the air for six weeks.
And I can't believe I haven't heard of this.
I mean, I it it's not that I spend all day watching TV, but I read enough to re-this program hasn't been reviewed by anybody.
This program has not been touted.
This program's been on showtime for six weeks or something, or eight weeks in or whatever, and I only heard about it when they started playing these YouTube uh sound bites.
So my bad, but it's apparently uh it's it's airing.
It's long past post-production.
So get that straight.
Listen, listen to this then Weber here in this last bite that we played.
I'm scared if Trump is president.
I think he's an authoritarian figure.
To deport 12 million people, Ike deported six.
We've done this before.
None of what Trump is proposing is unique.
None of it's unprecedented.
That's what's striking about this.
Congressman Weber, the wall has been funded.
There's already legislation to build the wall.
We just haven't done it because Obama's not interested.
We're going to build a wall before Trump ever showed up.
The wall is funded via legislation that's already been passed and signed into law.
Impose a religious test on people coming into this country is so violative of everything I believe about America.
We already do and have for who knows how long.
Let me explain again.
This is a former member of Congress.
And look at what they're reciting as their fears of Trump.
And you know what it all is?
It's almost by rote.
They're saying things they want Democrats to hear.
They're saying things that they want certain people to hear so that they will not be thought of as the racist sexists and bigots.
The Trump voters are perceived as.
So they're opposed to a wall, they're opposed to deportation, they're opposed to religious tests.
We've had refugees regularly and annually admitted to this country, and every refugee up until Obama.
Every refugee was asked about his or her religion.
It is the number one reason given by refugees seeking asylum.
They are fleeing religious persecution, they claim, on their application form.
Or they're fleeing poverty, or they're fleeing war, or political persecution.
But religious persecution is the number one thing, according to stats, that refugees list.
By definition, they have to be asked about what is your religion.
It has to be confirmed.
They claim they're fleeing religious bigotry and uh and persecution.
So they they're asked, where?
What is your religion?
What's being done to you?
You know, and if they're coming from the nation of San Cordoba, which doesn't exist, Mission Impossible made it up.
Some of San Cordoba.
They claim that there's religious persecution in San Cordoba.
Okay, so the authorities have to go look and see what's going on in San Cordoba to find out if there is any religious persecution going, or if the guy is lying.
Now Congress Weber ought to know this.
We routinely control who gets into this country.
We always have for the preservation of this country.
Freedom and the Constitution is not a suicide pact for crying out loud.
The Eisenhower administration deported six million illegal immigrants back in the 50s, obviously.
It it has been done.
Yet all of these things are cited as horrors that they're not with any America that I know.
It makes me very worried.
Trump's an authoritarian figure, he's gonna build a wall.
It's already been debated in Congress.
It's already been passed, signed into law.
The money's there for it.
Just hasn't been built.
Some of it has.
I don't know, folks.
This is uh this this is I have to tell you, this is what makes it tough for me to to You know what?
Let me put it this way.
One of the one of the most I think relevant things that was said in one of these episodes, and I just I just found this.
It was a question that Mark Halpern asked these guys.
He said, How do you feel about the fact that the Republican nominee may be someone that none of you know?
Bingo.
There it is.
What do you mean, Rush?
What do you mean?
It's a club.
Everybody in the club knows everybody.
There are favors passed out.
There are special considerations based on seniority.
It's like any other club.
It's like any other private enclosed existence.
There are rules and knowing who and what and where and when and why is the power.
Who to know and when to whatever.
And if you don't know the nominee, what can he do for you?
If you don't know the nominee, what can he do for you?
If you don't know the nominee, how the hell are you going to have any power with the guy?
Do not doubt me, folks.
We'll be back.
Fastest three hours in media.
One down and uh two to go.
When we get back, we've got some Casich sound bites to share with you from this morning after he went to vote in uh in Ohio.
And I I promise we'll start uh weaving your phone calls in the mix too, a little bit sooner than usual, I hope.
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