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March 17, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:37
March 17, 2016, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Documented to be almost always right 99.8% of the time.
The views expressed by the host of this program, the result of a daily, unstoppable pursuit of the truth.
And we find it.
Happy to have you here, folks, as always.
800-282-2882.
They've called Missouri.
I guess either they just did or I was premature.
I was wrong and I hadn't heard.
But here it is.
Missouri's been called Trump at 40.7% of the vote.
Ted Cruz at 40.5.
It's about 2,000 votes.
Kasich at 10.1% of the vote.
Rubio at 6.2 and all the others at 2.5%.
That's so close there might be a recount now, but it's a 2,000-vote difference.
And here's the delegate assignations.
Trump gets 25 delegates in Missouri.
Cruz gets 15.
There are 12 delegates unallocated pending further results because some of these were congressional delegates that have to, they're apportioned depending on who won the district district delegates.
Kasich and Rubio are not expected to win any delegates in Missouri, so it's going to be Trump 25, Cruz 15, plus whoever gets 12.
Here's Lindsey Graham moments ago on CNN.
Dana Bash was talking to him.
Senator, you have some news.
And he does.
I guess he called CNN.
He had the news.
And here's the news.
I'm going to be doing a fundraiser with and for Senator Cruz.
I think he's the best alternative to Donald Trump.
John Kasich, I think, is the most viable general election candidate.
I just don't see how John gets it.
This is an outsider year.
He's seen as an insider.
So I think the best alternative to Donald Trump to stop him from getting 1237 is Ted Cruz.
You might as well have not.
I don't understand this.
You kidding me?
I'm going to be doing a fundraiser with Senator Cruz.
I think he's the best alternative to Donald Trump.
Stop!
End of soundbite.
But no.
John Kasich, I think, is the most viable general election candidate.
I'm speechless.
Kasich has won one state and the confetti.
John.
Look, I warned you people.
I warned you yesterday this is going to be exactly what happened because I saw that headline on Tuesday right at noon when this program started.
The fate of the GOP hangs on Ohio.
You know what this is?
I like Senator Graham.
He's affectionately known here as Senator Gramnesty.
But you know what this sounds like?
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to get behind.
I'm going to get behind Cruz.
It's our only real hope.
I really want Kasich, but I'm going to get behind Cruz.
Kasich's the guy, but I've got to get behind Cruz.
And the reason for that is, hey, my fellow senators, don't hate me here.
I have to do this.
We know everybody knows we hate Cruz, but we got to get behind him.
So throwing in with Kasich, I'm going to go do a fundraiser here for the guy that we think can stop Trump so that we can put Kasich in there.
Is that what this means?
I'm not trying to start any trouble.
What are you talking about?
I didn't say anything here.
I'm analyzing it.
Play the soundbite again.
Soundbite number 21 in case you've thrown it away.
Grab it back out of the trash.
And here it is again.
I'm going to be doing a fundraiser with and for Senator Cruz.
I think he's the best alternative to Donald Trump.
John Kasich, I think, is the most viable general election candidate.
I just don't see how John gets sued the primary.
This is an outsider year.
He's seen as an insider.
He's won one state.
What are we even talking about if you're getting a since Ted Cruz?
I feel like going to commercial breaker, I'm going to start saying things that we don't have enough of a delay to handle.
Or just laugh about it.
He's won one state.
He doesn't even have, what is his delegate count?
Is it 100 some odd?
Well, he's got 143 delegates.
Okay, you need 1,203.
He's not going to win another state.
Oh, don't be so sure, Rush.
I mean, the way they say he could win, he could win Michigan.
No, wait, they already had Michigan.
Oh, that's right.
One of the Russ Belts they can win Buffalo.
No, that's a city.
They can win Pennsylvania.
Isn't going to happen.
John Kasich, I think, is the most viable general election.
How can you say that about a guy?
He's won one state.
Why wasn't anybody talking about Kasich as the viable, most viable general election candidate two weeks ago, two months ago?
All of this last-minute love for John Kasich, where has it been all of these past months?
Well, Rush, don't forget they were with Jeb and then they went with Marco.
I know they didn't go with Kasich.
They had every opportunity to go with Kasich.
So I'm on a vote.
I'm about their fundraise for Cruz to stop Trump.
I think Kasich's the guy.
I mean, why don't you just see, can't because of the animosity for Cruz.
I know what's going on here.
Because of the animosity for Cruz in the Senate, Republican Senate, he's got to qualify his support for Cruz.
He cannot have anybody think he's all in, or they're going to think he's a sellout.
So he can't have that.
So he's got to throw a bone to the confetti guy.
John Kasich needs an additional 1,094 delegates to reach the magic number.
You know what?
I'll tell you what we're going to do.
Rushlimbaugh.com, Kasich countdown.
We're going to, Coco, I want you to set this up.
Get the graphics department up there.
Get a rate of the Kasich to the nomination countdown.
Put the magic number up there, which is 1,094.
And as each of these primaries go by, we're going to be counting how many confetti ceremonies there are, as well as delegates one.
If that's based on this is the establishment thinking here, John Kasich is the best alternative to Donald Trump.
He's no, John Kasich is the most viable general election candidate.
Now, I know that the Cruz people are going to get mad at me for this.
You want to be promoted.
Don't, folks, this is, this is not, we're not going to be doing anything but recording failure here.
Don't, don't.
Does anybody, what state, somebody tell me, what state's Kasich going to win?
What's the next round of states?
Kasich thinks he can win California.
Kasich win California.
Okay.
What other states?
How about New York?
How about New York?
How about New Jersey?
How about New Jersey?
Okay.
How about Washington?
State of Washington.
How about Utah?
Nitt Romney's in the camp.
about utah uh this is i'll tell you this this this is such you know it's it's just all of this is sabotaging crews
It just, it's just, well, because you're divvying up the anti-Trump vote and you're out here now promoting it.
While you're fundraising for Cruz, you're out there telling everybody that you think Kasich is the most viable general like.
You don't think that's going to shift some votes to the guy somewhere in some of these states?
Meanwhile, the Cruz people, they have been waving and waving for this moment when they thought, hoping it would be one-on-one where they can offer the ultimate contrast.
I know they were hoping for the debate.
I had a lot of people down on Trump for pulling out of the debate, but look, he's the frontrunner, folks.
This is the way these things work.
Incumbent candidates, particularly presidents, one debate.
I mean, very rarely do you do two, and that's only if you are in trouble.
There is no way an incumbent can win in a debate.
Let me tell you, an incumbent, just the way the optics work.
Here you have the incumbent president, whoever he is, who is Obama.
But Obama won't work because he's not.
Well, let's say it's Obama and it's 2012, but he didn't have an opponent.
Okay, let's use Obama.
Forget primaries under General Obama and Romney.
Now, there were three debates in that circumstance.
And the reason for that is that there was a lot of concern that Obama was in deep trouble.
And the second reason they did it is they thought they could smoke Romney.
They had Romney on Obamacare and all that.
But the reason that incumbents don't like to do it is here you are the incumbent.
You're the most powerful person in the world.
And you're going to share the stage with a pretender, with somebody who wants it.
You automatically validate them by simply having them on the stage with you.
I guarantee the way Trump thinks, no way.
He is not going to do that.
And once Trump pulled out, Kasich pulled out because Kasich does not want to rip into Trump because Kasich probably hoping he's got some leverage here by the time he gets the convention to get something if there is a Trump administration.
So that means the only one left is Cruz.
And Fox canceled the debate.
The Cruz people should have been a, hey, hey, let's still do the debate and you bring in anybody you want to ask me questions.
You put other media people up there occupying Trump's chair and put another media person up there occupying Kasich's chair.
Let's have the debate.
And you ask me anything you want.
Have somebody pretend to be Trump or what have you.
I know that this is one of the things that they were really, really counting on is the end of the division of the anti-Trump vote.
Really wanted to see if it would coalesce around Cruz because if here's the thinking, it's pie in the sky thinking.
But the pie in the sky thinking is the Cruz camp, they can win every remaining primary simply because there are more anti-Trump voters than there are pro-Trump.
Trump hasn't gotten 50% anywhere yet.
I know, shake your head.
I'm telling you, it's the thinking.
What's erroneous in the thinking is the, and I don't know if it was really assumed, it was hoped, but even in some of the anti-Trump vote, once, say, Rubio's gone, some of Rubio's people will go to Trump, not automatically all go to Cruz.
So the assumption that everybody not voting Trump would continue to not vote Trump, and that all the anti-Trump vote would then go to Cruz.
That was the hope.
That was the, I guarantee some of the strategy.
And if it were to happen, then Cruz would win out if that were to happen or come close to it.
And this was something I know that they were desperately, desperately hoping for.
And they still are, even though the debate has been canceled.
But then there are other factors that you have to look at at the same time.
And that is, is there any indication that, I mean, if the voters would go to Cruz once Rubio and others get out, why haven't they gone to Cruz yet?
I mean, it's not as though people don't know what's going on here.
If you want to beat Trump, why vote for somebody continually you know didn't have a prayer like Kasich or Rubio, who you know wasn't going to win this thing, but he people did continue rather than vote for any other Republican cruise in this case.
It was always going to be a long shot, but they thought that they were prepared for it.
They wanted to fight that battle.
They wanted to try to make a big pitch for the entire universe of Republican voters that was not going Trump.
And it's there.
I mean, you hear and see it every day here, typified by various public people denouncing Trump and saying they'll do anything but Trump.
Third party people now.
So there still is a significant percentage of voters to coalesce there.
And it's still going to be their objective.
Okay, I got to take a quick timeout.
We'll come back.
Yeah, I'm going to still get to the, I've promised to do the only because it's interesting, folks.
It's not newsworthy.
It's not pressing.
It's why I've saved it to the third hour.
But, and, you know, I bounce off of everything, too.
So it's a latest from John Pedoritz as they in the conservative intelligentsia circles struggle to explain the Trump phenomenon to themselves.
We'll take a break.
I'll check.
Don't go away, folks.
Hang on.
You know, this This Lindsey Graham soundbite, it says so much.
Now, let me set the table here.
Not anything you don't know.
You've got Trump with a, what is it?
Look, about a 200 and let's say 50 delegate lead right now, 662 to 408 over Cruz.
And the news is, can Trump be prevented from getting 1237 before we go to the convention?
You get theories on both sides.
New York Times says, no, he can get there.
AP says, no, he can't.
You have a bunch of conservatives who are talking about no Trump going to go third party, having a meeting today to talk about maybe going third party, maybe what to do about Trump.
Why?
Here you have Lindsey Graham saying that he's going to do a fundraiser for Trump while also saying that Kasich is the most viable general election candidate.
You've got a guy here, Ted Cruz.
Where is all of this anti-Trump emotion design?
Why isn't it going to Cruz?
It seems to me that the guy next in line, if you want to deny Cruz, or Trump rather, that you've got to go with Cruz.
You've got to put all of your energy behind Cruz in these remaining states.
You've got to join the campaign effort, get votes out, donations, what have you.
And I'll tell you what it is, folks.
You're being shown, it's being demonstrated again what you already know.
Again, this is nothing you don't know, but the Republican Party, establishment, whatever you want to call it, they don't want conservatism either.
This is not just stop Trump, because there is a humongous opportunity.
Standing right next to him is Ted Cruz.
And you want to talk about debates and who can hold who?
There's no way Hillary Clinton can come anywhere near holding a candle of Ted Cruz in a debate on policy or anything else.
There's nobody better equipped to indict Hillary Clinton to expose her and her party for everything that's going wrong.
And yet, Republican Party, it's like, Cruz is not even there.
And they're focusing on a guy who's won one state and it was home state.
It's not even really a win.
It's a de facto.
And now got this meeting here to come up with a potential third party candidate.
And if you want to stop Trump, the best opportunity you've got is Ted Cruz.
Plus, you have all these people saying, hey, look at all this talk about a contested convention brokered or whatever isn't going to happen.
It's going to be one of those two guys.
It's going to be Cruz or it's going to be Trump because they're the two frontrunners.
They're the only two with a legitimate chance of getting a 1237 in any which way you go, either before the convention or, you know, for second ballot, what have you.
This is another one of these eye-opening episodes here.
We had a caller, and I've said it myself.
I mean, you've got the most capable, qualified conservative that has sought the presidency in years.
Trump's attracting attention because Trump's Trump.
I mean, Trump is a personality phenomenon.
It's a charisma personality, media, all of these phenomenon.
There isn't anybody that can compete.
Hillary can't compete with it.
Bernie Sanders can't compete.
Nobody can.
But yet everybody wants to stop this guy.
So, I mean, this grasping at straws out here when there's an obvious go-to, it's really eye-opening, is it not?
Now, look, I've got a brief time out here at the bottom.
They come too fast here, I know, because this is the fastest three hours in media.
We have remaining phone calls, pretty good roster still remaining.
And yes, what I've already talked about doing, the latest attempt by the intelligentsia to explain to themselves what's happening out here, all coming up when we get back.
Here's Nancy in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Greetings, Rush.
I've listened to you probably since the late 90s, and all your sayings kind of stick in my head.
I've heard you say things over and over through the years.
Like one of them especially is once a liberal, always a liberal.
The other one is conservatism will always win.
I don't know why that's not happening this year.
We've got a guy.
I mean, wouldn't it be great if someone who raises their hand and swears to defend the Constitution of the United States would actually do it?
I mean, guys like Ted Cruz just don't walk in the door every day.
Right, I know.
I think I have said conservatism always wins.
One of the things I've really said is that conservatism works every time it's tried.
And we are not there.
But I've got there's evidence today for you ought to take a look at the news coming out of Ireland.
Ireland has gone almost total conservative.
Denmark is dialing back on its liberalism.
Ireland's got 8% economic growth.
They have reduced government regulation.
They've lowered taxes.
They've implemented the recipe, and they're just, they're rebounding like crazy.
And we will, too, if anything like that ever happens here.
And by the way, all of Washington knows it.
Washington is not interested in conservatism working because conservatism, by definition, requires a de-emphasized role of government in people's lives.
And nobody in Washington wants a government getting smaller.
They don't want it becoming less consequential.
In the case of this campaign, I think a lot of people supporting Trump think he's a conservative, not doctrinaire ideological conservative, but they don't think he's a liberal Democrat.
Despite what Cruz has elucidated about Trump's donations and so forth, forget all that.
How does Trump make people feel?
What does he sound like?
He sounds like this guy, one of the hallmarks of conservatism is to call attention to failures of government.
Trump does that 90% of his speech is government failure.
He's not a conservative when he talks about his fixes, but in terms of identifying the problem, he comes across to many people who are not doctrinaire ideological conservatives.
That's sort of a thing to remember, Nancy.
It's just a trust issue, Rush.
You know, I mean, how do we know?
We already know what Cruz is going to do because he's already done it.
But we don't know what Trump is going to do.
I mean, to me, the guy is a loose cannon.
I'm afraid of him.
I just don't know.
I know, but here, look, there's also this thing called a campaign.
How many brilliant people do you know who don't have a likability factor?
I mean, even in politics.
I'm not talking about anybody particularly here, but my point is tough for anybody that is a professional politician steeped in the do's and don'ts of that business to stand up to Trump, Trump's definition of a pure outsider in terms of form and so forth.
And Trump doesn't have a prompter.
He doesn't do speeches.
There's no stump speech.
He's got themes he repeats, but every speech is different.
Every appearance is different.
You never know what you're going to get.
Therefore, it's exciting.
It's unpredictable.
Nothing is the same.
Every other politician, it is predictable.
You know what they're going to say.
You know what they're not going to say.
You know when they're going to play it safe.
It's a tough thing to compete against.
But then even so, Nancy, the point is I was making earlier, even with all this, in all these primaries, there were more people not voting for Trump than voting for him.
Yes, yes.
It's a shame that Rubio and Kasich didn't get out before this last Tuesday.
I mean, I like both those people.
Rubio's a fine man.
I don't know whether Cruz would have picked up any more support.
Well, let me ask you this, because this is a good test question.
Rubio, I think, is a fantastic conservative.
I think that speech he gave getting out on Tuesday night was the best speech I've heard in a year.
However, let's say Rubio decided that he wanted to officially, big time, make it a daily thing throw-in with Cruz.
How many Cruz supporters would you think would say, no, gang eight, he's going to hurt us.
He's not a real conservative.
Keep him away.
How many do you think would say that?
I don't know.
Probably more than I would like.
I wouldn't be one of them.
Exactly.
The doctrinaires.
Whoa, no, no, this guy, he's not a real conservative.
He was with gang.
He was with Schumer.
We can't have.
He's going to taint Cruz Bay Association.
We can't have that.
There'd be some that would say it.
I don't know how many, but some would.
And then you say, well, where's the unity exactly?
Yeah, well, I think he'd be an excellent VP pick.
I think he and Cruz, and I think if he was with Cruz for four years or eight years or whatever, I think he would be the next president.
Okay, standard political thinking.
You think he'd be a good VP, but the problem is, yeah, he's Florida.
He hadn't won anything.
He's won one election of Florida.
Well, he's won some local elections and get elected senators.
But in the national race, there would be some questions about whether he could help Cruz carry Florida, for example, in the traditional way people look at this.
And they're up against the unconventional here.
And I think that's what it's going to take to beat it.
You have to think outside the box, do outside the box, because that's where Trump is.
The aggressor sets the rules in any conflict.
I don't think anybody knows what to do with him.
I don't think anybody knows how to deal with it because I don't think anybody fully understands what's going on.
Which takes me to JPOD.
Nancy, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
It was not being disagreement, in disagreement or argumentative.
I was merely posing questions that I think others would ask and getting your take on them.
Here is John Pedoritz, who he might resent it if I included him in the club known as the Establishment.
I don't know if he would or not.
Would you say, well, I don't know.
It's a toss-up, but nevertheless, he is does have a lot in common with undoubted members of the establishment who are trying to figure out what happened.
I mean, if he's not establishment, he certainly is on the same page with him where Trump is concerned.
So he's the editor of commentary, has a column at the New York Post.
His father is Norman Pedoritz.
He's got great, great, what's the word I'm looking for?
Pedigree.
Exactly right.
So here's a long piece.
I'm just going to summarize this in two of his paragraphs.
So, he says, what I'm suggesting is, no, I need to set this up.
His theory is all rooted on the 2008 Great Recession.
And that when it happened, who got bailed out?
A lot of people got hurt.
The mortgage business, the subprime, who got hurt there?
Individual Americans, mortgage holders.
But who got bailed out?
The banks.
People already rich.
People already with second homes in the Hamptons.
People already have everything they want in life.
They got bailed out.
That's when Santelli came along and started talking about Tea Party and this and that after 2008.
So in his piece, Pedoritz says, imagine that that had happened in 2006, not 2008.
Imagine it did not happen.
That whole collapse did not happen in 2008.
It happened in 2006.
There wasn't a presidential race going on.
Imagine everything the same, but imagine the little guy getting bailed out.
Imagine everybody whose mortgage was destroyed having that mortgage forgiven.
He says there wouldn't be a Trump today.
Now, admittedly, that's the game of if.
So that's the setup.
Here's the final two graphs.
So what I'm suggesting is that the weird timing of the meltdown and the rise of Obama hindered and delayed a reckoning for 2008 that everybody would have expected, as a matter of course, had the crisis hit earlier.
Now, there were certainly suggestions of extra political populist rage along the way.
The Tea Party was one, though it focused on size of government issues.
Occupy Wall Street was another, though its anti-banker message was swamped by every far-left bugaboo on earth.
Occupy Wall Street was a phony created thing anyway in response to Tea Party.
But the signs were easy to misread, obviously, since almost everyone misread them.
And this is why I think, writes Mr. Pedoritz, the meaning of Trump is being misused and misunderstood.
He says he wants to make America great again.
But I don't think that's what his acolytes hear.
So Pedoritz reacting, Trump's out, we're going to make America great again.
We're going to make it great.
We're going to win so much.
We're going to win.
You're going to be tired of winning.
You're going to say, Mr. Trump, can we start losing some?
I don't like it.
We're winning too much.
No, I never lose.
I never lose.
We're going to win, win, win.
We're going to make America.
He says you're not hearing that.
That's not what you hear.
What you hear, he writes, I think what Trump acolytes hear is that he's going to turn his vicious temper and his unbalanced rage on the large-scale forces his supporters feel are holding them back.
They want somebody punished.
Could be China, could be Muslims, could be Mexicans, could be bankers, could be the GOP establishment, whatever.
Trump is the guy that's going to get even with him for once.
Trump's the guy that's going to punish him.
That's what Pedoritz thinks.
You Trump supporters.
It's not, you know, he's not going to make America great again because you know he can't make America great again.
No.
And you know it, and you know that isn't going to happen, and that's not why you support him.
You support Trump because you really think he's going to act out your rage.
He's going to take it to the bankers.
He's going to take it to the Mexicans.
He's going to take it to the illegals.
He's going to take it to the Chikons.
He's going to take it to the Vietnamese.
He's going to take it to the Japanese.
He's going to take it to whoever.
And he's going to punish him for you.
Except Pedoritz writes, only Trump won't be the punisher.
The qualities that have given him appeal to part of the GOP primary electorate would be destructive with a national electorate seven times the size.
If he's the GOP nominee, the gender gap, 12% for Romney in 2012, will open into a gender Grand Canyon.
So he thinks you're not hearing Trump's going to make America great again.
He thinks you hear Trump as a guy who's going to get even with everybody who screwed you.
And nothing's going to change for you except those people are going to get theirs.
And that's why you like Trump.
And that's why you put up with whatever Trump's saying.
Is that right?
Is that who you are?
I don't think that's it, myself.
But we have to take another obscene profit break.
Don't go away.
I don't have time to take the call, but I want to address Jim in Fairfax, Virginia.
Jim, it's a really great question.
What will Trump do if he doesn't win?
This is something the party bigwigs need to ponder.
Here's the question.
Let's say if Trump doesn't win the nomination, do you think he's going to say, oh, okay, you know, it was a fun nine months or so.
I'm heading back to Trump Tower in Mar-a-Lago, and I'm going to – or is he going to realize he's got a whole cadre of political people behind him?
In other words, does this redefine, reconstitute the Republican Party?
Does Trump hang around if he loses?
If he wins the nomination but loses the general election, what does that mean?
This is all, I guarantee you, party elders, establishment types, they are thinking of all of this.
There's much involved in this.
I'll have a reaction to the J-POD theory tomorrow because we are out of time at the moment.
Pedoritz's theory, get even with himism.
To me, that describes Obama.
I guess what the entire Obama administration has been.
But he wants to get even with the founders and everybody who believes in them.
Open line Friday tomorrow.
It is, right?
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