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April 25, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:40
April 25, 2016, Monday, Hour #2
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You know, I'm wondering if I should try this again or just let it be.
Would people be more comfortable stewing in their anger or actually figure this out?
Like, I just, I just got a, I just got an email from a friend in North Carolina.
I just had the process of delegate selection in North Carolina explained to me.
And the Cruz people came in here and they took charge.
It's all legal, but it's an amazing story of massive knowledge of the rules and coordination by the Cruz campaign.
Greetings, welcome back.
Rushland bought 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, LRushbow at EIBnet.com.
What is this?
This is Politico story.
Pardon me, folks.
I'm still recovering from some medical work overlooked.
April 25th, so this is today.
Cruz crushes Trump in weekend delegate fight.
Now, hang on.
Now, just don't, folks, stay with me on this.
There's no attempt here being made to irritate anybody.
There are explanations for all of this, and nobody's being cheated.
Now, I realize that some of you are never going to believe that, but nobody is being cheated.
In other words, the process is not being violated.
The rules are not being violated here in any of this delegate selection stuff.
And I will do my best again to try to make this understandable.
It may not be satisfactory.
Ted Cruz notched another delegate landslide Saturday, stretching his advantage in a competition that might never occur.
The second ballot of a contested Republican convention in July.
Ted Cruz won 65 of the 94 delegates up for grabs Saturday.
He may have won more than 65, but Kentucky's 25 delegates have not revealed their leanings yet.
Now, Cruz, I'm just reading from the political here, from the political news story.
The Texas senator has so thoroughly dominated the fight to send loyal delegates to the national convention that if Donald Trump fails to clench the nomination on the first ballot, Cruz is well positioned to surpass him and perhaps even snag the nomination for himself.
Now, I understand how just the possibility of that might make somebody think, well, wait, it's got to be cheating.
Because here's the process.
The people vote in a primary.
And in our country, the way people vote is the way it ends is what everybody thinks.
People vote, so we have a primary, and Donald Trump wins Florida.
And there is no way that Donald Trump should ever lose Florida after that, is what everybody thinks, right?
If the people in Florida in the primary gave more votes for Trump than anybody else, then every vote at the convention, Florida, ought to be voting for Trump, right?
And anything other than that means the system is being gamed.
Florida is not actually a good example here to use because that does happen in Florida.
The first three ballots, the delegates are required to vote the way the popular vote in the state went.
So Trump would win the first three ballots from the Florida delegation.
Let's just pick a state and an arbitrary number of delegates here to deal with in once again trying to explain.
Because folks, really, my whole point here to you, I'm not, I'm not, I'm really trying to get you to not think that this particular system is being rigged or you're being cheated.
You're not.
This is how politics is.
It's how anything where there are votes, boards of directors, anywhere where there are votes that determine outcomes of things, there are sometimes many votes, multiple votes.
People change their minds.
And it's bloody.
I mean, this is big leagues.
It's for all the marbles.
But I understand the basics.
I understand how it can be easily manipulated to be misunderstood.
So let's take the state of San Cordoba.
Let's make up our own state, San Cordoba.
And San Cordoba has 100 delegates.
Now, just stick with me on this.
And San Cordoba has a primary in January.
And in that primary in January, let's say San Cordoba, let's say Donald Trump wins San Cordoba and gets, let's just say, all of their delegates on the first ballot.
Donald Trump wins all 100 delegates in San Cordoba.
But San Cordoba doesn't have any delegates yet.
The delegates have yet to be selected in San Cordoba.
San Cordoba's delegates might not be chosen until May or April or March whenever San Cordoba has its convention.
It's party convention.
All that's known when the San Cordoba convention convenes is that in the first ballot at the upcoming national convention, every delegate has to vote the way the people of the state voted.
That means for Donald Trump.
But on the second and third ballot, the delegates are free agents and can vote for whomever they wish.
Okay, so the San Cordoba primary happened in January.
The San Cordoba Republican Convention is in April.
Now, there have been a lot of primaries since January.
There have been a lot of other elections.
And in April, the candidates decide whether or not they're going to send emissaries to the San Cordoba state convention.
In our scenario, Donald Trump doesn't send anybody.
Ted Cruz does.
Cruz sends in a bunch of people to participate in the actual selection of delegates.
The actual human beings.
The primary has not a thing to do with the individuals chosen as delegates.
All the primary does is give them instructions on how they must vote on the first ballot.
After that, they are free agents.
And those delegates are subject to any number of procedures in terms of being named as a delegate.
It is an honor, in many people's experience, to be a delegate.
In some people's experience, it's a hassle.
Some people love it.
Some people hate it.
But San Cordoba's got 100 of them.
And let's say Ted Cruz decides he's going to go in there and he's going to try to arrange it so that as many of those 100 delegates from the state of San Cordoba support him.
Kasich can do the same thing.
Jeb Bush could have done the same thing.
Marco Rubio could have done the same thing.
Chris Christie could have done the same thing.
Depends on how much money they want to spend.
Depends on how organized they want to be.
Depends on how deeply they want to plan for the convention going.
It's all up to the individual desires of each and every candidate to determine how involved he or she's going to be in each party's convention.
Cruz has known for a long time he doesn't have a prayer of getting a 1237 on the first ballot.
Only Trump does.
Cruz knows his only hope is a second or third ballot, the only hope he's got.
For that to happen, Donald Trump must not reach 1237 on the first ballot.
Well, there's nothing Cruz can do about San Cordoba's 100 delegates, even if every 100 delegates, if every one of those delegates is a Cruz supporter, they have to vote Trump on the first ballot.
But if there is a second ballot, Cruz's hard work at securing delegates in San Cordoba could get him the majority of those delegates on a second ballot.
And that's the rub, because you think that that's not fair.
You think that's not constitutional.
Why, the people voted.
How come after the people vote, those delegates' votes can change?
You think once chosen, once voted, the delegates should always have to vote for who won the state.
Am I right?
Well, if that's the case and nobody ever got to 1237, in this case, in this case, how would we ever get a nominee?
If every state delegation has to vote according to the popular vote of the state on every ballot, then no ballot's going to differ.
The first ballot's going to be the same as the 10th, and nobody's going to get to 1237.
Now, this has been standard operating procedure at party conventions and other democratic institutions for, you know, I shudder to think if the 2000 presidential race, if the Supreme Court had not stopped that recount and that election had gone to its constitutional end, I shudder to think what would happen.
You know who would have elected the president in 2000 if the Supreme Court had not shut down that recount?
The House of Representatives.
The House of Representatives would have chosen the president.
And guess who owned the House of Representatives in 2000?
The Republican Party.
Therefore, George W. Bush would have been elected president if they had not stopped the recount and Al Gore had never won, nothing changed.
And remember all that hassle with the hanging chads and everything?
If the House of Representatives had chosen the president, you want to, can you imagine the revolt that would have taken place?
Because here you would have had Al Gore supposedly winning the popular vote.
The Supreme Court would have stopped a recount.
The election in Florida, which is where this all turned, was certified.
It was made official long before the Florida Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court told the Florida Supreme Court, stop the recount.
Had it gone to the House choosing the president.
Can you imagine the outrage from people in this country who would not have had any idea that that's how it happens and would have thought cheating was what was taking place and that the Republicans were pulling a fast one when it would have been right there in the Constitution.
There are steps taken in the election of a president, anticipating trouble at every phase, how you eventually get it done.
And the last possible step is the House of Representatives voting.
But in the case of San Cordoba here, I know what you all want me to say.
You want me to say that the system is BS.
You want me to say that the system is rigged when somebody who didn't win the popular vote can go in there and manipulate delegates to vote for him on subsequent ballots.
You don't think that's fair.
You don't think that's right.
You think that is subverting the system and subverting the will of the people as expressed in the vote in the primary.
And I understand you're thinking that, but that's not the case.
There is no requirement.
And this is, I think, where this breaks down.
You have the primary election and the people vote their preference.
That does not mean that every delegate in that state's convention has to personally support that nominee or that winner.
That's not what the primary vote means.
The primary vote does not mean that every delegate must personally support the winner.
And I think that's one of the areas where this is breaking down, where people are misunderstanding what primary elections mean.
The delegates are up for grabs once the state convention begins.
Anybody can run for delegate.
People can be appointed delegate.
Candidates can go in and try to get people supportive of them as delegates, named as delegates.
That's the fight.
That's the process.
That has always been the way it happens.
There is nothing happening this year that has not happened before in terms of delegate selection, allocation, or what have you.
The will of the people.
I can see where you think the will of the people being subverted because if the people vote in San Cordoba, 100 delegates vote for Trump, and then a second ballot, they all don't vote for Trump, then some game is being played.
It's not right.
People voted.
Why don't the people's votes count anymore?
They did count.
They did count on the first ballot as written in the state's charter.
And every state's different.
And states have a right to be different.
It's called state sovereignty.
What Cruz is doing here is simply trying to secure support for what he hopes is going to be a second or third ballot.
That's what he's doing.
He's not monkeying around, nor is anybody else.
They're not changing.
They're not trying to cheat what happens on the first ballot.
They're not, they can't.
There's no way they can monkey with that.
There is no way that anybody can go in and make delegates of a state vote other than they are pledged, other than how they are pledged on the first ballot.
It cannot happen.
And that is not what Cruz is doing.
Cruz is not going in and talking Trump voters out of it.
What Cruz is doing is trying to make sure that there aren't very many Trump voters in the delegation from San Cordoba so that if there is a second ballot, most of the delegates vote for Cruz.
If Trump chooses not to go into San Cordoba and compete for delegates because he doesn't think he's going to need them, then that's a decision that he made, and he's leaving that field open to Cruz.
But there isn't any cheating, and there isn't any gaming of the system, and there isn't any talking Trump voters out of it.
That is not what is happening.
And even if it were, how in the world is it?
But it isn't.
I didn't want to go there because it's not what's happening.
It's not what happened in Colorado.
Ted Cruz did not go in there and whine and dine or threaten or whatever a bunch of people that were going to vote for Trump and convince them to vote for him.
Not at all in any way, shape, manner, or form.
It's not what's happened in any of these states.
Now, I'll tell you something else.
There's one little other thing to add here.
Let's say, let's just pretend here that all of these efforts that Ted Cruz is making to win on a second or third ballot, let's skip forward and say that it happens.
All right?
First ballot, nobody gets 1237, go to second ballot, and all of this work that Cruz has done in securing delegates in his favor gives him 1,245 delegates on the second ballot.
I don't think anybody understands the blowback that would happen from the Trumpists.
If that ever happens, we are going to see a nuclear explosion like you've never seen before.
Because if they think what's happened now is cheating and rigging the game, with Trump leaving everything and nobody even close to him throughout the entire primary process, nobody gets closer than 300 delegates.
And then somehow on the first ballot, he doesn't get to 1237, maybe gets to 1150 and they don't let him have it.
They go to the second ballot, and all this work that Cruz has done produces 1,250 and he wins it on a second ballot.
Holy smokes, the blowback that will happen then, the backlash, that will be the end of the Republican Party.
I mean, there are results here.
There is, there are consequences to all of this.
I'm not speaking about any of this in a vacuum, folks.
All of it has consequences.
That, man, I shudder to think that would end up being one of the most dramatic political conventions ever to be on TV.
It might make the Watts and Rodney King riots look like romper room when it was all over.
If something like that actually happened.
But that is all Cruz can do.
That's the only chance he's got.
He can't get to 1237.
The only chance he's got is second or third ballots.
It's the only chance Reagan had in 1976.
And it's not because anything's illegal.
Everybody's taking advantage of the rules.
But if that were to happen, I shudder to think, the backlash that would happen from, because there wouldn't be any amount of, there wouldn't, the words would not be there to explain to people what happened.
It would just be seen as straight highway robbery right out in broad daylight and people wouldn't put up with it.
Would be you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to be near Cleveland if that scenario actually manifested.
You wouldn't want to be in Ohio.
Okay, now just one more time, just to let you all know, I know where you're coming from.
I know where the breakdown is.
In my example of San Cordoba, my made-up state, Cruz wins, Trump wins it, okay?
And you don't understand how in the world ever Cruz could win it.
He didn't get the votes.
How can he ever win?
The people in San Cordoba voted for Trump.
So how can Cruz ever win San Cordoba at a convention?
You think it's a violation of the vote.
There's no way.
Cruz lost the votes.
How does losing votes equal winning a state?
I understand your reaction to this.
It's not fair.
I can hear you shouting it, but it's all about the delegate selection process.
And as I've said, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times.
Here is 1,001.
Every state on the first ballot must vote the way the popular vote in the state went.
That's why the number of 1237 is so important.
Because whoever can get there in the primary process, it's over before you get to the convention.
If somebody gets 1,237 delegates before the convention, it's over.
But if nobody gets there before the convention, the first ballot is going to show nobody getting 1,237 unless there are 200 unbound delegates of that 1,237.
So if somebody can go in there and manipulate whatever number they need on the first ballot and maybe not have won a state, but get enough delegates from that state on the first ballot, you're just going to have to trust me on this.
There isn't any cheating.
And nobody's going in and convincing people pledged to vote for Trump not to vote for him.
That is not.
And what's happening is I think you've got a lot of people in the media spreading all this just to incite people, just to get them all fired up and charged up and just spread this narrative that there's cheating going on when either they don't understand it or they want the fireworks.
They want charged up and angry callers calling in raising hell for the sake of it, ratings or what have you.
Anyway, back to the phones because we've got lots of people who want to weigh them.
And this up next is Myra in New York City.
Great to have you, Myra.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
So excited to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
I've called, I don't know how many times, but I've been a longtime listener.
And I was actually going to call you on the closet, but you just said what I wanted you to say.
And what I wanted you to say is that there are everybody from Breitbart in the morning to my friend that I'm disappointed in, fellow New Yorker, Sean Hannity.
They're inciting people to feel that there's cheating, where they can easily point, like you did, to Colorado and the fact that as a state, they made a decision that they weren't going to become insignificant or what happened with Santorum, that they were all bound to vote for him, and they changed their own mood.
And that's the reality.
I mean, whether you like it or not, I think Cruz's ground game is stuck into none and it demonstrates the incredible president he's going to be.
I'll vote for Trump if he winds up being the nominee.
I'm a New Yorker.
I like him.
But the reality is you need somebody that really can intellectually pull together the government in a manner that's constitutionally tilted.
And there's only one guy that can do it.
And it's not about being a cruise bot.
It's about the fact that he's demonstrating it.
And there is no cheating here.
And my challenge to you is, I really think you can't let go of this topic.
You have to repeat this every day, as boring as it may seem to you.
Oh, geez.
No, don't do that to me.
That's purgatory to have to explain this each and every day, because I'm going to tell you, this is one of those topics that people don't want to hear it.
They have their comfort level in what they think about what's going on.
And if I come along and challenge the comfort level, they get mad at me.
And I've been explaining this for months.
I was one of the first one to discuss the entire delegate selection process and how it has nothing to do with the primary, nothing whatsoever to do with the primary.
The delegates have nothing to do with the vote on primary day.
Absolutely not a diddly squat thing other than how they are required to vote on the first ballot.
But who they are, the primary does not determine who the delegates are.
The primary, after the primary, nobody knows who the delegates are.
Anyway, Myra, I appreciate very much.
Thanks.
Here is Jeff in Summit, New Jersey.
You're next.
It's great to have you with us.
Hello.
It's great to be here, Rush.
Thank you.
I've been listening to you since my brother introduced you to me on a golf trip to South Carolina in 1991, and you have been the gift that keeps on giving ever since.
Well, I appreciate that.
I really do.
Thank you.
Well, listen, on this issue of irate Trump supporters who don't seem to like this process of Cruz negotiating for delegates on the second and possibly the third round.
First of all, the will of the people is not being thwarted here because as far as I can tell, Trump, who gets 37, 38, maybe 39% of the overall vote so far is certainly not the will of the majority.
Well, yeah, you can look at, you know, it works both ways.
Exactly.
Trump got 60% of the vote in New York and 95% of the delegates.
I mean, what's fair about that?
It works both ways.
That's right.
Nobody complains about that, nor am I. The Trump people don't complain about it, and certainly you don't hear Cruz complaining about it because he understands that this is the system, but it's also not his style to whine and complain the way Trump does.
That's part and parcel of his persona so far.
But what's, I think, even more critical here is that this is a deal-making process that Ted Cruz has engaged in.
And if Donald Trump is the supreme dealmaker, as he's told us many, many times, if he can make better deals than anybody else, this process should be right up Trump's alley.
It should be right in his wheelhouse.
Even if he comes close on the first round and doesn't get the nomination, he should be out there making his great deals and locking up the delegates for the second round such that Cruz and Kasich should be left in the dust.
But it looks as though Ted Cruz is a much better dealmaker than Donald Trump.
Well, see, I'm not prepared to concede that.
I think Trump just never think Trump got into this.
Trump was winning this a different way.
This was the shotgun approach.
Trump was winning this with national media.
It was a national swarm.
It was national popularity.
It was just a giant wave.
The Trump phenomenon is and was a wave.
And it's like a tsunami, and it's just swallowing everything.
And it's going to take everything along with it.
And it's so big and so powerful that he's not going to have to go to the state convention.
He's not going to have to negotiate and get involved with delegate selection because he's going to win it long before that.
I'm sure that was the Trump strategy.
I'm sure that's what the Trump camp intended to happen.
It's not a criticism of them either.
I can understand their thinking on this.
I mean, the Trump campaign has to be an amazing thing to be part of.
Very, very rare, the air being breathed in the Trump campaign to have this kind of a national impact, to be the focus of attention in this way.
It's really, really heavy stuff.
And Trump is blessed with supreme confidence, and I think believes that he's going to win this thing with the power of his personality and the power of his existence.
And I believe that's how he believes he wins at everything that he does.
He has other people that roll up the sleeves and get down and do the nitty-gritty and stuff.
He keeps up with the details on it.
If he's needed in the nitty-gritty, he gets down there and does it.
But he's got a whole staff of people.
He does hire the best people that he can hire.
I just don't think he made the effort here.
That's, again, not a criticism.
The reason Cruz did it, it's the only chance he's had.
Cruz was very clear.
Once Cruz did not sweep the evangelical states, it was very clear Cruz was not going to get 1237.
The Cruz strategy blew up on them early.
The Cruz strategy actually blew up when Trump got in the race.
When Trump got in the race, that kind of screwed up everybody, including Jebs, but that divided the Republican vote in ways that nobody had planned on it being divided.
And so everybody had to make alterations on the fly in reaction to Trump.
Trump was leading and running far away ahead of everybody.
There was no reason for Trump to go into these states, start whining and dining delegates.
He wasn't going to have to.
Now, by the way, you Trump people, I understand emotionally how you feel about this.
A, your guy is the outsider.
B, you don't look at Cruz as an outsider.
To you, Cruz is as much an insider as anybody else is because he's in the Senate.
He's an elected Republican.
He's been in the Bush administration.
He's been the Texas government.
He's an insider, no matter what he says.
And he's working with the other insiders and doing all these delegate games.
And I can see how you would think that it's a bunch of insiders conspiring against the outsider, Mr. Trump, to deny him what he has earned.
I know that's how it appears to you.
But that's not specifically what is happening.
I don't want to repeat myself.
But Cruz is simply doing the only thing left to him to win this.
And that's win delegates on a second or third or even fourth ballot.
And the odds that we're going to get to a second, third, or fourth ballot, nobody knows.
Depends on who you talk to.
But there is nobody that knows right now.
There's not a single person that knows what's actually going to happen here, which is why everybody's having to plan for whatever contingency or series of contingencies that they can imagine taking place and being ready for them.
Brief timeout is the fastest three hours in media keep rolling on.
We'll be back, though.
Don't go away.
Look, look, I keep getting emails.
I know all of this is alienating voters.
That's what I say.
There are consequences to this.
If Cruz were to pull this off.
Oh, man, the explosion that would take place.
Anyway, Dan Middletown, Maryland, great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Well, Rush, I've only been with you as an admirer since 1986, so perhaps I did miss something along the way.
Rush, I think the American people, remember H.L. Mencken's line, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
No, no.
I don't think the American people are having any trouble understanding what these rules are.
And I don't think that the response is based on the supposition that the rule is being unfairly applied.
Ted Cruz is showing, by way of knowing this system and all of its secret handshakes, he's showing exactly why we're frustrated with the Senate and the Congress, with Ryan, with Boehner, with Mitchell.
They all have their House Rules Committee, Senate Rules Committee, Senate rules.
Sometimes it looks like they make it up as they go along.
And at the end of the day, what?
The will that the people express by way of their voting is simply disregarded in behalf of politics now as a four-letter word.
And Cruz is simply a living example, a daily example of how the game is played.
It's not that he's gaming the system.
It's that he's using the system and the system stinks.
And the Trumpists don't like the system, period, want it gone, and the fact that Cruz is using it disqualifies him.
He's no different than what we're trying to replace.
Well, as usual, you reduced it beautifully to a sentence.
Yes, he's not.
The difference between Cruz and his colleagues is that they can't stand him and he can't stand them.
So that is something exceptional.
Usually by the time you're close to being your party's candidate, you can at least count on collegial fellowship from a majority of the people you serve with.
I don't know about that.
You ought to work at a radio station someday.
Well, I didn't hear legions of Republicans coming out against McCain and Romney and so forth.
I think what Cruz has done in the Senate is what he's doing now.
He characterizes and patronizes those who disagree with him.
He's very Obama-like in that regard.
That is to say, Ted Cruz, who can't give a greeting without making it sound like the Gettysburg Address, has a way of offering these incredibly conclusive statements.
Wait a minute.
It's not conclusive at all.
Wait a minute.
He can't make a greeting without it sounding like a Gettysburg Address.
Is that what you said?
If you go to any collegiate book on debating, he was very good as a college debater.
I won't go into my background, but I've taught some of the teachers who regard him so highly.
Look, the college debating book tells you that it works something like this: Rush.
There's something very important that you must listen to.
Pause, pause.
Are you on the edge of your seat yet?
And I'm only going to say this once.
Pause, pause.
Good morning.
Yes, I know what you're talking about.
Sorry, I'm not taken in.
By the way, nor am I angry.
How could I listen to you for three hours and be angry?
Oh, no, no, I understand.
This is all, I appreciate that.
No, I really do.
Everything appears to be at crosshairs here, and we're not.
You know, I just whether you like the system or not, find it, Dan.
And your point is well taken: that the system is really what's being exposed here and what people don't like.
And Trump is seen as somebody way, way, way out of it, not part of it, and that redounds to his benefit over and over again.
The only thing I just desirous that people actually understand, whether they like the system or not, how it works, that there isn't really any cheating going on here.
Now, your point that it's not that the system is being exploited or that there's cheating going on, it's just that the system is being used, and that's what everybody's fed up with, because the system is what has led to the problems that we have.
And I totally understand that.
I don't disagree with any of it.
So I appreciate the call, Dan.
I really do.
I don't know where time is going here, folks, but I have to brief time out here.
We'll continue when we get back sooner than you believe.
Trump was just rocking it, by the way, in Rhode Island.
He's back on his back on his role.
He's back.
Trump, I think, was off on a tangent, is the best way to put it for a month or so, but maybe three weeks.
But Trump's got the old energy, the old firebrand, the old rack and tour personality back amidst all this talk that they're going to make him presidential.
He's going back to the way he was.
He's fighting that so-called image makeover.
And he's the Trump that everybody was falling in love with at the outset of this.
I mean, it was just on fire in Rhode Island a moment ago.
We'll be back and continue in a second.
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