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April 27, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:01
April 27, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Well, of course it's a different Trump.
What do you mean is it a different Trump doing this speech?
Of course it's different.
He's reading a teleprompter.
But that doesn't mean it's bad.
Trump is trying to show different sides to different people, or else his advisors have decided it's time to demonstrate some credentials and some weight here on foreign policy.
Go a little bit further than we're doing dumb trade deals and the Chinese and the Mexicans.
And you'll hear.
We'll have some soundbites coming up pretty soon.
You'll be able to judge for yourself.
And you'll be able to hear the difference in this speech that Trump is giving right now in his usual campaign rally speech, which is an off-the-cuff, extemporaneous improvisational hour, hour and a half every time it goes out at a rally.
Anyway, greetings.
Welcome back, folks.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
One thing on this Harvard survey on millennials rejecting capitalism, the Washington Post says here that the results of the survey are difficult to interpret, pollsters noted.
It's not difficult to figure out why a bunch of millennials would be anti-capitalist today.
What the hell have they been taught?
They have been fed an anti-capitalist message from the first days of Romperoom.
They have been told competition is the root of it.
If you are raised to believe that competition is evil, then that's three strikes against capitalism right there.
Capitalism is rooted in competition.
And if you have been raised to believe that competition is unfair because there are losers and there shouldn't be any losers, that's not fair and that's not right.
Everybody should win.
I take you back to Andrew Cuomo.
Sorry, Chris Cuomo, son of Mario the pious, brother of Andrew Cuomo, CNN anchor, about the time Obama went down to Cuba.
And they're doing a report from Cuba and Chris Cuomo is a little frustrated at what he's seeing down there.
It's still a time warp.
You're locked in the 1950s in Cuba.
Nobody has anything.
It's a slum.
The country is a slum.
And Chris Cuomo says, when are these guys going to figure out that communism is about raising everybody up and providing everybody with the best?
And I saw that.
And I did a double take.
I did a triple take.
I said, you got to be kidding.
It all makes sense to me now.
I have always believed that everybody understood what communism was.
I have always believed that even leftists who have sympathy for communism understood what it was and that it only had failed because the right people hadn't come along yet to actually implement it, direct it, and run it.
Little did I know that they don't even understand what it is.
They have no idea that communism requires walls to keep people in.
They have no idea that communism is specifically about making everybody miserable, that it is about making everybody equally poor.
That is not about raising anybody up except the people that run the country or the organization that happens to be communist.
So he's a classic example.
I don't know what he's, he's probably older than a millennial now, but not by much.
But if you've been raised to believe that you get a trophy for showing up, that you don't have to accomplish anything, if you've been raised to believe that there's even a stigma attached to achievement, because that's unfair, because it's unfair for you to get more than somebody else because you might be better than somebody else because it's not fair that you're better.
And so we can't humiliate people who are not as good as you or others.
So we have to penalize those who do good things.
We have to penalize those who achieve a lot.
Communism socialism never seeks to elevate anybody.
Same thing with liberalism.
It seeks to even outcomes by lowering everybody.
But if that's what you've been taught, if you're 30 years old, if you're 29, and if you've been raised by parents that believe that, been taught by teachers and professors who believe that, and you now happen to think that America's best days are behind it, and what has America always been up until Obama?
It has been capitalism.
So America is finally failing because the truth of capitalism has finally come home to it's not hard to understand this at all.
I don't know why these people writing the story think it's puzzling.
It's one of the major problems that we're facing and dealing with.
And by the way, I think that has a lot to do with why this particular presidential campaign is shaping up the way it is.
You know, folks, this campaign, I found myself today in a moment of solitude, feeling sorry for a lot of people.
And I don't mean in a critical or negative way, genuinely sorry for a lot of people who've just devoted their lives to the triumph of ideological conservatism.
They've given everything they have to it.
It has been, for many of those people, a singular focus.
They have written, they have done, studied, they have tried to persuade, they've taught.
And this year they thought, many of them, that the closest thing to a great conservative candidate finally had surfaced, and it was Ted Cruz.
And just isn't it not working out the way a lot of people hoped, a lot of people thought, and a lot of people are scratching their heads trying to explain it and understand it.
And I ran across, I was reading today, a piece by Bill Crystal in the Weekly Standard.
What he essentially has done here has reprinted a memo written on April 24th by a man named Rich Danker, who is described here as a bright young conservative operative who ran the Lone Star Committee, which is an independent expenditure effort on behalf of Ted Cruz.
It's a campaign organization, fundraising, spending group with the objective of getting Ted Cruz elected.
And it's a multi-page memo that Mr. Danker has written, and it analyzes this presidential race, but it even goes beyond that.
And it's got some incredible insights.
And I've excerted some that I want to share with you.
Title of the memo is the 2016 Republican Race.
Now, the parts that I'm excerting here to share with you are those parts.
Remember, this is a cruise organization.
The guy running a cruise organization, sending a memo out to others in the organization to explain to them what's happened here.
Trump's simple, straightforward strategy of trying to win in every state to take as much free media as possible, to have an inclusion attitude toward getting voters, and to appear in front of as many people as possible, proved to be a sledgehammer against the old way.
And unlike just about every other past self-funder, Trump did not let his campaign take him for a ride.
Now, let me put this in context.
What Mr. Danker here is explaining, he just has explained the cruise strategy, which is to realize you can win some states and you can't win others.
So you ignore the states you can't win.
You put your resources toward the states that you can win in primaries here.
And you put your ground game in place.
You come up with your message.
You tailor your message to every particular state you're going to.
You modify it.
You basically have one stump speech.
You give it over and over again.
And that's the playbook.
And Mr. Danker says that cannot possibly compete.
And that's the standard, ordinary way of doing things.
That's a Republican consultant way of doing things.
That's the playbook.
And it can't compete with somebody like Donald Trump, whose strategy was entirely this.
Trump trumps, I'm going to win every state, I'm going to win every state.
I'm going to win every voter.
I'm going to reach every voter.
I'm going to do as many public appearances as I can.
I'm going to do every appearance I do is going to be different.
I'm going to make fun of my opponents.
I'm going to make fun.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to break every rule in the book, and I'm going to just shoot for every possible voter I can get.
I don't believe in this regional business.
I don't think there's a state that I can't win.
I don't think there's a state that I should ignore.
I'm going for the whole enchilada.
I'm going to smother this nation.
I'm going to flood the nation.
I'm going to flood the zone.
I'm put myself out there and see what happens.
Mr. Danker says that that is one of the things.
Nobody saw it coming.
Nobody in professional politics has the slightest idea how to compete with it because it's not in the formula.
Political professionals, back to his memo here.
Political professionals have gotten so much power in presidential campaigns that they have deluded the candidates of a message and they put up barriers to getting votes.
They convince the candidates to run away from most media interviews out of fear of making a gaffe.
Or they encourage the candidates to stick to a stump speech that has been written after all kinds of focus grouping and after all kinds of polling.
So rather than a candidate being who he is, a consultant creates a candidate based on the consultant's polling, based on the consultant's focus grouping.
In state after state, in maybe precinct after precinct, you tailor a message, not who the candidate is and not what the candidate believes, but what you're polling makes you believe voters in a certain area want to hear.
Then you put those words in your candidate's mouth and you have him say it over and over and over again.
Same stump speech.
The media gets tired of covering it.
The media doesn't cover you every day because they've heard it all again.
They've heard it all before.
There's nothing new there.
You're not drawing any big crowds with this, and that's not the purpose.
Your purpose is to get little media hits here and there, show up now and then on national news, show up big on local news, making sure that your poll-driven, focused group message gets pounded and pounded and pounded.
And while all this is going on, the candidate never has a chance to develop as a human being because consultants turn them into robots.
Consultants turn them into automatons whose first priority is not to screw up, whose first objective is to don't go out there and say something that you're going to be regretting.
Don't make a gaffe.
Everything is defensive.
Everything is negative.
You end up with a boring, limited stump speech.
And the reason that is believed is because the more times you say something, the greater the impact is the theory.
So you have your stump speech with whatever you believe on immigration and whatever you believe on taxes and whatever you believe.
So if you end up saying 15,000 times, my first day in office, I'm going to abolish the IRS.
My first day in office, I'm going to abolish.
I'm going to rip it apart page by page Obamacare.
You say that a thousand times.
And you end up being an automaton, a robot that doesn't appear to be real to people.
You end up slicing and dicing voters so that virtually everything the candidate says is geared toward an interest group rather than the electorate at large.
You're focused grouping interest groups.
You're focused grouping like women here, men over here, immigrants here, Hispanics there.
You tailor your message.
Is this not what politics has in fact become?
And it's turned everybody off.
It's become predictable.
And worst of all, it isn't believable.
And you wonder after, where's the real guy here?
Why does every position sound identical?
I just heard the same words last week, yesterday, that I'm going to hear tomorrow.
Being staged managed, you see, gives power to the consultants.
Yes, you see.
It's how the consultants take credit for victory.
The consultants turn the candidates into essentially robots, articulating the words the consultants have focus grouped and researched.
It makes the candidate more dependent on staff and vendors to navigate them through the torture chamber that is an election campaign.
The consultants, as far as the media is, the consultants become the smart people and the candidate becomes a commodity.
And the consultants do this on purpose.
It's how they get paid.
It's how they get their reputations.
It's how they stay in charge of campaigns, stay in charge of issues, stay in charge of things that dominate campaigns.
And more importantly, this attitude is shared by political media, which wants to report on candidates this way.
It's easier.
You don't have to do any work.
You know what the candidate's going to say?
The stump speech is what it is.
Where the candidate is is the only thing it changes.
Write your story, file it, you're done with it.
But Trump, of course, is none of that.
Trump understood that presidential elections are situational, not ideological.
Therefore, the candidate who wins the primary and the general election is usually the one who best applies their ideological outlook to the issues of the day.
So how does that, Matt, what does that mean?
Situational versus ideological and applying your ideological outlook to the issues of the day.
Well, rather than announcing in every speech, and I'm going to make sure that conservative values triumph in this country, and I'm going to, you simply stake out your position on an issue that is conservative.
You don't call it conservative.
You just tell people what it is.
You tell them you're going to do it, and people end up applauding it.
And that's how you got your message across.
And in this guy's opinion, Rich Danker, in his opinion, Trump has actually made a greater connection with conservatives than Cruz has in many places around the country for these very specific reasons that he mentions in his memo here.
I have to take a break.
I'm up against it on time.
We will be back.
And we're back.
Great to have you.
El Rushball on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
There was the group that Trump spoke to today, it's have a name.
It's called the National Interest.
But let me tell you what, KT McFarland, she's a former foreign policy official, I think, Bush in the George W. Bush administration.
And she said that choosing the national interest to sponsor the speech is significant because it shows a break with the Bush neocons and a move back to the Nixon-Kissinger-Reagan theme.
Now, she's a foreign policy person and would know what that stuff, what that means.
But basically, this was not a speech to a bunch of neocons.
But again, this was a, don't misunderstand, it's a manufactured event.
This is not an event that happens every year at this time at a location.
This was put together for the specific purpose of writing a speech for Trump to deliver on foreign policy that would be read off a teleprompter.
And in fact, on social media, they can't, there's nothing that he said anybody heard really has a problem with, but they're mocking his delivery because it was so different than the normal Trump improv presentation.
To the phones, Mary Ann Williamsburg, Virginia.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Listen, I'm going to get right to the point.
Mr. Schnerdley made that clear.
I got to tell you.
I'm on the expressway.
I just pulled over.
I'm so excited.
Here's the deal.
You said you wanted you were going to summarize in maybe a paragraph why this Trump phenomenon is happening.
And I have the answer in 13 words, Rush.
Here it is.
The Trumpsters believe that he cares more about the welfare of the United States than himself.
Now, that's an interesting theory.
And if that's what you think, it makes you right.
You see, if that's how you interpret Mr. Trump, then you're right.
He certainly wouldn't disagree with you on it.
What I meant was I meant a six-month review of the things that I have said that explain the inexplicable to people.
The connection Trump has.
Why does it exist with people?
What is it that is different about Trump's campaign than others and so forth?
And I've spent six months analyzing this for people.
And I thought maybe I could summarize it in a paragraph or two.
Maybe I'll give that a shot at some point.
But I've got other things I want to focus on before we get to that.
So we'll continue when we get back.
One more paragraph here from Rich Danker.
Now, again, he runs the Lone Star Committee, which is a financial organization devoted to the election of Ted Cruz.
So it's a pro-Cruz outfit.
And it's excerpts from a memo he wrote three days ago that I've been sharing it with.
I made this memo.
I'm included in this next excerpt.
As Rush Limbaugh once said during this election, people are never permanently converted.
You have to keep re-engaging voters by meeting them where they are looking for political leadership.
Again, our guy, Cruz, seemed so wedded to a playbook that he couldn't get to such a place.
Trump drove away many conservatives by flunking on some conservative concepts and precepts, but he more than made up for that by matching the conservative ideas he did exalt to voters' top needs.
So what this guy's saying is that Trump doesn't even know when he's doing something right.
He doesn't even know what he's articulating conservative.
And I've made this point myself.
Trump is not an ideologue.
His world is not right versus left.
He doesn't run around and see people and like my example.
He doesn't see Chuck Schumer and say, there's a commie SOB.
I got it.
He doesn't see Schumer that way.
I don't know how he sees him, but he doesn't see him as a liberal.
Now, he might see some preacher and think, oh my God, some pro-life, whatever.
But when Trump does what he normally does, this memo indicates that there's enough instinctive conservatism, such as dealing with immigration, such as dealing with China, such as the economy and jobs and so forth, that it sends the message anyway.
Now, this point about people are never permanently converted.
That doesn't apply to you and me.
We are who we are.
We are very comfortable in who we are.
We know what we believe, and that's what we are.
We don't need to be reinforced.
But a lot of people, vast majority of voters, they're not that way.
And they have to be continually permanently converted.
I mean, you've got to keep working on them.
The greatest example I can give you of a failure to do this, when the Republicans won the House after the contract with America in 1994, a fatal mistake was made.
And that mistake was assuming that because of that election, the country had finally moved right, that conservatism had succeeded sufficiently that a majority of voters now voted that way.
And so the conservatives who were elected stopped explaining conservatism or who they were or their policies.
They stopped teaching, if you will.
They stopped explaining what they were doing, which left them wide open to be destroyed by Democrat and media criticism, such as starving kids by cutting the school lunch budget.
There was no such thing.
But because conservatives, the Republicans of that era, failed to explain what they were doing and why, because they didn't think they had to anymore, they lost the converts that they had won in that election.
So it's something that you have to keep reminding people of.
And therein lies the conflict because you have the stump speech, which is where those points are repeatedly made, but they're not real.
They are focus grouped.
The consultant and his team goes out and surveys people and then tells the candidate what he should say.
And you end up with somebody who doesn't instinctively know what to do and doesn't feel comfortable being who they are.
And somebody who can come along and do all of that, be who they are, is going to just shine in comparison.
Think back to Jeb Bush.
How many times during those days in, say, August of September, even in a debate or at a campaign stop, you would hear Jeb start explaining why he should be elected, and you looked and you scratched your head and said, what in the world is he talking about?
He might have been talking about he's proven conservative leadership and I have balanced budgets and I have cut taxes in X number of years as governor and I did and Even I will look at it.
Well, that's not a factor.
None of that's relevant to what's happening now.
This is not a resume election.
But they had $115 million to push that campaign.
They had a consultancy team that put together all these things that Jeb should go out and say.
And then every debate, yeah, Jeb's going to, he's going to take the gloves off this debate.
He's going to come out.
He's going to come out firing.
They telegraphed what they were going to do.
It had no prayer working, whatever it was.
But the point is, it was all artificial.
It was all the result of marketing and strategy and focus grouping and market research.
Some of that can be helpful, but it ends up paralyzing you.
And it makes you afraid to stray from it.
But what it mostly does is kill instinct.
It just, if somebody is instinctively on the money, if somebody's instincts are right, you've got to find a way to encourage it and amplify it.
But most candidates end up becoming afraid of following their instincts because the message is sent that, hey, you might go off message.
You could blow six months of work here, pal.
Don't do it.
And everybody gets defensive and protective.
And so when somebody comes along, it's none of those things.
It can't help but stand out.
It becomes real versus unreal, real versus artificial.
Sean in Philadelphia.
You're next.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
It's great to talk to you.
I've been listening to you since 89.
I'm glad you made it through, Sean.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, thanks.
I just wanted to make a point, at least my perspective, on the support of Trump.
I reluctantly support him, but I do straight, I mean, I do support him.
And it's not about conservatism.
It's not, as some people say, and I've heard it on your show too from a lot of callers calling in.
It's not really about, well, you know, people are being fooled that he's not really conservative.
It's not.
I know he's not a conservative.
The fact is, to put it simply, Trump will fight.
Not only will he fight, he'll fight dirty.
And the thing is, we got to get that, we have to have someone that's going to fight in the mud because that's where our opponents are.
Fight who?
Where our opponents have been?
The Democrats.
I mean, look at what happened after 9-11.
Remember, it was like a month or two after that, and then Kennedy came out and he started slamming George Bush.
And, you know, all of his supporters were waiting for him to stand up and defend himself, and he did.
And for eight years, he just let the Democrats plaster him.
And then what happens?
Obama gets elected and he rams Obamacare down the throat.
What were Ralph, what were Reed and Pelosi doing?
They were locking people out of committee meetings.
You remember that?
What was our response?
Did we fight back?
No, we didn't fight back.
So then what do we do?
We have a landslide victory.
We give him the house.
Do they do it?
Do they repeal Obamacare?
No, they do nothing.
They say, well, we can't do anything because we don't have the Senate.
Okay.
We give you the Senate.
What do you do?
Oh, you know, we're not going to do anything because we're going to take our only weapon off the table before we do battle with these people.
We're sick and tired of fighting with people who won't fight.
And when it comes down to Cruz, you know, my instincts with Cruz is that, yeah, he's a nice guy.
And don't get me wrong, if he magically wins this nomination, of course, I'll support him.
But the problem is, I suspect he won't fight.
And three days ago, there was an article in Breitbart where he's being interviewed and he said, you know, if I'm elected, he said something to the effect of I'm not going to get personal.
This is going to be about issues.
Okay, great.
You just handed them the election because you know what they're going to do?
They're going to make a personal against you.
And you're going to be like the new George Bush, just sitting up there like Jeb.
You won't fight.
You just sit there and take it and we're going to lose again.
And the thing is, Trump, you know what?
I disagree with probably 80% of the stuff that he believes in, or he purports to.
But the thing is, I think we're facing an existential crisis.
It comes down to immigration, illegal immigration.
Okay.
And Obama said.
You can stop.
You don't need to say anymore.
You just said everything in about five words.
I don't agree with 80% of what I think Trump stands for, but I'm voting for it.
That is why the Republican establishment is about ready to commit Harikari.
They can't figure this out.
Okay, I just got the Trump soundbite roster of the foreign policy speech that he gave at the national interest today.
And we'll kick off the next hour with those.
Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard was on America's election headquarters on the Fox News channel last night doing analysis of what all had happened.
And then Megan Kelly said, somebody said that Indiana is the Alamo for Ted Cruz.
Steve, what are your thoughts?
If Cruz loses Indiana, is the race over?
I think then you will start to hear if Ted Cruz loses Indiana.
I think then you will start to hear more talk about a potential independent bid, about a third party, about other ways outside of the Republican primary to stop Donald Trump.
Now, do not discount this.
Hayes is not in the Trump camp.
Hayes and there's some others, Jonah Goldberg and some others.
This is not a criticism.
Don't anybody start firing off notes.
I'm just telling you, they're not Trumpists.
They're not excited about it.
They think Trump's just the end of everything.
It's a disaster.
Don't understand it.
So when Hayes says that the GOP establishment is toying with the idea of a third-party candidate, don't doubt him, is my point.
Now, I know a lot of you Trump people, because I hear from you, you think, folks, maybe you don't know this.
I don't know what percentage, but a significant percentage of Trump supporters only care about one thing, and it's beating Hillary.
And they are convinced that Trump's the only guy.
They might not agree with anything Trump does, but they hate Hillary.
Don't want any part of Hillary, and they don't think anybody else can beat him.
Okay?
Now, the Republican establishment thinks the exact opposite.
They think that Hillary will clean Trump's clock.
The Republican establishment is convinced, and many conservative intellectuals are convinced that Hillary will win in a landslide.
They're out there.
They're looking at Trump's negatives.
They're looking at Trump's unfavorables.
They're looking at Trump's numbers with women.
And they're saying, my God, even if these points, these polls are wrong by 10 points, it's still a disaster.
It's a disaster.
And that's why the GOP is thinking third party, because they just can't, in good conscience, align behind the guy.
That's what Hayes' point is.
Well, you know, polling data is what it is.
You know, you throw it out at your own peril.
But over there is Mrs. Clinton, and her negatives are right up there with Trump's.
Mrs. Clinton is not this universally loved and adored Democrat candidate that crosses all kinds of political boundaries.
She's not.
But many in the Republican Party still can't get past the idea that because her name is Clinton and that there's a D next to her name, it makes her invincible.
So, you know, I reject that, but there are a lot of people that don't.
So for those of you Trumpists who think that this is easy, I mean, he's the only guy that can beat Hillary.
It doesn't matter.
GOP establishment thinks the exact opposite.
Speaking, do I have time?
Grab a call here.
This is Jim in Fairfax, Virginia.
Jim, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hi.
Thanks, Rush.
I'm a confessed former Trump supporter.
And I guess want to acknowledge that there's a category of people that did back Trump that are kind of drifted away.
And I'm definitely one of those.
In fact, I have a new board.
And about five months ago, I bought him a Make America Great Baby Hat, which I guess never put on him because of my loss of support.
Why are you drifting away from Trump?
Well, it's more than that.
I think it's more than a drift.
I'm a non, I'm very conservative.
I listen to you a lot.
I listen to Fox a lot.
And I'm anti-politician.
I think they all, we need to recycle.
We need term limits.
And I think when he came in with the they're all do-nothing, they don't do what they say.
They're all talk no action.
I was intrigued.
And I think more and more he smears everybody.
If you're not either with him or you're smeared by him, he smears Trump.
I mean, Cruz, if you're going to call somebody a liar every day for five months, you can't expect the support of their people.
If you're going to call people bimbos, who I respect, and people and say we should leave NATO and say Republicans want people dead in the street while some Republicans.
Wait a minute, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we go from bimbo lion, ten, you throw NATO in there.
Yeah, I mean, it's a mix.
His policies and his personal have pushed me away.
I think if his policies were dead on, I'd be maybe a little put up with the personal stuff more, but I think he's wrong on both.
And speaking from just my kind of anecdotal world, I have a middle-of-the-road, moderate spouse who's not political, doesn't like that I listen to politics all the time.
But if Trump gets the nomination, she's going to go poll for Hillary.
And she doesn't even like Hillary.
Yeah.
He is going to get demolished.
And one last thing, one last point, Rush.
You know, they keep saying, well, Reagan had high negatives, right?
But back then, there was no Twitter.
There wasn't reality TV.
No one knew Reagan.
And as they got to know him, they were.
Well, now, wait, wait, wait.
That's not true either.
Reagan's negatives.
There's a bunch of people trying to draw a favorable comparison, Trump and Reagan.
Reagan's negatives were not in the neighborhood of Trump's.
That's a manufactured little bit of news to try to diminish the importance of the disapprovals and the negatives Trump has.
But I said, well, hey, you know, Reagan had them.
He didn't.
Not in any way, shape, manner, or form.
But, you know, I know the spouse bit.
But I know a bunch of guys whose wives love Trump.
And every time he insults somebody, they just get the biggest kick out of it.
And they laugh at it.
They think it's funny.
They think it's refreshing, particularly if they happen to agree with it.
They don't find it offensive at all.
So it all adds up.
I don't think anybody knows what's going to happen.
Part of what is making all this attractive to a lot of people is it's going to be really hard to handicap it.
Okay, coming up, we'll get back Trump soundbites from his heavyweight foreign policy speech to the National Interest Today.
And we've got Ted Cruz.
13 instances.
Cruz says Trump and Hillary Clinton agree eye to eye.
And we'll have those soundbites from Cruz coming up.
We'll continue to mix your phone calls in with everything else here on the fastest three hours in media.
You sit tight because we'll be back before you know it.
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