RUSH: We’re gonna start Grand Rapids, Michigan, with Matt. I’m glad you called, sir. It’s great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, dittos, Rush. Happy New Year.

RUSH: Thank you. Same to you, sir.

CALLER: Hey, you mentioned something a short time ago about the fact that the GOP lacked some courage, and I called to see if you could expand upon that, and I guess what I’m getting at is, I think that’s why the crosshairs are aimed right at Trump, is because he does wear that medal of courage that cowardly lion didn’t have initially. And I think the whole GOP field — not the field itself, but the establishment, rather — wishes they could wear it. And I don’t know if they’re envious or jealous. But they just can’t seem to garner the conviction that is necessary to do what’s right to lead the country.

RUSH: So there are three questions there, essentially, or three points?

CALLER: I’ll let you sort that out.

RUSH: Well, the first one on courage. The fact that the Republican Party doesn’t seem to have it. It kind of looks that way. There are two things happening here — and look, I’m sorry to be repetitive here but I’ve been asked. I was gonna repeat some of the stuff I said in the first hour. The Republican Party as we know does not like its base. Jeb Bush promised, claimed he was gonna get the nomination without the support of the base. The way he was gonna do it was with money. He was gonna be the biggest fundraiser.

He was gonna have more money than anybody else, which was gonna scare of our people out; then all the other conservative entrants were supposed to cancel each other out by dividing up all their support and dividing up all the money. At the end of the process, Jeb would be the last guy standing because he had the donor money. So the donor class was gonna be responsible for nominating our nominee, for selecting our nominee. Now things have not worked out in any way, shape, manner, or form this way.

What we know is that the Republican Party doesn’t like the Republican base. They don’t like conservatism. But there’s something else that we’ve learned. And again I hate to be redundant here, but if you look at the coalition Trump has put together, it is everything that the Republican Party claims they want, and they don’t want it with Trump in charge of it. They don’t want it with Trump being the guy that attracts it. So it’s more than just anti-conservatism and anti-base. It’s also anti-Trump. Now, why would they not like Trump?

Well, on the surface it’s that, believe me, folks, when we’re talking the establishment, they don’t like Trump not because he not conservative. That doesn’t matter. The fact that he is not conservative in their minds actually would be a plus. Now, they can concoct all the reasons they want for it, but what is apparently obvious to me now is that in addition to opposing conservatism or the Republican base, there’s also this cliquish, elitist club characteristic here that, if you’re not in it — and the only way you can get in it is to be accepted, to be invited. You can’t succeed your way into it. This is important to understand.

You cannot be an overwhelming success in whatever you do and have that be the reason you get into the establishment elite political club. You have to be a certain type. You have to come from a certain place. You have to be invited. Trump does not qualify on a whole lot of grounds, in a lot of ways. So even though Trump has the largest bloc of voters made up of exactly the kind of outreach the Republican claims it needs to win, they’re rejecting it and don’t want it. Now, they’re characteristic of business involved here, the donor class and their demands.

There’s some psychology involved in all this, too. But when you boil it all down, it is that the Republican Party. Yeah, they want to win, but only one way. They are content to lose if winning means conservatives dominate the party. They seem content lose if winning means that Donald Trump’s the nominee. The reasons for this would take too long toward the end of the program here to detail. But it’s fascinating, because hanging in the balance is the future of the country. And that seems to have not much impact on the thinking and the decision-making that they’re making, or engaged in.

And you and I, we’re out here thinking that winning is the objective, getting back in power is the objective, because of specific things we want to do. We want to stop the direction the country’s going. We want to roll back some of this mindless destructive economic policy and Obamacare policy. We want to reestablish the concept of individual liberty and freedom. None of that seems to be the guiding desire for people in the political establishment.

Now, I know their desire to stay in power and in office trumps everything. (No pun intended.) But for as much as these people run around claiming they want their committee chairmanships and they don’t want to win and so forth, it’s clear that there are two ways they can win on the Republican side; they’re not interested in either one. Now, what does that tell you? I don’t know if it’s a matter of courage or if it’s exclusionary.

Here’s Francis in Ontario, Canada. Hi, Francis. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Long-time listener, second-time caller. The first time I think we spoke, you and I didn’t see eye-to-eye. But I’m hoping we can push Hillary’s “overcharge” button and start again from there.

RUSH: Well, Hillary’s reset button has never worked.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: So I don’t even want to try that here.

CALLER: No, of course. Okay, let’s avoid that. Listen, Rush, you couldn’t be more on the mark on this one. The fact that the Republican Party is absolutely poised to once again attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The idea of running away from Donald Trump… I’m not a Donald Trump supporter. To be honest with you, I don’t think Donald Trump would be effective in a general election. But his message is clearly resonating with the American people.

The idea that the Republican Party, the establishment would want to run away from that message is ludicrous. Donald Trump’s message, whether you like it or not, is resonating. You want the independent votes but you can’t run away from the base. You can’t run away from the Republican vote. Donald Trump was accused by Hillary Clinton of being a propaganda tool for ISIS. This one to me, Rush, maddens me beyond belief. Why doesn’t Donald Trump…? Why doesn’t the Republican Party grab onto this and run with it?

RUSH: Oh, you haven’t?

CALLER: The fact that ISIS doesn’t hear Donald Trump.

RUSH: Hey, that’s nothing. Have you heard…? Jane Mayer’s got a book, and the New York Times picked it up. Are you aware that the father of the Koch brothers built the third largest oil refine for the Nazis?

CALLER: “Oh, yeah. What a great, quote/unquote, “recruitment tool.”

RUSH: Well, but the fact is he didn’t! They’re totally making this up. They’re making it up. Hillary has joined in this fray by referring that the Nazi past or whatever Trump supporters have, so… When you see this kind of stuff. Now, the Koch brothers don’t have a candidate. The Koch brothers are upset that they don’t have any influence anymore. Did you see that? Yeah, this was the most amazing thing. It was an interview in The Politico last week. Charles Koch of the Koch brothers said he was beside himself.

He said they’ve spent money, they do all these seminars, they have all of these get-togethers, and he’s never had less influence in a presidential race than he has this year, this time around. He doesn’t like Trump because of what Trump said about Muslims or what he thinks Trump said about Muslims. He thinks Trump wants to limit all Muslims coming into the country. I don’t know how that works with freedom. He’s not totally correct in understanding what Trump said about that and why. But that’s the degree to which everything here has been turned upside down, establishment-wise.

The people, the donors, the fund-raisers, the big money people are all running around scratching their heads, asking themselves, “What’s happened to our power? What has happened to our influence? Why aren’t we factors?” And, believe me, they’re asking this. You can’t understand how frustrated they are that they’ve been unable to stop Trump. That’s got them so bugabooed, it has got ’em so flummoxed, they don’t understand it, and they’re frustrated. The consultants, the other candidates, they think that Donald Trump should have been rejected after his opening speech at Trump Tower, his announcement speech.

They thought he would be disqualified. They laughed. They thought it was a comedy routine. They have been stymied since day one of the Trump campaign, and to this day, I’m here to tell you that many of them still think he’s gonna implode. Many of them still think that he’s not going to finish this race, that he’s not gonna be there in the end. They’re coming at it from a state of denial. But they are beside themselves in their inability to understand what happened to their influence, to their power. I mean, all of this money they’ve given to Jeb, and what’s to show for it?

All the money they’ve given to Kasich and all the money they’ve given to all of them. And here’s a guy who’s not spending any money, by comparison — Donald Trump — running away with it. Folks, I said this…well, a number of times, last week being the most recent. The disconnect. This is really the explanation for all of this. It’s the explanation for Nikki Haley last night. The disconnect between the governed and the political class is wider, larger, deeper than I have ever seen it. The lack of commonality, the lack of mutual goals, the lack of the elected political class understanding the frame of mind of a majority of the American people.

I’ve never seen people elected and serving in office as out of touch with the pulse of the country in my life. Now, I don’t know about before I was alive. I’m sure there have been other times. Throw the Civil War out. I mean, that’s its own unique circumstance, and you can argue that nothing since has ever been that dire. But throw that out. After we resume states of normalcy here, I have never seen the people elected to serve be so out of touch and so unaware, stymied, surprised by the attitudes and the things that are important to the people in the country. Add to it, when the elected class, the political class, find out what is really important to the people who’ve elected them, they scoff at it and they pooh-pooh it!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No sooner do I say it than a news story crosses the wire. Right here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, from TheHill.com: “Upset Republican Donors: Have We Wasted Our Money? … GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s relatively cheap campaign — contrasted with the millions of dollars spent on behalf of Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Scott Walker and Rick Perry — has left donors, fundraisers and [Republican] leaders questioning the value of super-PACs…” New York financier Anthony Scaramucci said, “I mean, with the free media, or whatever the term is, when they allow Trump to go on to every TV station in America — if there’s evidence that PACs are so consequential, please explain it to me.”

You know, these people… Here it is, folks. It’s just more evidence. So what is it they think? It’s what they’ve always believed and what they’ve always believed matters: The money. All that matters is the money, spending the most. Spend the most money. Forget the message. The message doesn’t matter. Spend the money. And you who have the most money and spend the most money, and particularly if you can spend some of that money on negative ads and destroy your opponents, then that’s how you do it.

What they’re up against that they don’t understand, is it’s the message. It’s the details. It’s the principles. It’s whatever you want to call it. The policies. This Republican campaign is focused on and made up of specific policies and essential messages. And the messages and the policies and the communications skills are working. They are getting to the American people and the voters. The voters are responding to a guy who has spent six figures — 300, 400 grand — versus the super PACs and their multiple millions.

The money people are scratching their heads, “What?” They don’t understand. They thought Jeb had this in the bag. I mean, two months after Trump had announced and two months after Trump has got this massive lead, the Jeb team says, “Don’t sweat it! We still have it in the bag. We have all the money.” The message didn’t matter; the candidate didn’t matter. What the candidate was saying didn’t matter. What the other candidates were saying didn’t matter. At the end of the day, it was the money that was gonna define who won.

In the past, that has been true in more ways than not. And then every year the same people who benefit from all that money are the first to run around claiming about all the money in politics. Obama did it last night. Obama has led the league in fundraising in presidential contests, and here he is, “And one thing I’ve gotta do and I’m really disappointed about, is I haven’t been able to get all the filthy money out of politics.” He’s still fundraising! The Clintons, that’s all they have done since they walked out of the White House paupers and poor.

All they’ve done is fundraise.

But ignoring the central thing that’s happening in this campaign, this is why the disconnect is just profound. There is a specific message or a series of messages that make up this Republican primary campaign. You might even say to a certain extent it’s true on the Democrat side. But you get Bernie Sanders. What is it about Bernie that is more appealing and attractive to that group of people over there than Hillary is? We know it’s not his looks, and it’s not his money. It’s his message. He’s this far left-wing, radical Looney Toon who happens to be resonating with the Democrat Party base.

And Hillary is the sphinx who’s just sittings there waiting for the money to be spent, waiting for the money to be donated, biding her time, trying to make as few appearances as she can, not trying to make a connection with voters because she can’t. She doesn’t have the kind of personality to make a connection with voters because the voters understand she thinks that she’s so far above them and much better, she doesn’t deign to actually get down to where they live. In walks Bernie with an ability to connect and so forth. It’s even true on their side.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I haven’t seen it. I haven’t heard it. I’ve got the networks on here, and apparently there’s a video of the capture of the American sailors and soldiers, and apparently one of the videos shows a captured soldier apologizing to Iran — to the captors — saying, “Sorry, it was our fault. We were where we shouldn’t have been,” or what have you. Now, that’s all I know about it. I don’t know if the sailor was under orders to say that from whoever ran the Benghazi operation. There’s simply no way of saying the administration. I don’t know if this is the way the military is being trained now. “If the enemy captures you, you apologize.” I have no idea. But it certainly is right in line with how Obama does business with enemies and foreign countries. He apologizes left and right.

So, anyway, we will get the details.