{"id":214020,"date":"2016-07-21T17:52:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T21:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/172.24.32.11\/daily\/2016\/07\/21\/it_s_all_personal_for_ted\/"},"modified":"2017-07-11T10:58:16","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T14:58:16","slug":"it_s_all_personal_for_ted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2016\/07\/21\/it_s_all_personal_for_ted\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s All Personal for Ted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Here\u2019s another thing, folks, do not forget.\u00a0 They\u2019re gonna go back here and analyze Trump versus Cruz in the battle of the wives.\u00a0 Who got that started?\u00a0 You remember?\u00a0 And what did they do?\u00a0 That\u2019s right.\u00a0 A Cruz super PAC.\u00a0 And of course the candidates are not allowed any contact with the super PACs at all, never.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t happen.\u00a0 Ahem.<\/p>\n

A Ted Cruz super PAC published photos of a scantily clawed Melania Knauss when she was a model back before she — maybe even after she had married the Trumpster. And so that page got flipped by the Cruz campaign, even the super PAC is not related, not officially associated with the campaign.\u00a0 It was after that that Trump himself opened fire on Heidi Cruz and Goldman Sachs and whatever else it all was.<\/p>\n

Greetings and great to have you with us, folks, as we roll on on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.\u00a0 Rush Limbaugh here at 800-282-2882, and the email address at ElRushbo@eibnet.com.<\/p>\n

I just got an email with a question:\u00a0 “Do you think that the Republican establishment will now like Ted Cruz any more than they did?”\u00a0 It\u2019s an interesting question.\u00a0 The Republican establishment despised Ted Cruz for a host of reasons, not least of which was his personal attack on the floor of the Senate, Mitch McConnell.\u00a0 They blamed Cruz for engineering a worthless government shutdown over Obamacare in 2013.<\/p>\n

They really hated Cruz.\u00a0 They just despised Cruz.\u00a0 But some of the GOP Establishment hates Trump, hated Trump, don\u2019t like Trump at all.\u00a0 And here came Cruz last night, for all intents and purposes, Cruz said, I\u2019ve never said a critical word of Donald Trump and I\u2019m not gonna say a critical word, but by not endorsing Trump and uttering words that made it sound like he\u2019d be fine if people didn\u2019t vote for Trump, will that make the Republican establishment soften on Cruz and like him again, whereas they had previously grown to dislike him intensely.<\/p>\n

Well, if not, if this does not cause the GOP establishment to soften on Cruz, he would at this point be despised by the GOP establishment and gave more ammo — one of the things about the establishment, you could tell last night, and I knew this was gonna be the case. Can I take you back to my appearance with Chris Wallace? Sometime back this spring, it was on Fox News Sunday, he asked me what I thought was gonna happen with all this.<\/p>\n

And I said my best guess is and what I hope, by the time all this ends at the convention and we move on, that there\u2019s gonna be, for the most part, unity, and everybody will focus on what needs to happen here and beat Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 And for the most part, that happened.\u00a0 You have some Never Trump outliers out there, but many of them were not in the convention hall last night.\u00a0 You have some Never Trump outliers in the media, in the conservative media, and you have some Never Trump outliers in elected office, in the Senate and in the House.<\/p>\n

But for the most part one of the reasons people got mad at Cruz last night is that despite the fact you can\u2019t plug Trump and his campaign into the usual playbook of presidential campaigns and conventions, the one thing that is universal in terms of almost a necessity to win the White House, is party unity, and they were on the way last night.\u00a0 In fact, I actually think as I said an hour ago, I think what Cruz did last night as actually hastened the unification behind Trump, particularly among GOP Establishment people who were gonna hold out.<\/p>\n

They saw what not unifying looks like last night, and they don\u2019t want to be in the same class as Ted Cruz.\u00a0 They don\u2019t want to be in the same room. They don\u2019t want to be thought of in the same way.\u00a0 They actually saw last night, the people who didn\u2019t want to unify behind Trump, they saw what it looks like when the vast majority of Republican voters and convention delegates think that you\u2019re not unifying, it\u2019s not a pretty sight.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think this is going to lessen the establishment\u2019s resentment of Cruz much at all.\u00a0 And, in addition to that, I can tell by calls that we\u2019ve had, calls that are on hold, emails I\u2019ve had, a lot of Cruz supporters are disappointed.\u00a0 Cruz has a lot of people that are devoted to him, and many of them, not all, but many of them wanted him to follow the script, you know, do what you have to do here and get ready for your next turn, get ready for 2020 and join the effort to beat Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 All of this is academic if Hillary Clinton does not lose the election.<\/p>\n

If she wins this election, all this is nothing more than an academic discussion.\u00a0 Talking about who\u2019s gonna be up in 2020, you talk about the epitome of selfishness, that\u2019s four years from now.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want those four years to make 2020 important to somebody who\u2019s not an incumbent.\u00a0 That\u2019s not what we\u2019re angling for here.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think anybody is.\u00a0 Now, I don\u2019t know what contingent of GOP establishment who six months ago, three months ago were publicly saying and some of them for attribution that they would vote Hillary.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think that\u2019s gonna happen.\u00a0 I think they said it, I think they probably meant it when they said it, but I think when the rubber hits the road, they\u2019re not going to, and they\u2019re certainly not gonna be out there actively campaigning for Hillary Clinton, Republican, Republican establishment types.<\/p>\n

So the unification is something that I think actually was hastened last night by what Cruz did, but he remains ostracized.\u00a0 And he did further damage to himself by putting distance between him and some of his supporters who really did want him to follow the playbook, endorse Trump, and then vanish and let Trump sink or swim, maybe do a couple of campaign appearances or whatever, but don\u2019t tie yourself to Trump, don\u2019t link your success to his, don\u2019t do any of that. But certainly appear to be a party guy, appear to be unified in the singular cause here of defeating the Democrats.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the case he didn\u2019t make last night.\u00a0 You know, vote your conscience is one thing.\u00a0 But that I thought that maybe the biggest mistake, not endorsing, the non-endorsement, I think the bigger mistake that Cruz made, he explained that freedom\u2019s under assault, he explained it as well as anybody has, but he didn\u2019t close the loop. He didn\u2019t make clear the difference a Clinton and Trump presidency would make to freedom itself and to the Constitution.\u00a0 And I think that was a mistake.<\/p>\n

I think his supporters, one of the reasons they love Ted Cruz is they don\u2019t want Hillary Clinton and they want her defeated.\u00a0 And I know he had some words for Hillary last night, but at the moment that he\u2019s talking about freedom and its importance and how it was under assault, he just couldn\u2019t bring himself to promote Trump as an agent to defend and protect freedom.\u00a0 So he\u2019s actually angered the GOP establishment probably even more.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s disappointed his supporters, a lot of them, who wanted him to follow the playbook and then do what he has to do to stay viable in the Senate for a 2020 rerun.\u00a0 But now every branch there is in the Republican Party is loaded for bear against Cruz, and his gamble is that his revival or resuscitation now relies on Trump being defeated.\u00a0 What a gamble that is.<\/p>\n

Back to the audio sound bites.\u00a0 Let\u2019s stick with Cruz.\u00a0 This is in Cleveland, this is at the Texas delegation breakfast. After he had explained in detail what he did last night, he stood there for Q&A from people at the breakfast of Texas delegates, and I woman said, “I supported you, and we\u2019re family.\u00a0 We can agree to disagree, and that\u2019s okay, but you signed a pledge that you said you would support the party nominee.\u00a0 As a girl, my mother and father said that your word is your bond.”<\/p>\n

Well, she plagiarized Michelle, did you see that?\u00a0 That Texas delegate has plagiarized Michelle Obama.\u00a0 Wait \u2019til the media hears about this.\u00a0 “As a girl, my mother and father said that your word is your bond, and if you didn\u2019t believe that you were gonna do it at the time, then you shouldn\u2019t have made the promise because your word is your bond.\u00a0 And I supported you, too, and I expect you to keep your word and say that your word is your bond.”<\/p>\n