RUSH: It’s like clockwork. It’s becoming predictable. I don’t care who it is, a Republican presidential candidate breaks out of the pack, gets close to Romney — or even surpasses Romney in polling data in certain states — and the Republican establishment goes after him. Today there is a coordinated — well, I don’t know that it’s coordinated, but it sure appears to be. Regardless, no matter where you look in the Republican establishment media today, there looks to be a coordinated attack on Mr. Newt. I’m not gonna mention any names because you know when I do, all I do is elevate these people and the names don’t matter here.

I’ve never shared this, folks. Being number one, I mean there’s nothing like it and I wouldn’t trade it, but it carries limitations, it brings limitations with it. By definition anybody I talk about is smaller than I am so when I talk about ’em I elevate ’em and call attention to what really is not noticed by a whole lot of people. So there’s a lot of stuff I can’t, either by virtue of my professional policy and by virtue of common sense, there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t talk about because it doesn’t deserve to be any more widely spread than it already is on its own. Do you understand what I’m saying, Snerdley? It’s a very limiting thing, and it’s amazing how this has changed over the course — I remember the first five years this program, I don’t care what it was, unless, you know, some little newspaper in Oshkosh ripped me, I wouldn’t talk about that, but I mean for the most part I could talk about pretty much anything and not worry about giving it a wider berth than it already had.

But now pretty much everything I talk about is gonna get a wider berth than it already has, which is one of the reasons why I have this ban on MSNBC. Why should I give them a bigger audience than they can attract on their own, for example? You see what I’m talking about here? (interruption) What were you gonna say? I know. Exactly right. There are people who try to trick me into talking about them, hoping I’ll talk about ’em to put ’em on the map. Exactly right, Snerdley. Very perceptive on your part. So I’m just gonna tell you, there are — count ’em, one, two, three, four — there are five, not counting whatever’s happened on television, there are five hit pieces on Newt Gingrich today that come from Republican establishment conservative media. It’s amazing.

I want to call these people and say, “Let me ask you a question. When this is all over, who would you rather have –” and, by the way, none of this is to defend Newt. I don’t want to be misunderstood on this, folks. None of this is to defend. I mean this is pure, 100% commentary right now. But I feel like calling some of these people, which of course I would never do, I don’t call anybody ’cause I actually don’t like talking to people. I would say, “Do you really at the end of the day prefer Obama to Newt? ‘Cause that’s what you’re gonna bring off here if you keep this up.” What’s happening, anybody that gets close to Romney — we talked about this yesterday, we talked about this back in November. The Republican establishment is now, I’m convinced, fully invested in Romney, which is fine, I’m not endorsing anybody, but the reason is the House and Senate, not the White House.

I am convinced the more I read and the more I read between the lines, these people I’m talking about don’t seem all that confident Obama can be beat, but they do think that Romney can help the Republicans pick up Senate seats and hold the House. I didn’t think holding the House was in question here, but some of these people think that it is. Now, of course your goal and my goal is much different than this. We want the White House. We want to dispatch Obama. We look at this list of Republican nominees and we take any of them over Obama. So while you and I may have problems with each candidate, some of them more so than others, we still take every one of them. Whoever wins this we’re gonna support them.

Now, actually that’s not true. There’s some rock-ribbed conservatives who may, if the wrong candidate’s nominated here, sit out, but you are different than the people I’m talking about. These people, we’re not even talking about ideology with conservative versus liberal or Republican versus Democrat. This is strictly inside-the-Beltway political machinations that are going on here that are the determining factor. So it’s just interesting to categorize it.

I said yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine, he sent me a note and he was all bent out of shape about this. This friend of mine, he tunes in or reads a lot of conservative blogs and websites, he’s pulling his hair out, “I thought these people were conservative?” I said, “You are misunderstanding something. There is not a conservative movement in the media.” And there really isn’t. The conservative movement, and I mean this from bottom of my large beating heart — ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom — the conservative movement is made up of me, talk radio, the Tea Party and the American people who are conservative. But a conservative movement made up of movement media people, there hasn’t been that since Mr. Buckley passed away. I really don’t believe so.

So you look at today in these pieces, and they run the gamut, one piece talks about all of Newt’s baggage that you have forgotten or that you don’t any longer care about but that these professional media people, it’s their business, they haven’t forgotten and they have to remember it and it will be a disaster if he wins, and it will be a disaster if he wins the White House, it will be a disaster for everybody. I’m thinking, “Ehhh, versus Obama?” Which is really what it cuts down to. I’d rather have Newt in there than Obama. I’d rather have Romney in there than Obama. I would rather have Ron Paul in there than Obama. I would rather have any of these people in there than Obama. What are we talking about? Do we want to become Europe? You know, the only reason Europe’s being propped up, folks, and that is an entirely interesting story in and of itself what’s happening in Europe. Europe is right before our very eyes, socialism failing on a grand scale yet again.

Everything Paul Krugman and Thomas “Loopy” Friedman, New York Times, everything they hold dear is failing right before their very eyes, and our very eyes, but they can’t allow that ’cause that’s Obama. So Europe has to be propped up by the IMF. Europe has to be propped up by Germany. Europe has to be propped up by us somehow. Europe has to be propped up by Obama at least through the next election. Everything has to be propped up artificially in order to protect Obama’s reelection bid, pure and simple. George Will, I mentioned this yesterday, George Will has called Newt a Marxist. Fine; he can do whatever he wants. But I don’t recall him ever calling Obama a Marxist. So there’s a huge effort out there today, and it’s not just today; of course it’s been building. It was Herman Cain before Newt. It was Rick Perry when he came out strong. This effort’s been directed at Michele Bachmann. And it is essentially an attack on conservatives. It is conservatives that nobody in the establishment inside the Beltway appears to want. Republicans and Democrats alike really apparently do not want genuine conservatives winning elections at the upper levels of the Republican Party.