RUSH: And on the phones we start in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. This is Barb, thank you for waiting and welcome to the program, Barb. Hi.
CALLER: Hello Rush. I am kind of angry at you, but I would like to say first, I really am a true Rush fan. I’m a true conservative. I was chairman of our county party. Most of all, I am so proud I’m the mother of two Rush Babies.
RUSH: Wow.
CALLER: Yes. Very proud of them. Ages 26 and 23, and they listen to you whenever they can.
RUSH: Are they still conservative? They grew up and they did not rebel?
CALLER: They did not rebel. My daughter went to Madison to college, she joined the young Republicans because of you. My son went to college at Whitewater, and he also worked with the College Republicans, and they love you. So I did a good job, real good job. I’m very proud of them. They never rebelled.
RUSH: I’m deeply moved.
CALLER: Yes. I am grateful. I have listened to you and loved you for 26 years. I never thought I’d be calling you in anger.
RUSH: But you’re mad at me?
CALLER: Oh, am I mad at you. I want to know why, after all this time trying to get a real solid, proven conservative as president, would you ignore the real deal and help prop up a fake, phony conservative, that would be the Kardashian candidate, Donald Trump. And the real deal was Scott Walker.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Make sure I understand this. You are upset with me that Scott Walker has dropped out of the race?
CALLER: I am.
RUSH: You think I abandoned Scott Walker for Trump?
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Who is this “we” started calling —
CALLER: Oh, my family.
RUSH: Oh.
CALLER: My kids will listen to you when they can on their lunch break and everything, you know. We started calling you the Trump Show. Trump only bashes other Republicans. His shots at Democrats are tepid. He’s anti-gun, pro-choice, pro-universal health care, and the only way the Hildebeast can win is by dividing the Republicans. And I can see her saying, “Wow, this Trump thing is gonna work out great.”
RUSH: We need to put this in a context and a chronological order. You say that I abandoned Scott Walker for Trump.
CALLER: Hm-hm.
RUSH: I think I was one of the early and loudest voices for Scott Walker for months, maybe even a year or longer, even before presidential politics.
CALLER: That is true.
RUSH: I thought what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin was a blueprint. I don’t need to repeat. I don’t want to be redundant here, but I said all of this. I was one of his most ardent supporters of what he had done in Wisconsin and how he had done it, and I thought that it was a blueprint on how to defeat the left.
CALLER: You know, oh, boy. Yeah, that is true. The establishment might not like him because he wouldn’t toe their line.
RUSH: Well, maybe, yeah. It was almost like the same thing happened to the governor of Virginia, the candidate for governor, Ken Cuccinelli. Here you had a wonderful conservative who was totally abandoned by the party. I never understood it. Barb, if I may be frankly honest with you, I always wondered, why am I the only guy in this country talking about Scott Walker, why is the Republican Party not? I mean, they’ve got the blueprint right there. Here’s a guy that’s taken them on. They tried to destroy him, his family, his life, his career. He beat them back three different times. Where is the Republican Party heralding this guy? They never did.
CALLER: You are right about that. And that is another point I’m upset with the Republican Party about.
RUSH: But I did, Barb. I did. But, at some point, you know, I’m not running. I can’t go on the debate stage and speak for these people, and I can’t go out on the campaign trail with them.
CALLER: I know. I know.
RUSH: The whole thing with Governor Walker distresses me, too —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — in ways that you can’t imagine. I think this points up some of the challenges with this whole electoral process we’ve got. You’ve got to be good on TV, gotta be dynamic, gotta be forceful, you’ve gotta be good TV. I’m not saying he’s not. But what I’m saying is it takes much more than just being substantively right on things, obviously. That’s what’s frustrating, that it takes more than that.
CALLER: It’s very frustrating.
RUSH: How many great people are not never gonna get a chance because they just can’t pass muster on TV or within the confines of competition out there in things that are not political. But you can’t cry about that; it’s what it is. It’s what our system is.
CALLER: He would be so perfect. He would be the best president ever, because he does what he says. I’m just grieving today and sick about it.
RUSH: A lot of people are. People on his campaign team are. I mean, some on his team were not even told in advance. They found out —
CALLER: Oh, boy. Can I ask you one other thing about Donald Trump?
RUSH: Yeah, ask me whatever you want to ask me, Barb, ask me anything. No secrets here.
CALLER: Well, do you think he could possibly be helping Hillary? Because like I said the only way she can win is divide the Republican Party this time. And since he only bashes other Republicans, could he be working for her? Oh, boy, you know, we’ll get these people voting for Trump and they’re not gonna vote for the real candidate which, by the way, I do not want Jeb Bush to be the candidate.
RUSH: Who do you want, now, if it’s not Governor Walker?
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: I like Ben Carson.
RUSH: Carly Fiorina was on TV last night dumping all over Ben Carson. You gotta be very careful there, Barb. I’m kind of out of time here. I don’t mean to be provocative like that
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here we are, Fox News this morning Happening Now, cohost Jenna Lee speaking with Betsy Woodruff, a political reporter at The Daily Beast about Scott Walker dropping out of the presidential race. Jenna Lee said, “Is this all about Trump? Is that why Governor Walker is getting out?”
WOODRUFF: One thing that we looked at is the support that Walker had among talk radio hosts, particularly Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh talked up Walker for months. He loved him. He thought it was great. And then when Trump came onto to the scene, Walker just kind of got displaced. He was sort of shuffled to the bottom of the pack. He went from being a hero to a “me, too,” that’s an actual term “me, too,” that Limbaugh used to talk about him. Trump sucked up all the energy.
RUSH: Yeah. (interruption) What do you mean, there’s two things out of context? (interruption) Snerdley is shouting at me here over the IFB that Ms. Woodruff here is taking the “me, too” comment out of context. I remember when I offered the “me, too” comment. Look, Trump has disrupted this whole thing, folks. It’s not just Scott Walker. I mean, I guarantee you that Ted Cruz envisioned sitting higher than 7%. And more than that, more than that, I will guarantee you that Jeb Bush and everybody around him thought he was gonna be in the double digits.
Trump has disrupted everything. Nobody thought Trump was gonna get in. Everybody thought Trump was doing his usual publicity stunt and negotiating a new deal for The Apprentice or trying to gin up audience numbers for it or whatever. Nobody expected him to get in it. Then when he got in it, the day he got in it, nobody believed that he would last the end of the day because of his announcement statement. And it just turned everything upside down. This is why I say it’s impossible to predict the future in politics, or in anything, really, but you start endorsing candidates, you don’t know, especially this far out, you can’t possibly.
I never hitch my wagon to anything that far out. You don’t know what kind of forces are gonna come along and you don’t know what’s gonna happen to people. You have to play it hands-off and just objectively observe, which is my practice in primaries. But it’s not just Scott Walker. Trump just upset everything. After that first couple of weeks, you had a lot of Republican candidates, in an attempt to not be marginalized, “Hey, I think that, too. Trump’s got nothing new on anybody here. We all think that.” So I dubbed it the “me, too, caucus.” But it was not to impinge or impugn those people, but rather to demonstrate the utter shock that Trump had caused within the campaign.
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