RUSH: Seth, Greencastle, Indiana, glad you waited, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you. Mega dittos here from the Hoosier State. From my granddad, from my uncles, to my dad and myself and even now my sons, you’ve got lifetime listeners here in the Hoosier State.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. Really appreciate that.

CALLER: Let me get right to my point here. I’m calling in regards to some of the statements that Senator Cruz has made the last couple days, and of course he’s come under some huge, massive fire from the left, and I really want to speak as to why I think that they absolutely cringe every time he opens his mouth. You know the reason I think that they hate Rush Limbaugh, the reason I think they hate Christians, the reason I think they hate Senator Cruz really is because you’re looking at group of truth-tellers, and that’s what they cannot stand. They cannot stand truth-tellers, because their power is directly linked to the deception that’s behind who they are as individuals and what their view is of America.

RUSH: I think you are on to something. I would make one clarification, and it’s a subtle point, but I think it’s important. They really do think that Cruz and me are liars. They do not sit there and say to themselves, “We’re lying to people every day, we’re fooling ’em, we’re deceiving ’em,” and then we come along and tell the truth and feel threated. They don’t feel threatened by the truth. They construct — they’re pathological — they construct their own alternative reality they end up believing is real. And then people like Cruz comes along and just blows it to smithereens with the truth and force them to face the fact that they are living a series of lies and deceptions, and that’s why they go bonkers.

CALLER: I couldn’t agree more. Absolutely correct.

RUSH: It’s a subtle point. It may not even be that big a point, but I think it’s important. They don’t really look at us as truth-tellers. They look at us as bombers. We are blowing up their reality.

CALLER: That’s exactly right. Exactly right.

RUSH: Well, look, I appreciate your lumping me in the way you did.

CALLER: Absolutely. And, I’ll tell you what, it’s been a pleasure to listen to you. My boys, every time your music starts, they know that Rush Limbaugh is getting ready to come on.

RUSH: Right on. Right on. Thank you so much, Seth, I appreciate that. I mentioned at the top of the program that Cruz made mincemeat of an infobabe for ABC News. This is an example of exactly what the caller is talking about. Ted Cruz said the majority of violent criminals are Democrats. Now, that just drives them nuts. How can somebody lie like that? How could somebody just make that up? That’s just absurd. But it happens to be true. And that’s why. They don’t look at themselves as coddling violent criminals. They think of themselves as defending victims of an unfair criminal justice system. And Ted Cruz comes along and tells them what they’re really doing, and they can’t handle it.

Let’s get started with the sound bite here. This is ABC News website. Unidentified infobabe talking to Ted Cruz in the hall, outside his office. He’s made the point here that the majority of violent criminals are Democrats. And the infobabe says, “That study that you cite, that only cites a few states as having a majority Democrat registration. So your assertion that it reflects the overwhelming majority nationwide, that’s not accurate, Senator.”

CRUZ: It is exactly accurate. We can draw a reasonable inference. When elected Democrats support putting judges on the bench that release violent criminals, when elected Democrats such as President Obama try to appoint to senior Justice Department officials lawyers who glorify and lionize cop killers, when elected Democrats push to give felons the right to vote, it is a perfectly rational and reasonable inference to say those Democrats understand that the overwhelming majority of violent criminals vote Democratic. You don’t like that. I understand that. In the state of New York, 62% of ex-felons who registered to vote registered at Democrats. Nine percent registered as Republicans. Those are the facts.

RUSH: Now, his point is unassailable. In terms of logic or fact, it’s unassailable. You draw reasonable inferences. Elected Democrats support putting judges on the bench who are going to release violent criminals because of the way they vote. It’s no different why they’re gonna support amnesty because the illegals vote Democrat, the majority of refugees vote Democrat. That’s why the Democrats do all that. He’s just connecting the dots, and the reporterette was just befuddled. There’s another companion bite that goes with this, but alas, my friends, we are out of programming time for this busy broadcast segment, but there’s always more, so hang in there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Play that sound bite again, because there are two of them, this interview that Cruz did with the ABC infobabe. It’s their website. It’s not broadcast. Now, we’ll have the link to the entire video interview. It’s about four minutes, twenty-five seconds. We’ll have it at RushLimbaugh.com, and you’ll be able to see it in its entirety, but it’s important to note that it did not air. I don’t think it’s aired anywhere. There may be excerpts. I’m not sure if it has. We got it off the website.

But here’s what it’s based on. Here’s the setup. The study that Ted Cruz is referencing in this interview is reported in the Washington Examiner back in January of 2014. “Jail Survey: 7 in 10 Felons Register as Democrats.” And from the article: “[P]rofessors from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, found that in some states, felons register Democratic by more than six-to-one. In New York, for example, 61.5% of convicts are Democrats, just 9% Republican. They also cited a study that found 73% of convicts who turn out for presidential elections would vote Democrat. …

“The study looked at three states which are reminding convicts that they can vote after leaving jail: New York, New Mexico and North Carolina. They provided the following Democrat-to-Republican breakdown in felon party registration patterns: New York: 61.5% register Democratic, 9% register Republican. New Mexico: 51.9% Democratic, 10.2% Republican. North Carolina: 54.6% Democratic, 10.2% Republican,” and that’s what Cruz is talking about with this infobabe. Now, I have a thought here. Take a look at what’s happening here. The Democrats have to import voters from other countries if they’re going to grow their base.

They have to have amnesty. We need illegal immigrants. We need amnesty for them. We need the border to remain open so that future Democrat voters can get into the country. Then these refugees. It has been determined that a majority of these refugees also end up — using past refugees as the sample — voting Democrat. And now the Democrats are going after the felon vote, and Hillary Clinton is one of the leading figures trying to get this legalized, that felon ex-cons will be granted the right to vote. At present, they can’t.

Now, isn’t it interesting that the Democrat Party looks like…? If you just look at this on the surface level, you could maybe assume that the Democrats believe that they have lost the support of American citizens. I mean, their actions demonstrate that they don’t think they can win with the American law-abiding public. Look at all of the — I’ll use the word — “illegals” that the Democrats are seeking to register as voters because they know that they’re inclined to vote Democrat. Illegal immigrants, now the felon ex-convict bloc, and the refugee bloc.

And every Democrat Party policy is oriented toward increasing the number of those people in the country (with the exception of felons that are already here), and then making it easy for those people to end up registering to vote. The Democrat Party is actually tolerating — I won’t say “promoting” ’cause I’m not gonna go that far yet, but they’re tolerating — criminal and illegal behavior in order to profit from it. Now, why? There has to be a reason. I know the Democrat Party needs a permanent underclass.

And in the old days, when we had a growing economy, what would happen is that members of the underclass would eventually become middle class. Some of them would become upper middle class. Some of them would become the top 5%, top 1%. With the Obama stagnant economy, nobody’s moving up because nobody can find meaningful employment. Well, not nobody, but we have a flat economy. We have a stagnant economy. There isn’t any job growth, there isn’t any wage growth, and so the traditional upward mobility in the US economy has been brought to a screeching halt precisely because of Obama policies!

It’s not the country has seen its best days.

It’s not that the country’s best days are behind it.

It’s not because actions have caught up with the country.

It’s because of this administration and the Democrat Party and their policies, which have brought this economy to a standstill. And even with that, the Democrat Party sees the need to import a bunch of noncitizens or ex-cons as voters, because it sure seems to me that they don’t think they can win with the law-abiding citizen class, if you will, in this country. Now, I don’t know if Cruz thinks that or not; I’m just telling you this study from the professors at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford went out and detailed the voting registration habits of convicts and ex-cons, and they found out that it is vastly majority Democrat.

By the way, I should add that the authors of this study are now whining that Ted Cruz “misinterpreted” their data. Oh, yeah. These professors at University of Pennsylvania and Stanford are now whining and moaning that Cruz is misinterpreting their data. What’s there to misinterpret? They simply are reporting the voter registration and voting tendencies of convicts and ex-cons. Felons! It was in the Washington Examiner, again, back on January 2014. So it sure seems to me that the authors of the study are trying to save their academic careers.

The worst thing that can happen is when Ted Cruz cites your work. That would be like Sarah Palin citing it. “Oh, my God, how embarrassing this is! Oh, my God,” and they gotta run from their work and paint Cruz as misinterpreting it and so forth. Plus, their grant money is at stake here, don’t forget. Given that, we go back now to the two Cruz audio sound bites. He was interviewed by the ABC infobabe outside his office in the hall. Question: “That study only cites a few states as having a majority Democrat registration. So your assertion that it reflects the overwhelming majority nationwide is not accurate, Senator.”

(replaying of sound bite)

The reporter then says, “Well, in specific states, but that doesn’t suggest a vast majority of Democrats of violent criminals throughout the country, sir. It just doesn’t! You’re just not right!”

CRUZ: We do have the behavior of elected Democrats, which is —

REPORTER: How does that affect violent criminals and their Democratic or Republican registration?

CRUZ: Because elected Democrats are behaving in a way that clearly indicates they understand that criminals vote Democrat, and it’s why they support putting judges on the bench that release violent criminals. It’s why Democrats push so hard to restore the right to vote to ex-felons, because they understand those ex-felons are going to vote Democratic. That is a point that is basic common sense, and I will point out the academic data overwhelmly support it.

RUSH: (imitating reporter) “But how does that affect criminals, violent criminals and their Democrat or voter registration, how does it do that?” Again, gotta admire Cruz for his patience ’cause he understands, he’s not trying to change her mind. He knows he can’t change her mind. He’s not trying to impress her. He’s using the opportunity of having her camera and microphone get his message out. And to the extent that it’s helping here, ’cause it was a website, ABC website interview. Now, I warned everybody, I told everybody way back in October that the way this primary is shaping up, I said, “Keep your eye on Ted Cruz.” Cruz at the time was in the bottom tier candidates, just starting to make his move upward. I just want to remind you in this audience what I predicted as we get into some of these Ted Cruz greatest hits of recent days.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I think there is one candidate who is positioned here — now, I know it’s getting late. Trump has had the lead for a hundred days here or more. Well, he’s been in the lead ever since he got in. And there are now fewer days to Iowa than he has been in the lead. I mean, he’s over the hump in that regard. But there’s still a long way to go. It’s politics. Any number of unforeseen, unpredictable events are potentially out there, and there has been somebody trucking along here steady Eddie that has continued to be who he is and continues to lay down foundational markers for himself, and that’s Ted Cruz.

And I think Ted Cruz is positioned — I wouldn’t say ideally. I mean, I’m sure Cruz would love to be in the top two, top three here, but of all the others in the race, Trump and Carson here, and they’re at number one and two, Carson’s pulled ahead of Trump even in Iowa now, in two polls, but overall Trump leads, and his lead continues to expand, but what if it doesn’t? What if something happens? We’re not shut out here. We still have somebody in our roster who opposes every bit of the Democrat agenda, perhaps more than anybody else in the race, and that’s Cruz. I mean, Cruz does not have in his record any statement like Trump does of having supported certain things the Democrats have done. Cruz is inarguably thoroughbred conservative, and I think the more I read about the Millennials, by the way — and I’ve got some stuff about them in the Stack today — the more I read about Millennials and where they are attitudinally, politically, socially, economically, Cruz is somebody I think has a great opportunity to connect with them.

RUSH: I don’t know that that’s happened, by the way. I just say he has an opportunity to connect with them. Cruz has been on fire the past couple of days, and he’s out there nuking the left on many things. Here he is Monday night in Bettendorf, Iowa, held a town hall campaign event, and during the Q&A, Ted Cruz had this to say about the so-called War on Women.

CRUZ: When the War on Women came up Republicans would curl up in a ball, they’d say, “Don’t hurt me!” Jiminy cricket, this is a made-up, nonsense example. Last I checked, we don’t have a rubber shortage in America. Like, look, when I was in college, we had a machine in the bathroom, you put 50 cents in, and, voila.

RUSH: Now, we edited that, but what he’s talking about there is contraception, and it’s very key to understand this. The War on Women began with a question to Mitt Romney from George Stephanopoulos in a Republican debate back in 2012 about whether or not Romney supports — I don’t even remember the question. It had to do with contraception. The subject had not come up. It was not a factor. Nobody anywhere was talking about it. But Stephanopoulos is not a journalist. He’s a Democrat Party consultant. He’s a hack. He’s a Democrat Party activist and he didn’t care but for one thing, he wanted Romney to answer the question.

It didn’t matter what Romney said, as long as he answered the question. He put a question out there about contraception, Romney (paraphrasing), “No, no, nobody wants to. We’re not trying to stop women from being able to get contraception. What are you talking about?” War on Women began, and it was over contraception. You’ll remember what happened after that. All of these claims that the Republican Party want to deny birth control to all of these poor college women who wanted to be paid $3,000 a month to handle all the contraceptives they needed because of all the sex they were having, when you can for 12 bucks a month go get it at Sam’s Club.

And what Cruz is talking about here is there’s no way anybody in the Republican Party has ever stood in the way of contraception. There are condom machines wherever you go. We don’t have a rubber shortage. Contraception is up to the individuals. It doesn’t need to be a federally paid for program. The Republican Party’s never removed a condom machine; they’ve never made birth control pills unavailable. The whole thing was totally made up, and that was his point here in making the condom joke. He’s trying to illustrate to people what a phony thing this War on Women is and why nobody should be afraid of it and run from it and curl up in a ball over it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s that question that Stephanopoulos asked Romney. “Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception, or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?” And Romney said, “George, I don’t know if the state has a right to ban, I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a silly thing, we’re not even talking about it, George.” And that began the War on Women. That’s where it began. That’s all it took. And so Cruz is running around saying the Republicans are not the condom police. You get a condom, birth control pill, doesn’t cost jack whatever, go get it whenever you want it, it’s up to you. And one more Cruz sound bite again from Newton, Iowa. This is Sunday, campaign event, Cruz turning the left’s arguments around on them, and they don’t get it.

CRUZ: There has been some vicious rhetoric on the left blaming those who are pro-life. We don’t fully know the motivations of this deranged individual. We know that he was a man who registered to vote as a woman. The media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life movement when at this point there’s very little evidence to indicate that. It’s also reported that he was registered as an independent and as a woman and a transgender leftist activist. If that’s what he is I don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric of the left. This is a murderer.

RUSH: It’s a murderer, who is not being blamed. The perp is not. Republicans, pro-lifers, whatever, get blamed. That’s I asked, well, why doesn’t Planned Parenthood get called up here? They’re the ones that traffic in body parts, which seems is what upset this guy. By the way, he’s not transgender. A clerical error led to mistaken reports that he was born a woman. His female status was not an expression of identity politics, according to the chief deputy clerk in the Colorado county where Dear was registered. It was just a clerical error. I don’t know why in the world would anybody think this guy ever was a woman or is a woman now when you look at him. I mean, come on. I know, I’m probably gonna get in trouble.