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RUSH: Now, Peggy Noonan. This is interesting. Peggy Noonan says: “Stop Trump? Unite behind him? No matter the outcome, nothing will ever be the same.” So I had to stop for a moment and think, what does this mean? Stop Trump or unite around Trump, it’s all the same, nothing will ever be the same. What is “nothing will ever be the same”? And I am guessing that in Peggy Noonan’s world “nothing” is the Republican Party. And so it means the Republican Party will never be the same after all of this. And she’s not happy about it, I’m gathering. I could be wrong about that.

But maybe she’s not happy that it won’t be the same, ’cause it’s been blown up here. Without getting her on the phone and asking her, I’m gonna guess that what she thinks is that whether Trump wins this thing or whether there’s a coalition that aligns to stop Trump, the party is finished as we know it. You might be saying, will the party change if somebody unites and stops Trump? Well, because if that happens, the party has just blown off a huge number of voters.

Don’t forget that as we sit here now a huge majority of people, both at the polls and in polling data, are expressing a preference for Trump. And if there is a maneuver to take a couple candidates to unite and deny Trump this, that’s gonna tick off all these Trumpists, and they are not gonna be happy campers and they’re not gonna say, “Well, you know what, we gave it our best shot and we lost this fair and square.”

They’re gonna think that the party played another trick and used power and hidden strength to once again thwart the will of the average little guy out there, and that’s gonna be it, and they’re gonna drift away, and the Republican Party’s gonna lose its base. I think that’s probably what she’s afraid of, and never, ever be the same. And by the same token, if Trump wins, well, that really means the party is never gonna be the same. So to her, this is a seminal, seminal moment, and we’ve already reached it, regardless the outcome here.

RUSH: This is Albert in Austin, Texas, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Longtime listener since the early nineties and first-time caller.

RUSH: Great to have you here, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Okay. Listen, for 33 years I’ve never voted for anything but a Republican. I’ve described myself as a social conservative, a fiscal maybe right of center, but now I’m looking at it and I’m thinking holy cow, I must have been way right of center, because Trump is not a conservative, he’s not a Republican. I get all the talk about he’s voicing outrage over the right topics, I’ll agree with that, and even where I agree with him, I agree with him on immigration, I agree with him on trade and China.

RUSH: Did you watch the debate last night?

CALLER: I refused to.

RUSH: Well, because Ted Cruz essentially said all this last night.

CALLER: And I guess that’s my point. I voted for Cruz. I’m not a Cruz supporter. But I could have supported any one of the candidates. But Trump is not — he’s just not anything that the Republican Party represents, run down the list, tort reform, eminent domain, (unintelligible) on the Supreme Court, entitlements off the table? This guy’s not a Republican.

RUSH: Albert, that’s the point. That’s why he is being propped up and supported, because the people doing so blame the Republican Party for allowing the Democrats to get away with everything they have that has resulted in us being where we are. The Republican Party is ultimately held responsible here for their inaction, their lack of opposition. So when you say Trump’s not a Republican, his supporters are going, “Damn right! Damn right!”


And the fact that he’s running in the Republican primary is an added bonus because that’s another sign that he’s taken it to ’em. And the establishment is clueless on this. They still think that Trump has, by giant trickery, gone out and run a scam on loyal Republican voters. The concept that their base is fit to be tied and threw with them, I guess, has not hit them. They’re in such a state of denial that they don’t realize that.

Now, I would say… Albert, thanks for the call. I would say that things are not nearly so dire as Peggy Noonan says, or thinks. I really don’t. I think there is a solution out there staring everybody in the face that would grow the Republican Party, solidify the Republican Party, keep the base within the Republican Party — and that is embrace conservatism, embrace the principles of the founding of this country, become proud of them once again.

Articulate them, sponsor them, implement them. Go out and simply provide a contrast and show the distinctive difference between that and what Obama and the Democrats stand for, and the party can survive, it can thrive, and it can become a majority party. But they won’t do it because conservatism is what they think is the problem. It’s the most amazing thing. Conservatism is the salvation of the Republican Party.

But since they refuse to embrace it — in fact, they not only refuse to embrace it, they mock it and they make fun of it — is it any wonder that somebody like Trump, who many people say is not a conservative, can come in and capture 35, 40% of it? It all makes total sense to me, no matter how you look at it: Human behavioral, human psychology, actual events that have happened over recent years in the political arena in Washington. None of this is a mystery. That’s why it’s still flabbergasting that the GOP establishment can’t figure this out.

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