RUSH: Here’s Kathy in Scotts Valley, California. It’s great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Longtime listener. I go back to about ’89, and you did a lot to help me define my own core values. But on this parallel that you have drawn between Goldwater in ’64 and Trump, I think you’re all wet. Trump is not a conservative. He’s a parallel to Reagan and Goldwater completely breaks down and fails.

RUSH: No, no, no. You are right… There’s no ideological component here. I didn’t mean that. I’m simply drawing a pattern of behavior by the establishment to whoever is trying to take over.

CALLER: That’s the core of the problem. You keep presenting the opposition to Trump as this monolithic establishment thing. I am not establishment. I never have been, I never will be, and I am absolutely anti-Trump. I call myself a constitutional conservative.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: A principled conservative.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: And there’s a whole lot of us out there that also don’t want Trump. And we may be temporarily aligned with the quote/unquote “establishment,” but that doesn’t mean I back them, either.

RUSH: I’m not saying that you are.

CALLER: I hate the idea that you’re presenting anti-Trump as all monolithic establishment.

RUSH: I’m not. No. You are inferring that. I’m not saying anything of the kind.

CALLER: It really —

RUSH: But you weren’t at Sea Island, Georgia, this weekend meeting with those people plotting to stop Trump, were you? That’s who I was talking about.

CALLER: They aren’t all establishment, either. Are you saying Ben Sasse is establishment?

RUSH: They are all establishment. That’s the whole point.

CALLER: Ben Sasse is establishment?

RUSH: In this instance he is. He was with them. What are you talking about? He’s aligned with these people.

CALLER: Like I said, there are aligned objectives of beating Trump without them necessarily being the same.

RUSH: Okay. So what really is your grievance with me here? You don’t like being lumped in with the establishment?

CALLER: Well, I… It felt like you were using that parallel to say that it’s exactly the same and this is what the establishment’s doing. But the opposition to Trump is not all establishment. And there may even be some cleaning up between the anti-Trump not establishment and establishment to deceive him. But that doesn’t mean they’re in bed with each other on everything else.

RUSH: I’m gonna guess that who you’re for is Ted Cruz?

CALLER: Cruz or Rubio. I could pick either one. I think Rubio gets short shrift, and I find the people who say, “I can never vote for Rubio; therefore I vote for Trump,” are complete hypocrites. They can’t ignore one thing Rubio did, when everything else he did was conservative? But they’ll ignore all of Trump’s past? How do you do that?

RUSH: (long pause) Okay.

CALLER: I could vote for either Rubio or Cruz.

RUSH: Okay, cool. All right. Fine. But you have… Look, don’t take this personally. I was not trying to lump all opponents of Trump in with the establishment. It’s just the establishment are the people with power and are… Look, Kathy, the point is people I’m talking about are trying to deny you, too. They’re trying to stop you, too, as well as they’re trying to stop Trump.

CALLER: Well, maybe so. But there’s a whole lot of —

RUSH: Not maybe so, definitely so.

CALLER: — conservatives who don’t want Trump. I think he’s gonna do every bit as much damage as Clinton would do.

RUSH: Okay. Fine. But —

CALLER: You make it sound like a lot, very often, not always, every now and then I get a little nugget the other way and I think, thank you for final saying that. But most of the time I’m thinking it really, really does come across that you’re supporting Trump —

RUSH: Oh.

CALLER: — because of anti-establishment as if the opposition to him is monolithic, and it’s not.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: That’s part of why this is so emotional for so many people.

RUSH: I understand. Well, you know what my answer is. I’ve told you today and any previous day that anybody was here listening. My preference, my requirement, the thing that I think must happen or all this is academic, is the Democrats have to be beaten.

CALLER: I agree with that.

RUSH: The Democrats have to lose. And the difference is —

CALLER: Which is why if it came down to Trump or Clinton I would have a lot of soul-searching to do.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: It would not be an automatic, and I never missed an election.

RUSH: Well, what would you do? If it comes down to Trump versus Hillary, and if somebody runs third-party, would you go for ’em?

CALLER: That would be really hard. I would have a lot of soul-searching to do. I would probably end up voting for Trump, but I would have to hold my nose harder than I did for Romney.

RUSH: I hear you. I hear you. I understand.

CALLER: And I will be praying that he doesn’t do what I expect he will.

RUSH: Well, what’s that? What are you thinking —

CALLER: I think he’s gonna be just as bad as Obama in terms of working to make the presidency more imperial, that it’s gonna be all about him, that he’ll try to do things he can’t do constitutionally and there will be all kinds of battles.

RUSH: Kathy, can I help you with that for just a second? Let’s play a little hypothetical here. Let’s say Trump’s elected. We’re still gonna have Democrats in the House and Senate, and we’re gonna have Republican establishment types in the House and Senate. Now, the reason Obama has been able to get away with his authoritarianism is that the Republicans have basically checked out of the game, and they have said they’re not gonna do one thing to stop Obama and impeachment has been taken off the table, and they’re not even going to oppose. Mitch McConnell said we’re not gonna even oppose anything in this year because it might affect our presidential campaign.

CALLER: And that’s wrong, but I don’t think all Republicans have stepped out. I just think they’re too small of a minority.

RUSH: I don’t care. They run the places and so they set the agenda, and the agenda is no stopping Obama. Therefore Obama is unchecked.

CALLER: You think they’re gonna stop Trump when he’s their guy?

RUSH: I’m telling you that if Trump gets elected you’re gonna see more unity between the Republicans and Democrats in stopping any Trump authoritarianism than you have ever seen in your life, ’cause they’re gonna hate it. They’re gonna despise the guy, and they’re gonna align together to stop him if he tries executive orders, if he tries —

CALLER: They’ll take the same position that a lot of the Trump supporters have today, that he’s a bully, but he’s our bully so it’s okay?

RUSH: Well, his supporters might, but his supporters are not gonna be in Congress. Get past your anger at me. I’m setting up a hypothetical here. I’m trying to comfort you. Trump is not gonna be able to get away with Obamaism because Obama has a compliant Republican Party. Trump is gonna have a Democrat Party that’s not gonna say, “You know what? We can’t stop him. We’re afraid of offending people.” They’ll be talking impeachment on day two, after the first Trump executive order. In fact, Trump winning may be exactly what you want. You might finally get to see unified opposition to the guy.

You gotta think about all this stuff, folks. You have to understand, all these comparisons, Trump and Obama, I understand ’em, but Obama is only getting away with it ’cause the Republican Party is nonexistent. Well, I’m telling you, the Democrats don’t play that way. Trump, if he wins, will be a Republican, and if he does authoritarian stuff that the Democrats want, then I guarantee you the Republicans will stand up and stop him. He’s not African-American. He’s not a minority. They won’t be worried about any of that. I have to take a break. But just follow the thinking here, folks, and chill out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Bret Baier, Fox News Channel, said that he knows a lot of Republicans, Washington Republicans saying privately they’ll vote Hillary if they have to, they will not vote Trump. I’ve heard that, too. Some of them have even been quoted as saying they will do that. I’m gonna expand this hypothetical. I’m afraid this might have gone over Kathy’s head because she was so focused on what I’m doing wrong.

But I want you to imagine Trump, if you’re worried about Trump as nothing more than an authoritarian Obama and may do either similar things or different things but still poses that threat, I want you to stop and think of how it will be different than it is under Obama in our hypothetical. The Democrats are not gonna sit down and just let that happen, unless he’s doing their agenda. And I know some of you fear that that’s what’s on tap. But we’ll play this out tomorrow.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The only way Obama has gotten away with all this authoritarian executive order stuff is the Republican Party hasn’t stopped him. You want to see an opposition party in action, take a look at Democrats down the road.