They were shocked.

I mean, that’s the tone of the stories.  These guys, I guess, were ready for Trump to come in there and tell ’em to go to hell and what to take with ’em on the way. And instead, they say he came in and he was willing to listen to them. He was calm. He was thoughtful. And it’s exactly, folks — precisely — what the Drive-Bys do in every such circumstance.  They try to prepare everybody that Mr. Republican X or Mr. Conservative X is an off-the-wall, loud, bombastic extremist.  And then when he’s not, it’s like the exception to the rule, and everybody’s supposedly shocked by it.

Maybe the Drive-Bys were hoping that Trump would go in there and read ’em the Riot Act or what have you.  Harry Reid’s reaction, if you… Have you seen Harry Reid’s reaction?  He had another one of his patented meltdowns on the floor of the Senate.  He practically called Trump and Mitch McConnell and every Republican Congress every name in the Democrat playbook.  McConnell came out and he was supportive of Trump, and so Dingy Harry goes to the Senate floor: “So I guess McConnell also thinks women are pigs,” and so forth.

Who knows what’s gonna happen with all this, but one thing is patently obvious, that they still don’t know how to deal with Trump. They still don’t know how to explain it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  So Trump and Ryan have a meeting — Trump and the Republican leadership — and there didn’t appear to be any fireworks.  And some people not happy.  Some people are not happy that the Republican establishment (as epitomized by those who met with Trump) has “capitulated” to him.  Many were hoping for a tempest, many were hoping for fireworks, many were hoping for a reason for the establishment to abandon Trump and join this third-party effort out there.  Last night on CNN tonight Don Lemon spoke with Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. He said, “This meeting, it’s about deal-making, right?  So who’s got more leverage here?”

KRISTOL:  The Republican establishment turns out to be really as weak and as lame as Donald Trump said it was.  I mean, here they have basically capitulated to Donald Trump.  There’s no evidence that Donald Trump is compromising on anything.  It’s Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which is why some of us are going to have to leave it — at least at the presidential level — temporarily.  I would have liked Paul Ryan to say, “You know what? I’m Speaker of the House. I’m gonna keep the Republican House. Here are my principles and commitments.  I don’t know that I can in good conscience support Donald Trump, but I will just stay out of the presidential race.”

RUSH:  That didn’t happen.  That’s what the establishment — well, some wanted the establishment to do.  Apparently. You can you can hear Kristol. He’s not happy. It’s obvious he was expecting something else.  He was expecting the establishment tell Trump to go shove it.  And a lot of people, frankly, were expecting Trump to tell Ryan to go shove it.  Let me ask you a question, folks.  Seriously, now.  In your opinion, who does run the Republican Party?  Is it the party’s presidential nominee, or is it somebody in Congress, the speaker of the House or the Senate leader of the party? (interruption)

That’s right.  It is always the presidential nominee, once that person has been identified. With Trump, it’s not official, obviously, and that’s what they were hoping would happen at this meeting, that somehow the establishment (as represented by Paul Ryan) would tell Trump to go pound sand and that he doesn’t run the party; we do.  But it’s true to say, Donald Trump just won votes of gazillions and millions of Republican voters nationwide, and there’s not a single member of the House of Representatives that has been voted on by anybody but his congressional district, which is not even statewide.

But it is tradition. For those of you that are that are involved in this to this extent for the first time in your lives because it’s the first time it’s been interesting to you, tradition is that the nominee runs the party, that it is the nominee’s party, that the nominee provides the energy and the policy of the party.  The nominee runs the convention if the nominee’s chosen before the convention takes place.  It’s always been this way.  The nominee runs the platform.

Now, the platform has no lasting importance, so a lot of compromise is made in the platform writing, because once the convention’s over, the platform is forgotten.  So, for example, if Trump wants to extend the fickle finger of friendship to people that opposed him, put ’em on the committee that’s gonna do the platform. And then let ’em write whatever they want to write. And then when the conventions over you rip it up.  Now, the people who lost make the platform big deal if they’re given positions of power to write the platform, and they’ll continue to talk about it.

But the party platform has… There’s nothing in it binding on the nominee.  It’s just … Theoretically it’s a statement of principle, and it could be something important if people took it seriously.  It could be where a party actually spells out what it is about and it could be something very useful. But traditionally it’s been a waste area where you deal with the people who you defeated and you extend olive branches to them.  But the nominee runs the party.  So here’s Bill Kristol thinking that Ryan should say, “Who’s Trump?

“He’s outsider! He’s not one of us,” and he thinks that Ryan should have told Trump to go pound sand.  “Hey, look, we’re the Republican Party, not you,” and it didn’t happen.  And as you heard, Bill Kristol is now thinking of having to leave the Republican Party, “at least at the presidential level.”  Don Lemon, ever on the case… You can’t get anything past Don Lemon. Black holes notwithstanding, you can’t get anything past him. Don Lemon, so perceptive, then said to Kristol: “Are you suggesting a third candidate, Bill?”

KRISTOL:  I think there will be an independent candidate, I think a — a — a — a Republican of integrity and honor who people like me will feel comfortable voting for.  I hope that person can beat both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  Is it unusual? Is it a long shot? I think this is such an exceptional year, it would be worth trying.

RUSH:  Well, correct me if I’m wrong but, for example, hasn’t the deadline to be a third party or third candidate, say, in Texas…Hasn’t that deadline passed?  Well, Texas has a lot of electoral votes.  Now, the objective here of these guys that want this mythical third-party candidate… It’s a pipe dream that a third party candidate could win, but what they hope is that the third-party candidate could come in and win enough electoral votes to ensure that neither Hillary nor Trump get 270, which would then throw the election to the House of Representatives.

And the House would then select either the third-party candidate or Trump or Hillary to be president.  Kristol’s thinking that he would be running the House at that time, able to tell Ryan and the boys what to do and get his third-party candidate elected president.  That’s the pipe dream.  That’s what they’re thinking.  But these two sound bites actually illustrate quite a lot. They demonstrate much of what I tried to explain all last fall, all during this campaign:

Who the establishment is, why it’s more important to maintain the establishment than even win the White House or beat Mrs. Clinton. Because without the establishment thriving and without the nominee coming from the establishment, therefore, keeping the establishment paramount and at the top of the food chain. The people in the establishment find they’re no longer at the top of the food chain, and if they’re not top of the food chain, they maybe end up being nothing.