RUSH: Okay. So our last caller said, “Rush, yeah, Trump won, but I don’t think he ever had majority support of the Republican Party. It was divided. That vote was divided many ways. After he won the Republican nomination, he wasn’t able to put together a coalition. He wasn’t able to unite the Republican Party, much less anybody else, so his support isn’t that broad.”
Well, maybe so, but I’m gonna remind you some things here, folks, that I’m sure you have forgotten. Let me first ask you a question. Do you think Trump has less support from the base than Mitt Romney had in 2012? I don’t know the answer. I’m just asking you what you think as you ponder these things. Remember we were told that anywhere from two to four million Republicans did not vote in 2012 because they were dissatisfied with Romney as the nominee. Theoretically that was because Romney was not conservative, didn’t fight back, whatever the reasons were.
Number two. Trump, in the Republican primaries, got more votes in the Republican primary than Mitt Romney ever did, and Romney was not running against nearly as many opponents as Trump was. There aren’t that many open primaries in the Republican primary season, meaning he couldn’t have gotten significantly more votes from Democrats than Romney got because there aren’t that many open primaries for that to happen.
Remember all of the new voter registration numbers we were hearing. That Republicans were registering in droves during the primaries and that Trump got more votes — do you remember this? — Trump got more votes in the Republican primary than anybody ever has. What happened to them? What in the world happened to them? If that’s all true, where did they go, where are they going? Are we to believe that they weren’t all legitimate, that it was another sting operation run by the Democrats? It was a bunch of Democrats registering and voting Trump just to fool everybody. Who knows. I mean, people will conjure up all kinds of theories to explain things that they can’t.
We’re living in the moment, of course, and so it takes an effort to go back and remember what things were like during the primaries. During the primaries Trump didn’t have any serious opposition, and that frustrated a lot of people. Remember, the traditional ways of winning the Republican nomination, none of ’em worked. Jeb Bush had $115 million, got six delegates. Jeb Bush had the full support of every powerful entity in the Republican establishment. He got six delegates.
According to Real Clear Politics, Trump received about 13.3 million votes during the primary. That’s 1.8 million votes more than the previous record held by George W. Bush. And yet it is believed — and this is not to castigate the prior caller. I’m sure a lot of people probably agree with him. Even though Trump gets this record number of votes, he somehow doesn’t have the support of the Republican base.
Well, then who are those voters? Where’d they come from? If they’re not the Republican base — and I will admit to you, I even reminded people back then, a lot of Trump’s support was not quasi-so-called conservative. There are many Americans fed up with the Democrat Party, fed up with the establishment, who are not specifically ideologically ordained conservatives or movement conservatives. They may live their lives that way, but they don’t call themselves that, and they don’t think in those terms. They think of themselves as Republicans or outsiders or people fed up with the system or however you want to describe it.
And remember this, too. During the Republican primaries there were endless polls that said Trump was declining. There were polls during the various stages of the primary maintaining the premise that Trump was losing support. And then there would be a primary election and Trump would win in a blowout. And people said, “But the polls said –” I’m not trying to construct a scenario for the polls being wrong. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m just trying to remind people of some history.
And we are to believe — and many people do — that the reason so many people are abandoning Trump is because they are embarrassed over the tape from Access Hollywood, and they are embarrassed over the way Trump went after Miss Universe, and they are embarrassed over the way Trump talks about women, and they’re embarrassed this, embarrassed that, and so all the reasons that Trump was generating record registration, record support, record Republican turnout during the primaries, is all gone or is vanishing.
Traditional politics is surfacing once again, and the American voters are voting and making decisions and answering poll questions as they always have. And they are universally now, in what appears to be landslide numbers, maturing and they’re growing and they’re realizing the error of their ways in supporting Trump way back when and they’re now prepared to sign on with Mrs. Clinton, sign on with the establishment because they have come to grips with the fantasy that they were living.
It’s much the same way they try to change minds on climate change. They’re out there promoting the issue, and they are humiliating people that don’t buy it and don’t believe it, but they’re always offering a chance for absolution. If you finally admit that you have contributed to this problem, there is salvation for you. You have been doing things to destroy the planet. You have been doing things to destroy the climate, but you can make amends.
Same thing here. You have been on the verge of destroying the American financial system. You’re on the verge of destroying the American political system with your support for this maniac Trump. But, people are realizing that Trump is exactly what the media says he is, and people are now siding with and agreeing with the media in droves and abandoning Trump. That’s what they’re asking us to believe is happening. Who knows!
The reason why I’m asking questions about it is ’cause Trump is not of the system and has never been judged as part of the system from the get-go. And that is the primary reason why Trump has been supported and it’s the primary reason why all of these so-called character defects, which were known during the primaries, didn’t cause anybody to abandon Trump.
But now that Hillary Clinton is there and there’s somewhere really worthwhile going if you abandon Trump, I mean, if you abandon Trump for Ted Cruz, who would do that? If you abandon Trump for Marco Rubio, who would do that? But if you prepared to abandon Trump for Hillary Clinton, well, then you are coming to your senses. And the American people are finally seeing things they should be, exactly the way the media wants you to.
Endless polls during the GOP primaries said Trump was declining. And every time there was an election shortly thereafter he would win mostly and win big, leaving people scratching their heads, coming up with explanations. Remember all of the expert analysts, the campaign consultants, the political commentators and pundits and all of their wild-guess explanations as to why Trump was surviving, why he was thriving. It didn’t make any sense to them.
Now all of a sudden Trump bombing out and people abandoning Trump in droves, why, now that makes sense. Everything’s as it should be and that’s the narrative. And that’s what you’re up against each and every day. I know for a fact, with intelligence guided by experience, that lots of people fall for it every four years.