RUSH: Here’s Brenda in Williamsburg, Virginia. Great to have you with us. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how are you?
RUSH: I’m great. Thank you.
CALLER: God bless you. You’re in our prayers.
RUSH: I appreciate that too. Thank you so much.
CALLER: So, I called because I wanted to let you know that I have had to give my husband a sticky note for the last 20 years on how to vote, and he didn’t start paying attention until 2016 when Trump started to run.
RUSH: Wait a minute, now. You had to give your husband a sticky note to remind him to vote?
CALLER: No, no, how to vote.
RUSH: How to vote.
CALLER: How to vote, who to vote for. He never paid one iota of attention until the election in 2016, when he saw how blatant the other side was sticking it to our country.
RUSH: Meaning the Obama side, Obama and Hillary?
CALLER: Oh, yeah, yeah. When he… It was terrible — and, you know, Trump’s not a polished politician. He tells the brutal truth, instead of blowing smoke you know where, and now he sees that Trump is a doer and not a can kicker like the rest of D.C. And I think America sees it, too, and I think he’s gonna win.
RUSH: How big the margin, do you think, is gonna be?
CALLER: I think it’s gonna be bigger than any of the pollsters think it is. It’s definitely gonna be more than it was last time.
RUSH: So you’re not worried?
CALLER: I go back and forth a little bit every now and then. But I also know that —
RUSH: That’s only natural to be worried. I mean, something you want very badly, something you think’s very important, yeah, you do worry. You worry about it when it’s left to other people to make it happen.
CALLER: Well, and it’s not socialism. It’s communism. They just put a little bow on it and call it socialism and package it so that the leftists… It’s not even liberalism. It’s so far left, they’ve just… They’ve gone. I mean, conservative is not a bad word. I’m an eighties metal head, okay? No one would ever think that I was a conservative. But I’m also a highly educated suburban woman who knows what’s important for the whole instead of just for myself. You know, you have to think about the whole country and what’s gonna be best.
RUSH: See, I’ve known that about eighties metal heads for a long time. You know —
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: I have. You know, in the eighties, metal heads… I mean, I was right in the thick of it. I was in California for the last half of the eighties, and you want to talk about metal heads? Yes. So I’m well aware that you’re not selfish.
CALLER: No, and we’re educated, we have common sense, and Trump has more common sense in his pinkie finger I think that most of the people in Congress. That’s for sure.
RUSH: There seems to be something… As I talk to people, there seems to be something that I detect that’s in common among Republicans. Republicans were very, very alarmed that George W. Bush didn’t seem to be able to sound smart when he spoke, that it was too easy to make fun of him as an idiot. Everybody knew he wasn’t an idiot. Harvard MBA.
The guy was brilliant. I can’t tell you the number of times I talk to him — Karl Rove, too — and said, “You need to address the American people this way.” “Ah, we’ve got it handled. Don’t worry about it.” People say the same thing about Trump now. He just doesn’t seem to be able to sound… The people are worried that he doesn’t sound like he’s as smart as he is, and Republicans are tired of candidates that can be caricatured that way. That’s one thing I find in common among people.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, wow, did that last comment light a fire under people. No. I’m just telling you. I have comments from people who lament, they wish Republicans sounded as smart as they are. They’re sick and tired of Democrats being assumed to be the smart ones. Anyway, it’s Friday, folks. We don’t have much time here. We gotta get going.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: Don’t misunderstand. I’m not calling anybody smart. I’m telling you people are upset that Republicans can be caricatured that way. I tell them they’re gonna caricature them that way anyway. Don’t you understand, part and parcel of being a Republican or conservative is to be thought of as being stupid? Look. We’ve had all kinds of smart-sounding Republicans that lost. McCain, Romney. Take your pick. Any number of Republicans in the 2016 primary field. Plenty of them sounded smart. Didn’t get anywhere.
You know it as well as I do. This was one of the most often heard laments about George W. Bush, that he was just too easy to make fun of as being not dumb and not stupid, just hayseed, hick-type stuff.