http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/04/18/explaining_the_rules_to_trumpists_and_the_narratives_to_cruzersExplaining the Rules to Trumpists and the Narratives to Cruzers
April 18, 2016
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RUSH: This NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 62% Republican voters, new poll, say that the Republican presidential candidate with the most votes should be the party's nominee if no candidate wins a majority. So even if nobody gets to 1,237, 62% of Republicans, "Go ahead and give it to the guy who gets closest."
Fifty-five percent said that it is acceptable if Ted Cruz wins the nomination at a contested convention. And about 71% say that it is unacceptable for delegates to choose a nominee who has not run in the primaries. But there were a lot of people that ran in the primaries, and some of them would be ideal choices of the Republican establishment.
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RUSH: Mike in Pompano Beach, Florida, we start on the phones with you. Great to have you. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It's a pleasure to be on with you. My question is, with Trump... Hypothetically speaking at the end of this, if he has millions and millions more votes, hundreds and hundreds more delegates, and has won the vast majority of states -- like 35 or some odd states -- how does Ted Cruz get that nomination, whether it be by a second vote or a third vote, and still have all Trump's voters not feel like they got robbed and support him? I don't see how it happens. I mean, logistically, how could it be done?
RUSH: See, there's a way that all of that can happen, and what Trump is doing here by going down the road that everything's rigged and that he's being cheated, Trump's philosophy is blowing up that potential strategy that the establishment has of somehow awarding this to somebody else on the second or third ballot. That's why Trump is... There was no canceled election in Colorado. Yet, Trump writes an op-ed on Friday talking about the election being cancelled.
Today on Drudge there's a story about the four Cruz guys that could cancel the election. There wasn't a canceled Election Day. There was no election planned in Colorado. But so the theme is being established by Trump that he's being cheated, that it's being rigged. The whole thing's rigged in favor of everybody but him, so that if something happens and he doesn't win it on the first ballot and somebody else does, then this is made to order for the Trump voters to skedaddle and get the hell out of there and just be fit to be tied.
CALLER: But my question again... I know that that's what he's trying to do, but I'm just saying: Let's say he does get to the end and he does have millions more votes. It's rare that anybody gets all the votes of all the states and all the delegates but doesn't get the nomination. Don't you think the voters -- regardless of what he's trying to do -- will dislike that?
RUSH: Look, you have... I've been this over and over and I'm catching hell from every direction it in explaining this. No matter how I explain it, the Trump or Cruz supporters think I'm endorsing what they're doing. It's amazing to see this. Let me just give you Pennsylvania as an example. The short answer to your question is, the millions and millions of voters do not choose the nominee. In many states they do, but in some states they don't. Let me give an example: Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, coming up soon, has 71 delegates available. By the way, you notice the nominee has to get 1,237 delegates. There's no mention of votes. It's the votes of 1,237 delegates. You with me so far out there, Mike?
CALLER: I am, but --
RUSH: Hang in there. Hang in. I just want to explain.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Look, Mike, I'm just explaining. I don't want you to assume I'm arguing or anything. I'm just explaining. So in the case of Pennsylvania, 71 delegates. But the winner of the popular vote is only gonna get 17 of them. The other 54 are up for grabs based on other criteria, but they are not bound to vote. On the first ballot, they are not bound to vote for the popular vote winner at the convention, and there have been some states with similar rules.
But Trump is also... He has been able to... He's actually benefited from this system. For example, in Florida... Get this: In Florida, he got all delegates. Despite not winning every vote, he got all the delegates. In Florida, do you know that on the first three ballots, the delegates have to vote for the popular vote winner -- in this case, Trump? So on the first three ballots, Florida delegates must vote for Trump. There is no second. Cruz cannot hope to get Florida no matter what he does -- Kasich cannot hope to -- unless it goes to a fourth ballot.
CALLER: I -- I'm not... Rush, I'm not trying to figure out what's right and wrong. I mean, parties by the tradition of our Constitution are able to pick their own candidate over the years. It's only recently that it's become voter based and primary based. But just in Realville, if we get to that spot and Trump has more votes, more states, and more delegates, and then Cruz -- who came in second -- gets the nomination, I just think we're gonna lose all those Trump voters 'cause the scenario's never happened. You can talk about rules and delegates and Florida giving all the delegates, too. But people are just gonna be like, "Man, this party screwed me! I'm not voting." I think we're giving it to Hillary if that happens.
RUSH: I don't mean to be changing the subject on you. Mary Matalin was on one of the Sunday shows yesterday, and she said the party's gonna blow up no matter what happens here because it's been blowing up for who-knows-how-many years because the GOP has been purposefully trying to subordinate and suppress conservatives. They've not been... They've been ignoring them. They've not been paying attention. They've been sabotaging conservatives. And it's gonna blow up on 'em! Look, I know what you're asking.
We've got the poll here from NBC. The answer to your question is 62% of Republicans -- not delegates, not attendees at the convention, 62% of Republicans coast to coast -- think exactly what you think. Whoever shows up there with the most votes in these primaries should get the nomination; to hell with 1,237. By the same token, 55% of the same sample think it'd be perfectly fine if Cruz got the nomination on the second ballot. So you could say almost two-thirds agree with you. You're concerned that if Trump is denied the nomination, and he...
Look, that's another word-play game. I'm sure that got me in deep doo-doo, too. Will you keep track of all this stuff out there that people saying? Because I don't. My instincts are just telling me here. I made the point: You can't be denied something until you've won it. But the Trumpsters think that that process has begun. Look, there's a headline here. This is from Politico. This is not gonna please you Trumpists. Ready for this?
"Trump Massacred..." "Trump Massacred in Delegate Fights Once More --More than 90 delegates were up for grabs Saturday. And Ted Cruz grabbed most of them. Again." And your question still stands, Mike. I know. "Well, how can that be? Wha...? Wha...? What...?" I've been trying to explain it. You know what? You're on your own. I've explained it; I've been explaining it since September. I can't be any more crystal clear than I have been.
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RUSH: Because I can read the stitches on a curveball -- because I see the pitch before it's coming -- I'm able to tell people what Trump's strategy is gonna be. The problem is when I do that, people think I'm advocating for it. By the same token, I can tell people what Cruz's strategy is. When I do that, people think I'm advocating for it, or not advocating for it enough, or whatever. But I'm gonna persevere out there, folks, because that's the only way I know to be -- or some such drivel.
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RUSH: Okay, folks, back to the matter at hand here, and that is my ongoing efforts to explain how all of this works. I understand my powers of persuasion are such that even when I'm just explaining something, many partisans assume that I am advocating that which I'm explaining. I'll give you an example.
I can't count the number of times I have explained on this program how delegate selection process happens from state to state. And I can't count the number of times that I have explained it has nothing to do with the popular vote, that when the primaries are held, the delegates are not even known. The delegates come later at the state party conventions, and it's an honor to be a delegate, and there's any number of ways that you can be one. It depends on the state.
In some states, Republicans and Democrats run for the position of delegate. They have to be voted on by other attendees at the convention. In other instances, members of the party elite will choose a couple of people as an honor to be a delegate. Don't know how many; it's not the entire number of delegates per state. Some states have superdelegates which are chosen by party people. They're used as a firewall to make sure that the party, the national party's interests are represented in every state delegation.
But the delegates are not chosen at the primary in many cases. The delegates' names are never on a ballot. The candidates' names are on a ballot. So you go in the Florida primary, you vote for Trump, you vote for Rubio, you're not voting for a single delegate. The delegates get chosen later, and they're chosen by the people that run the party in that state. And the way the delegates are chosen varies from state to state. It's always been the case. It's just that this is the first time people have ever seen this happen. They have never seen it, they've never cared about it, it's never mattered.
But this instance it does because we're into some unprecedented territory in quite a few years, so people just haven't seen it. It's the whole process of choosing delegates. Look, when I was growing up I knew about this. It was a big deal back -- what year was the Republican convention in '64, Cow Palace in San Francisco, the Goldwater convention. I was 13 years old, and one of the prominent people in our town, who would end up owning and operating local newspaper, was chosen as a delegate.
I remember my mom and dad, it was such an honor, it was such a big deal. The guy's name was Gary Rust. We all knew him and after it was over and he came back and I ran into him someplace. I asked what was it like, and he went on about how he didn't have time to sleep, didn't have time to eat, it was so much work, great honor and so forth. My point is that these people chosen to be delegates, some of them look at it as an arduous task. Most of them look at it as a great honor. When you watch a convention, you see all these people on the floor of the convention hall and these high signs that have the names of the states. Those are the delegates there.
Now, from state to state, it's determined how those delegates vote, on the first ballot, on the second ballot, on the third ballot. And it's always differed from state to state. Every state has their own rules because every state has their own spoils system and the national party wants to keep its hooks into every state so they've got their presence in every state delegation. Florida, for example, 99 delegates. Trump did not win the whole state, but he's gonna get all 99 delegates. I mean, Trump people are running around and saying how they're being screwed, but they've also benefited from this process at the same time. They have many more delegates than the share of the popular vote Trump has won. They really do. There's no question about that. It's all in the numbers.
Now, in Florida, Florida's one of the few states where delegates are required to vote for Trump on the first three ballots. That's the way Florida set it up. I realize many of you Cruz people think, "There goes Limbaugh advocating it. See, he's explaining it, so he's supporting it." I'm just telling you. The delegates are not free to vote the way they want to vote until the fourth ballot. I've also explained I don't know how many times, it's quite possible that over half the delegates in any given state do not support the candidate they required to vote for in the first ballot. That's why what's going on now is happening. The candidates are going into these state conventions and trying to get the delegations packed with their own supporters.
Now, the Trump people who are not engaging in this are calling it cheating. They're calling it, it's being rigged. They're describing it as the democrat process being bastardized. The truth of the matter is that Donald Trump has missed crucial deadlines in a number of states to lock up delegates who would stay loyal to him beyond the first ballot. The candidates are totally free and able and allowed to go into each state at each state's party convention and have a role in determining who those delegates are. Depending on how good the candidate's organization is, he could end up with 70% of the state delegation being in his favor.
Trump's not even playing the game. Trump has missed crucial deadlines in a number of states to lock up delegates who would stay loyal beyond the first ballot. Most of the actual delegates are elected at state and congressional district conventions run by party insiders, members of the party establishment that Trump has run against. The same thing would be happening if a third party was running. The third party wouldn't have any role whatsoever in a Republican Party convention. One of the reasons a third-party candidate doesn't have a prayer, because the third-party candidate can never get into one of these conventions and lock up delegates. Well, he can, but the party's gonna shut him out.
But Trump hasn't even gone into many of these states. He doesn't have an organization working these conventions, trying to influence who is chosen as delegates in state to state. And if a candidate doesn't go in there, then the powers that be will be, if any other candidates are there trying to make it happen, plus the party insiders. Trump's team has had very little contact with these loyal party activists. But Ted Cruz has spent -- it's incalculable the amount of time that Cruz has been spending actively courting delegates for months.
Now, the truth about delegate selection is this: The delegates to a party convention almost always come from the ranks of elected party officials and their friends and family. Could be state elected officials. It doesn't have to be US Congress or senate. Could be a state Congress, statehouse, could be a state attorney somewhere in some county. But these people come from the ranks of elected party officials. So, by definition, some of them are going to be the, quote, unquote, establishment. The, quote, unquote, insiders.
So Trump -- who has, from the start, been running against these people, and at times even threatening to run third party. It was always gonna be a long shot to secure their loyalty anyway, which I think Trump wasn't concerned with. I think Trump thought he was on such a roll that he was gonna get to 1,237 by now and none of this would matter. Trump's strategy was clearly to just run a smother campaign and let his total command of the national media -- and he owns them, by the way. By the way, they do not like that. But Trump has owned the media.
See, if I say that, people say, "There you go praising Trump again. You know what? I don't know what (grumbling)." I'm not praising anything. I'm just telling you: Trump has owned the media, exactly what so many Republicans have told me they define as eventual Republican success. "We're not gonna get anywhere, Rush, 'til the media likes us and likes our candidate." Well, I've always told you: You're never gonna be happy, then. The media doesn't like Trump. They're fascinated by him, they need him, they benefit from covering Trump, but they don't like him.
They're scared to death of him, but they can't not cover him because somebody else will, and if they do, they're gonna own whatever ratings accrue to covering Trump. But Trump was gonna rely on this massive national primary sweep to drawn up 1,237 so that none of this would matter. There wasn't gonna be a second ballot, there wasn't gonna be a third ballot, because Trump was gonna have this wrapped up, and he was relying on the power of his personality, the overall intensity of his campaign, the fact that the media was in his back pocket promoting him whether they liked it or not.
But it hasn't worked out that way.
It's now up for debate as to whether Trump will get to 1,237, which is what makes all this other sausage making relevant all of a sudden. Cruz cannot get to 1,237, either. Cruz is not trying for a first ballot win. Cruz is trying to stop a first ballot win by Trump and then score a second or third ballot win. Because the prevailing conventional wisdom is that Trump is so disliked that if he doesn't win it outright in these primaries with 1,237, that there's no way he will be nominated by the convention because he's so disliked and detested by so many Republicans.
And Cruz is simply trying to take advantage of that by going to all these conventions and securing the support of as many delegates as he can and trying to install as many delegates as he can who are in his column. But here's another thing. We don't know until the actual voting begins whether any of these pledges are real. We don't know how the second or third ballot's gonna go. They're not bound. They can change their mind five seconds before the balloting begins.
So all these promises that candidates are being given now, these pledges, "Okay, I'm voting you, Ted, on the second ballot," who knows? People can get to 'em during the convention, wine and dine 'em. Any number of things can happen, and it may well be that that's Trump's strategy is to deal with this later rather than going to all these different states, 'cause he doesn't have an infrastructure set up to do it anyway.
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RUSH: I checked the email during the break. "Hey, you didn't answer the first caller's question! You skated it! You skated it! You don't want to answer." Yes, I did answer it. Let me do it again. Let me answer. The first caller's question: If the guy gets close to 1,237 but still has the majority in delegates, and they take the nomination away from him, we're gonna lose the voters, right? What's gonna happen? Folks... (sigh) Patience. Patience, Rush. The Republican establishment is prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton if it means holding onto their fiefdoms.
The Republican Party is prepared, if Ted Cruz gets the nomination, to not care whether he wins or loses. In fact, if Ted Cruz is the nominee and loses the general, the party will be happy. They'll be able to blame the loss on conservatives and conservatism and be done -- once and for all -- with conservatism in the party. The party's primary objective is self-preservation, not winning the White House in this cycle. Given the vagaries of this cycle, the Republican Party's primary objective is maintaining its own power structure and base for the current people that occupy it.
The dead giveaway for that is when you hear some of them openly, publicly say that they will vote for Hillary rather than Trump. And some of them have even said that they'll vote for Hillary instead of Cruz. It means they don't think the country's in crisis. They don't think anything of the sort. They don't have anything in common with you on that score. And, number two, that it's all about self-preservation, maintaining the current Republican establishment, the ruling class and their positions in it.
So if something happens and the nomination is taken away from Trump... By the way, by rule if he doesn't get to 1,237 it's not technically gonna be "taken away" from him. He's got to get to 1,237. But even there, there are vagaries on that. Let's... Folks, I really do believe that Trump is waiting for the convention to do all of his delegate work. He doesn't have an infrastructure set up to go to all these state conventions. He never thought it was gonna be necessary.
But every delegate's gonna be in Cleveland. They'll be much more accessible, much easier to get to, much easier to wine and dine. And it is very persuasive that the likely, potentially next president's coming and asking for your help. It'd be tough to turn that down. So I don't doubt for a moment that Trump has probably decided that his second, third ballot efforts will take place at the convention rather than what Cruz is doing by traveling to all these different states.
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RUSH: There's one other point to be made here. For all of you Trumpists out there, all this caterwauling about how the system's rigged and how there's no democracy going on and elections are being canceled and all these Cruz people are out there I don't know what -- cheating, canceling elections, rigging the process. Let me tell you something. If Donald Trump doesn't like the process, say, in Colorado, there's a way of changing it. Instead of ignoring the place and waiting until after what they do is done and then complaining about it, you go there.
And if you don't like the way Colorado does it, you go there as the presumptive nominee and you get involved in their state and party convention or whatever, and you try to change their rules and force them to start having a primary instead of this caucus delegate selection process. As a candidate, as a potential nominee, as the front-runner, you have all kinds of power at these state conventions if you want to go, even if you think that some of the party officials are establishment types and are opposed to you.
originalYou have the ability to go in and try to change the rules and these procedures in all these states. Now, I, for one, refuse to believe that Donald Trump and his campaign did not know how Colorado was gonna do this. It's simply... For a guy who knows every community that he does business in -- every zoning law, every aspect of getting a building built in Chicago or Las Vegas or Atlantic City or down here in Florida. I mean, this is a guy who has mastered the construction business, and he knows from state to state, from town to town, what the different zoning regulations are.
It's his business to know those things, and I'm sure he knows them backwards and forwards. He not only has staff that learns it and understands it and puts it into their proposals, their budgets and everything -- and how they have to wine and dine local zoning commissions and all that -- environmental impact statements, things you have to do to get your building built. There's no doubt Trump could have determined how every state is going to choose the nominee in that state or the winner in that state. Now, whether he chose to...
My point to you is, he chose not to act on it. He knew how Colorado was gonna vote because every candidate did. Every state had to decide by last August. Every state did decide by last August. And they submit their procedures and their rules to the national party, which then publishes it all in a book or pamphlet form or whatever, and it's distributed to every campaign. Thus every campaign is informed how the selection process of delegates, what delegate requirements are in terms how delegates must vote at the convention.
All of this is known at the very beginning of the process. My point is that if Trump is really worried about how a state is "rigging" its procedures here, as he is saying about Colorado, he could have -- at any point in this entire process -- called the people of Colorado that run the Republican Party there and said, "Look, I want to come to one of your meetings. I don't like the way you guys are doing this. I know you're gonna do it this way, but I want to push the rules changes. It's undemocratic. I don't like the way this is working."
He could have done that. He's not guaranteed to have won, by the way. Just because he went in there or would have gone in there and complained or advocated for a different procedure is not to say he would have won. But he could have gone in there and tried -- and in the process, maybe changed some minds, maybe persuaded some people. As the presumptive front-runner, you have a lot of power, whether they like you or not. Because at the end of the day, you can make them like you. That's why I think Trump's process here on the second and third ballot is gonna be focused on Cleveland.
My guess is that Trump looks at this as highly inefficient to go out and hire a bunch of people and go traipsing around state to state to all these different places while they're choosing their delegates when they're all gonna be in essentially the same place for five or six days in a row: Cleveland, Ohio. It's much more efficient to get 'em there, and when as he arrives in Cleveland, he's gonna come in as the presumptive winner. He's gonna come in either with 1237 or just shy of it. There's a lot of power in that.
And if he needs a hundred delegates, if he needs 50 delegates, it's not too big a stretch to imagine him reaching out to them. Because who wants to say "no" to the likely nominee? Well, now, there would be some. That's what this is all about. There's some establishment people that would say "no" no matter what. But some people won't. Some people will want to be in good with the nominee. Some people want to be tight. Some people want to be on a first-name basis with the nominee, particularly a nominee that's gonna remain powerful and interesting and a national figure long after this race whether he wins or loses.
So I just... I think there's so much going on that even though we're seeing more than we've ever seen, there's still a heck of a lot going on that we're not seeing. And there's certainly a lot of strategizing taking place that we're not privy to, and there's a lot of planning and who knows what other things happening here. But this is for all the marbles. But, look, my only point -- and I realize I'm gonna anger you Trumpists.
But if you don't like the way Colorado's doing things, you've had six months to go in there and try to change it, influence the changing of their rules or what have you. But it turns out also that there is, from Trump's standpoint, an imaging standpoint. There's an upside here to the way this turn out, 'cause he's clearly got a meme, a narrative, that the deck is stacked against him, that it's not a fair fight, that people are cheating, that they're canceling the elections -- and he's using that to his benefit in the world of perception being reality.
So that has to manifest itself in the general reality at some point when you get to Cleveland. Who knows if it will, but clearly that's the Trump strategy.
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RUSH: And, by the way, folks, when you start talking about Democrats staying home, that doesn't mean they're not gonna vote. Remember who we're talking about here. Dead Democrats vote. And they're not at home. So just because Democrats say they're gonna stay at home does not by any means mean that they are not going to vote.
Now, the latest polls say that not so many people will stay home if Trump is the nominee. That number is shifting. You know, it used to be a big number of people saying if Trump's the nominee they're staying home. The number is going down now. I forget the poll, but we had it last week. But the number of people I think in that poll who say that they will refuse to vote for Trump is supposed to be the same number as those who say they will never vote for Cruz or for Kasich.
You know, I played golf yesterday and at lunch beforehand a couple people came up -- I'm just sharing with you what people think. They don't care about this stuff. They think Kasich, they think everything is being wired for Kasich to be the nominee. The problem was they're looking forward to it, these two that I talked to. So I'm, "Oh, jeez, don't ruin my golf game."
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