http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/10/17/any_other_republican_would_ve_folded_by_now_but_trump_keeps_fighting_backAny Other Republican Would've Folded by Now, But Trump Keeps Fighting Back
October 17, 2016
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. We got a new poll, the Monmouth poll, Monmouth College poll just came out. Hillary is up 12 in this poll. So here are the three polls that we have in the last couple of days: ABC News/Washington Post, Hillary up 4. NBC/Wall Street Journal, Hillary up 11. These are all likely voter polls. And the Monmouth College poll has Hillary up 12.
Greetings, my friends. Welcome back. Great to have you. El Rushbo, behind the Golden EIB Microphone. The telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
Let me get into a little bit more detail about what I mean when I say this is what it looks like when an outsider attempts to wrest control of the establishment away from the genuinely powerful, I mean, those who are really, really powerful in our country. You know, the politicians like to slough blame, it's Wall Street, these big corporations. No, no, no. It's the political class that has all the power.
It's a mutual admiration society. I mean, the wealthy donate, keep them afloat, keep them in business. So it's a shared thing, and they have their internecine fights even during the best of times, but they unify when there is an assault against them. And this is a serious assault. And what I mean when I say that this is what it looks like when an outsider tries to win is, this is what a genuine political fight looks like.
And to understand this and to follow me here, you have to -- you in the base are not gonna have any trouble, but I think we will all agree on our side that the 2008 presidential election followed by the 2010 midterms -- well, before I get specific, let me give you the umbrella. People in the Republican base have seen over the last eight years that people they elected they thought were going to take the fight to Obama and the Democrats and stop it or try to, didn't. And the people in the Republican base who elected Republicans, voted for them on this basis, they finally wised up.
There isn't any fight. There isn't any opposition to Obama and the Democrats, not on the stimulus, not on Obamacare, although to be fair, on Obamacare they didn't even have the numbers. They couldn't have stopped Obamacare legislatively. But since Obamacare passed they have promised over and over to repeal it, to try to repeal it, and haven't.
The 2010 midterms we were told, "Well, look, we can't do anything if we don't have numbers. You've gotta give us the House. It's the only way we're ever gonna be able to stop Obama." So people showed up in droves. It was a landslide Republican victory in the 2010 midterms featuring this new thing called the Tea Party. These people went to the polls in record numbers and they fully expected that the Republicans were gonna fight back or try to stop the advance of the Obama agenda.
It didn't happen. Then 2012 rolls around, the Republicans nominate milquetoast. The establishment gets the nominee they want, not any pretense of fighting back, not a whole lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of the Republican base stayed home and didn't even show up. Anywhere between two and four million fewer voters in 2012 on the Republican side than in 2008.
In 2014, Republicans said, "Look, Obama still has the White House. Yeah, you gave us the House, but he's still got the White House. We can't stop him. We need the Senate." In 2014, landslide Republican turnout, landslide Republican win. Between 2010 and 2014, the Democrats lost over 1,000 seats in the House, in the Senate, state legislatures, governorships, was it massive. Still the Republicans who were elected on the promise that they were gonna fight, fight back, try to stop, didn't.
And that's all she wrote. Republicans had done everything that had been asked. The Republican voters had been asked, we need the House, fine, we gave it to 'em. We need the Senate. Fine. And even after they got the Senate, "Well, you know, Obama's still in the White House. There's really nothing we can do. 'Cause we don't have a veto-proof majority." So no matter what we did, no matter how many things they asked us to do and we did, they fell back on the "it's still not enough" and there wasn't any serious opposition to the leftist Obama agenda.
So here we are in 2016, and the Republicans had what they thought was the greatest field of potential candidates in a long time, 15 Republican candidates from across the spectrum led by the popular favorite Jeb Bush, and this was gonna be the day, this was gonna be the year, this was gonna be the moment in time we were finally gonna get it all. We were gonna have the House and the Senate and win the White House and get our committee chairmanships and hold onto it or what have you. And the Republican base said, "Not this time.'
And they did what? They nominated somebody as far from the political scene as you could get. They nominated somebody that the political class gave no chance. They nominated somebody that had no ties whatsoever to anything that had happened previously. No elective office held, no participation on any policy, no fingerprints, no nothing. And more than that, they elected a brawler. They didn't elect somebody who disagreed simply. They elected a brawler. They elected a fighter. The Republican base changed its approach. It's not just that they chose an outsider. This is why I wanted to expand on my theory here.
The Republican base decided to send a brawler, a knockdown, drag out street fighter, something unseen in the modern era of politics. And, again, the reason the Republican base decided this was needed is because we, the Republican base, we know the left, and we knew what our nominee would face, we knew that this was the kind of campaign that whoever our nominee was going to face. And, as I said, anybody else would have folded by now.
And by "fold," I don't mean quit, but would have moderated his tone, would have diminished and fallen back to the point that he would be indistinguishable from any other Republican. And the establishment would be supporting him and he'd lose in a landslide. That's what, I mean. Any other Republican nominee under this barrage would have wilted long ago, probably during the primaries, and the left is used to that. They are used to neutering Republican opponents. They are used to taking them out early. They are used to being able to mock them and destroy them and render them impotent months away from an election.
This has not happened, because the Republican base said, "Screw it." After all of these campaigns with all of these assurances that they were gonna fight back and stop, none of it happened; it was time to send a brawler. Now, I'm not describing an actual thought process that happened. I'm the talking about Trump gets in, is the person he is, campaigns the way he did, and the Republican base said, "Yeah! This is what we're talking about!" and overwhelming got behind him.
And they got behind him not because of the usual reasons you get behind a candidate: character and political experience and a record that you can examine. None of that mattered. All that mattered was somebody was gonna happily and cheerfully take the arrows and throw 'em right back. Somebody was gonna take all the shots and fire right back and not put up with any of it, in defense of the voters.
This is the thing I think that the Republican base hasn't yet figured out, is that all of these attacks on Republican politicians are also attacks on Republican voters. And they go undefended, they go unanswered, and people know that they are not these crazy things. People are not reprobates. People are not racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes and they're tired of not being represented as such. Trump comes along and it is happy days are here again. The establishment Republican candidates did not have a chance.
So this is it. This is now what a political fight looks like. The forces on the left have had to unify because they have never had to face anything like this in recent years. They are used to a docile and conforming and embarrassed Washington Generals type of opposition in the Republican Party. But the Republican base knew what any Republican nominee was going to get. If they could tarnish and destroy and demonize Mitt Romney, they could do it to anybody.
And so it didn't matter. Whoever was nominated was going to get the treatment that Trump is getting now. The Republican base wanted a fighter. They wanted a fighter, a brawler, and somebody who was not going to give up and cave in and become like the Democrats in order to sue for peace and thus we have a genuine fight.
This is what it looks like. It is in the sewer because that's where the left has taken it. We're in the sewer and the gutter because that's where the Hillary campaign and the media have taken it and are taking it and leaving it there. We are in the gutter, we are in the sewer, we are in the swamp because that's where the Democrats have taken it. It's not because of who Donald Trump is.
We are in the sewer, we are in the gutter because that's the only way the Democrats know how to win, and they have not faced this, in your lifetime or mine. Well, I always have to exempt Reagan. Reagan befuddled them and won two landslides. But we have a nominee who, for once, has no problem counterpunching. Wherever they hit him from, he hits back, whether it's in the sewer -- you know, so they're out there saying that Trump is this and that and he's a horrible, rotten guy, and they're saying, "Okay, you guys have got this election rigged. You guys are taking unfair advantage." And they think that Trump's the reprobate.
They're the ones that have taken us to the sewer. The Democrats, the media, the establishment have taken this campaign right -- maybe it's so low they look up and see the sewer. But we're there, not because of that's who Trump is. We're there because that's where the Democrats have taken the campaign. Because the Democrats can never go high. The Democrats can never elevate. Here the Democrats have a chance, because of what they've done, they have a chance to become the party of optimism and good cheer, and they can't do it because it's not who they are.
So we're in the gutter, we're in the sewer, we are in the filth and the muck and the yuk because they have taken us there. And we've got a guy who's punching back from the filth, from the muck, from the sewer, whatever, and the Democrat Party and the media have not had to put up with this, they've not had to experience this. They're used to people rolling over for them. They're used to the opposition kowtowing, quitting, resigning, admitting whatever allegations are made.
As such, I don't think anybody can predict what's going to happen because there's not a blueprint for this. And that's why I think the way the left is behaving, the Democrats and all this outrage over Trump and the Republican headquarters gets blown up and it's Trump's fault? Can you imagine if the Hillary campaign was blown up, do you think that would be in the news every day and do you think they'd be trying to find some Trump voter that doesn't have any teeth to blame it on? You know damn well they would. It'd be the front-page story since it happened. But since it's the Trump headquarters that blew up, ho-hum, no care, no concern.
In fact (clapping), yeah, kind of makes sense, with the stuff Trump's been saying, yeah, yeah, as little Brian Stelter at CNN said, Trump's rhetoric, Trump's own words are responsible for his headquarters being firebombed. Sorry. We know that's caca. So they don't know what to do with a brawler like this. They don't know how to factor it. They don't know how to poll it. Hillary doesn't know how to deal with it. She's in hibernation. She chooses not to deal with it. The evidence is abundant that Mrs. Clinton is among the most corrupt, and if you want to talk about unfit and unqualified people to ever seek the office, she is it.
And the fact that they cannot capitalize on what they claim Trump is, the fact that they can't get her positives up, they can't get her negatives down, the reason that they are not acting like they are reporting. They reporting it's over, it's a landslide, look at these polls, Trump has just alienated everybody. You can't turn on television without hearing that every woman in America hates Donald Trump. But then you watch him on TV and you read what they write and you listen to 'em talk and they don't reflect the good cheer, the happiness, the contentment that you would think real knowledge that it's over would bring you.
They are continuing to hammer and destroy, because that's who they are, number one. And, number two, they are not sure how -- believe me, they can see these people at the Trump rallies, and they can sit there all day and say, "Well, there's nothing scientific about that. It's anecdotal. Look at who these people are. They're just madcap extremists. Of course they're gonna show up." Meanwhile, Hillary and Tim Kaine can't draw flies, and that's normal, too, they tell us. But it isn't normal.
My long point here is that this was exactly what this was gonna be. It's gonna be a fight. This is a fight. The Democrats are not used to this kind of opposition and a fight, and the people that poll it don't know how to poll it and they're not quite sure of what's going on in the country right now. They don't know how many of these people that are eager beaver supporters of Trump they really are. They really don't know. And they're terrified that there's a whole slew of people that haven't voted in 20 years and are gonna vote for the first time and they can't find 'em to poll.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to add to and build on to that monologue, and I'm gonna do it here in a minute bouncing off another sound bite coming, but I've got to get to the phones. People have been waiting for the entire program.
We'll start here in Las Vegas. Janet, hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. It's such an honor and a privilege to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you very much. Same here.
CALLER: Every time I hear you I think, "You get me, you get me." Rush, I am a longtime listener, I'm longtime Nevada. My family has been here since 1895 and a multigenerational Republican. When my husband asked my father for my hand in marriage, my father's only question to him was, "Are you a Republican?" That's how important the Republican Party has been to our family. My dad has an uncanny look to Ronald Reagan and we always refer to him as uncle Ronnie. He was part of our family.
But I am fed up. I am so disgusted with our party. And I'm often embarrassed to say I'm a Republican because of the way, the treatment they have had towards our nominee. And I have made the determination that this is a litmus test. I go and I find out that the man running is supporting our top man on the ticket, if he is, I vote for him. If he's not, he's not gonna get my vote this year. I've had enough.
RUSH: You're not alone. There's a whole lot of real frustration over this. This is why Trump cannot talk himself out of being supported. He just can't. Because the people supporting him, the days of judging candidates the old way we're supposed to is out the window here. It's too dire. For many people in this country, this is it, and it's got to be stopped. This direction the country is headed, and the fact that somebody is standing up, saying he plans to, is enough for them.
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