http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/04/06/cruz_strategy_led_to_landslide_wisconsin_win_but_the_race_is_nowhere_near_overCruz Strategy Led to Landslide Wisconsin Win, But the Race Is Nowhere Near Over
April 06, 2016
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RUSH: Folks, this is in no way over, and it's fascinating to watch after every primary all the analysts. There's so many of them now, and everybody wants to come up with something nobody else comes up with, which leads to really crazy extreme and wild analysis and/or predictions. You have people also trying to be the smartest in the room that are in competition with the others trying to come up with something unique that nobody else has come up with -- and that's really, really very hard to do.
And you've got people who want it to be over now that are tired of the drama. They're tired of biting their nails. They just want it decided, they want it over with, because they're scared that they're not gonna get the outcome they want. You have other people who thought it was in the bag. A lot of Trumpists thought it was in the bag and now they're starting to doubt that, and they've got problems, and they're wondering how this is all gonna play out. And I'm sure they want their guy to get back in gear, get back in the game and resume the things that were creating the momentum.
You got the Cruz people that are jazzed beyond belief over this, as is totally understandable. This was the result of a lot of factors coming together on one night, all of it rooted in hard work and some really well-crafted strategies that were really well executed all came together on Tuesday in Wisconsin. But the point is that it's nowhere near over because there are still way too many variables. As I say, the subject of getting to 1,237, for example. Conventional wisdom.
Had Trump won last night and secured all of or most of the delegates, then everybody today would be acknowledging that it's over, but would now be calculating and contemplating ways to still stop Trump. But the exact opposite happened. Cruz wins and Cruz is still, what? Here's the delegate count as of right now: Trump's at 743. Cruz, even after last night, is at 517. Over here is Rubio with 171, and he's holding onto his. Then you have Reince Priebus out there, and Reince Priebus saying the nominee is going to come from those still running. That includes Kasich. He will not exclude Kasich.
Now, there's only one way Kasich can become the nominee, and that's if the establishment takes over the convention and invokes this dream of theirs of disqualifying both Cruz and Trump. And then if neither get to 1,237, then you go to a convention that's gonna have more than one ballot and then the entire process of securing loyalty delegate by delegate by delegate state by state by state, there is just way too much yet to happen, and nobody can know how it's going to play out. You might have people tell you they do, but they can't.
There are too many variables, just in this delegate business alone. You know, for example, Trump has had limited staff throughout this. He has relied on the sheer force of his personality and his focus on a national campaign that has produced massive turnout and massive victory in many places. And the strategy has been that that mass, that momentum, that excitement is just going to bring everybody along as Trump makes it increasingly clear that he's going to be a big winner. This was the strategy, that everybody wants to be with a winner and eventually that's what's gonna happen.
As a result, whenever a state primary concluded, Trump, in many places, closed the campaign office that he had there, and his offices were never big. But Cruz, for example, has not closed his offices in these states. They're still open. They're still populated by Cruz employees who are now working on people who might become delegates in these states on a second ballot. All these efforts are being made to wine and dine or whatever, secure the support of delegates. In some states the delegates haven't been chosen yet so you don't know who to wine and dine.
So you go to the party leaders. Trump doesn't have an operation like that yet.
Do you know that Obama state offices from his 2008 campaign are still open? "Well, why, Rush? Why?" This is how Obama protects his agenda. He's got his campaign offices from 2008. Not all, but in a lot of states they're still open and when anything happens in a state where a Republican governor has been elected, maybe a Republican legislature -- and they start making moves in state legislation to repeal, reverse, get rid of something Obama has done federally -- and they try to take a step on it the state level, the Obama office gets into gear and starts lobbying and influencing and doing what they can to protect the president's agenda.
So these offices stay open. If you have enough money and if you have a big enough organization, big ground game, these offices never close, and nobody ever stops to think that they're still open. You hear that Obama '08 or Obama '12 still has a campaign office in Durham, North Carolina and say, "Why? Why in the world? He's not running again." No. He's protecting his agenda. These offices may stay open after Obama leaves with a different title, a different name, but the purpose will be the same. So you have that here on the Republican side. Okay, how's this all gonna manifest itself, because we're now talking second ballot if nobody gets to 1,237.
Then we got the establishment. Are they're gonna try to play a game and disqualify with new rules both Cruz and Trump? And if so, what's gonna happen with that? We've got the audio sound bites here from people who are waking in on that possibility. "No, no, no. You know what?" they say. "The establishment's gonna figure it out. That would be bad. They're gonna sidle up to Cruz. They're not gonna like it, but they're gonna sidle up to Cruz." All this is coming up here on the program.
But I want to go through some of the exit polling data first before we get to all that. My only point is I'm not trying to throw cold water on anybody winning last night. It's big, but it isn't over. And Cruz, they know as well as anybody getting 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, that's gonna be really, really challenging. They have to make plans for getting the nomination, not getting 1,237, which is what they're doing. Now, part of that is continuing to win and building momentum and showing support, so it's all oriented toward the same thing.
You want to win as many delegates as you can, create the momentum and have that speaks for itself once you get to the convention. Then you have the facts on paper at the establishment. And they don't like either of these two guys, 'cause when you strip all this away -- forget Cruz and Trump individually -- combined, what do we have here? We have two men who have engendered minimum 70% support of Republican primary voters. And neither of these two are part of the establishment. Both of these candidates are running as anti-establishment or anti-Washington.
They are both securing support from people fed up with the power structure, the ruling class of Washington. Both parties. So no matter how the establishment looks at this, if they choose to sidle up with either of these guys, they're still sidling up with the enemy at the end of the day. And that does not make them happy. And that's another thing. There's all kinds of people out there on the right, there are all kinds of conservatives out there who are primarily anti-Trump.
They are making people think they are pro-Cruz because it's safer. But they're not. They're really anti-Trump. They are anti-Trump to the point that many of them would not be bothered at all if Hillary Clinton won. But it serves their purposes now to make it look as though they are pro-Cruz because that naturally goes along with being anti-Trump. It would hurt their cause if they let it be known that they were really anti-Cruz as well.
And it may be a stretch to say they're anti-Cruz. It's some bloggers. It's some magazine people. You might have some people in the broadcast media, I don't know. They're relatively young, and there are a whole bunch of factors of this. I mean, you throw all of these things into the mix is how you inexorably conclude that this is nowhere near over. Because no matter what happens, with every state primary there's a lot of people unhappy with the result. Maybe even more people unhappy than there are happy people on the winning side. And when that happens, it creates all kinds of chicanery and sabotage and strategy, because to a lot of people this is very personal.
To a lot of people this is personal as to their future. Many people want you to think they're in it for the country, and they are, but they don't take themselves out of the equation, either. Cruz knows all this and Trump knows all this. That's why neither of these two are giving up and that's why they're battening down the matches and they're gonna be proceeding forward with even more sense of purpose and energy. On the polling front, Reuters is making a big deal out of this. Ted Cruz has pulled into a statistical dead heat with Trump with 35.2% for Cruz among Republicans, to Trump's 39.5%. There's a margin of error. It's a tight one. The margin of error's 4.8 percentage points. It's barely a statistical tie.
But Trump has had a double-digit lead. I mean, Trump's been at 45, Cruz 17, 20, what have you, throughout most of this campaign in the national Reuters poll. I mean, Trump was beating Cruz by 20 points in this poll a month ago. And now they're in a margin of error tie. So everybody is taking note of that, trying to figure out what that means. There's some really interesting stuff from the exit polls last night to the extent that we can believe what people tell exit pollers.
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