Two Columns on How Hillary Can't Win the General Election
RUSH: I actually think there's something else happening, too. There's so many things going on here. And one of them, we talked about it now months ago. Remember that piece by Sam Francis that we touted. He was a columnist who wrote a piece back in 1996 urging Buchanan on. And he essentially said, "Pat, the future is populism. If you renounce conservatism, you'll go a lot farther. The conservative guys, Pat, they're just holding you back. Populism's where it's at."
I asked Buchanan about this. We interviewed Buchanan for the Limbaugh Letter last week. The issue will come out soon, and he addresses this. I don't want to give anything away. But the point is that there are any number of people now -- and this what this Michael Lind piece is all about, too, trying to say populism is the new conservatism. Conservatism never really was anything big. It's always been this little minority movement over here, had a lot of powerful intellectuals in it but it's never been that big. Populism is really what it's all about, and Trump is proving that.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/01/20/understanding_trump_s_appeal
There's an all-out war on conservatives. That's what everybody's afraid of, folks. The Democrats are afraid of it, the media's afraid of it, the Republican establishment's afraid of it. They're using the Trump campaign to do any number of things. Among them is to try to take all the air finally out of the conservative movement and a lot of conservatives are playing along, unwittingly. What the Democrats are trying to do is use Trump to destroy the Republican Party. They are of the belief that Trump cannot possibly win and cannot possibly beat Hillary Clinton.
However, I would like to share with you two different takes on this. And one of them is from Salon.com, a writer named -- let me find it here -- well, the first one is John Kass in the Chicago Tribune. "Hillary Can't Win. She's the establishment candidate in a year of insurgency." Chicago Tribune. I don't know Kass. I don't know what leanings he has. The Tribune obviously is a -- well, it's journalism. What do you think they are?
Pull quote from the story: "Clinton is the political embodiment of the establishment. And that spells serious trouble for her, because the American people are in an insurgent mood, fueled by the holes in their bank accounts, all those jobs Bill Clinton sent overseas with his support of NAFTA, and the rifts in what we once called the common culture. It spreads across class lines like fire in a dry riverbed. It won't stop until the weeds are gone."
Hillary Clinton will not be elected president because she can't win and the sooner you Democrats figure this out the calmer you will be. That's one theory. Because she's the embodiment of the establishment, and that's what this election is all about. And, folks, by the way, this guy Kass is right. It is a real factor here. I know that people in the establishment, they cannot relate to this, they can't put their hands on it. The fact that in the middle class there has not been significant economic improvement in many years, over a decade.
The wages are stagnant, a college education has no longer become the route upward because it costs so much, you come out so indebted that it has become a shackle and a ball and chain rather than something that spurs you upward. All of the things that the special people have been in charge of have been destroyed. Look at the social welfare system. It's a mess. Obamacare's destroyed the health care system. It's not working at all. The stimulus didn't work. We're countlessly in debt, $19 trillion now.
The discord that average Americans feel for the Washington establishment is real, and a lot of it is rooted in economics. Now, I know people that are doing well don't even bother to think about it. If you're doing well, most people doing well think everybody is. And there are large sectors of our population who aren't, and many of them are what are called blue-collar former Democrats, white working-class people, who feel the deck has been stacked against 'em in any number of ways: economic and cultural.
I have sympathy for them. I have a lot. I know that they are not improving their lives economically. But they're not the slothful ones. They're not among the 94 million not working. Well, some of them are. They can't find jobs. But they don't want to be there. These are people that have always believed hard work has a payoff, and it hasn't. Now they find their hours being cut by companies to comply with Obamacare. The problem is they are not correct in who they are blaming. The mess is they are assigning blame to the wrong people.
George W. Bush and the Republicans are still getting the lion's share of blame for it when most of it is directly traceable to the Democrat Party and its policies. Ditto Millennials. They are a group of people that sees a bleak future. Many of them, not all, of course, but many of them. They don't know why. They don't relate it to current administration economic policies, like immigration and health care, you name it, all of the spending, the out-of-control growth in the size of government. They just think confluence of events and the country's finally reached that point where its best days are behind it. Because they're not educated properly, they don't know who to blame. They're just down on the country at large.
But all of this makes people rife for anybody that comes along and says they can improve it and change it for them. They feel powerless. They feel ignored. I know exactly who they are. And I don't think that they're a bunch of hayseeds. I don't think they're a bunch of low-lifes. I don't think that they're identified because they're uneducated or what have you. Look, they run the gamut.
There's all kinds of different -- (interruption) you have a question? The official Program Observer has a question. What's the question? Wait, wait. Wait. Who says can't win the nomination? Oh. Oh. Well, right. Well, I'll get to that when I get to the Democrats. But I'm still talking right here about this situation that exists on the Republican side.
All I'm trying to tell you is that the people supporting Trump, they are not what everybody thinks they are. They're not reactionaries and so forth. There's genuine frustration, whether it's trade deals or what have you, it's economics. It's always economics. It's always the money. But if you're doing well you tend to think everybody else is, too. You have to work at reminding yourself what it was like when you didn't have money, and there's a whole lot of people out there.
The middle class in this country used to be what defined its greatness. The middle class and its possibilities, the middle class and the ability to expand and grow out of it was what set this country apart from any other, in addition to our Constitution. And it's becoming harder and harder and harder to do it now because obstacles are being put in these people's way. Now, some of them it's their fault. There's enough blame to go around here.
But all I'm saying is that this is not illegitimate. You might think they're foolish for buying what Trump's saying. You might think they're fools for falling for it. Trump can't do what he's saying, that's another thing. You're trying to figure out why they're there, why they're supporting Trump. And nobody wants to ask the question, have we let 'em down? They're always trying to blame. Is Trump lying to 'em, is somebody else fooling them.
The people that do have some fingerprints on this mess don't want to own up to it and want to continue to absolve themselves of blame. And those that are really doing well want to protect it. So self-interest is triumphing over what used to be a concern for the entire population. I think this is actually a fundamental important thing. I've been thinking about it in spurts recently, and I haven't put together an entire thought process on it.
But let me try it this way. I was watching an episode of Blue Bloods, the most recent one on Friday night. And in this episode the commissioner of the police department of New York, played by Tom Selleck, has a meeting of police officials from Great Britain. And the subject of the meeting is for the officials of Great Britain to learn what the NYPD is doing to protect its people from acts of terror and violent crime and whether or not the NYPD has proprietary techniques that might be on the edge of the law that they therefore don't want to share with anybody because of it.
And what triggered in me watching this program was it was clear that the writers of this program were of the impression that the commissioner of the police department and the British officials were actually interested in protecting their entire populations, not just their friends, not just their donors, not just their special interest, powerful friends. And I think that's what's happened here.
I think a lot of people believe that the people entrusted with leading the country have forgotten all about large segments of it and care only about making sure that their buddies don't lose anything, making sure that their buddies don't get hurt, making sure their buddies are protected from terrorism, making sure their buddies have protected from economic collapse, such as bank bailouts and so forth, but the hell with anybody else.
It used to be that the people of this country trusted whoever it was they elected to lead them, that they understood that the entire population was worthwhile and valuable, and everybody in it was special because they were Americans. And a lot of people don't think that's the case anymore, that the establishment takes care of itself and of its own and of its friends and stops.
RUSH: I actually think there's something else happening, too. There's so many things going on here. And one of them, we talked about it now months ago. Remember that piece by Sam Francis that we touted. He was a columnist who wrote a piece back in 1996 urging Buchanan on. And he essentially said, "Pat, the future is populism. If you renounce conservatism, you'll go a lot farther. The conservative guys, Pat, they're just holding you back. Populism's where it's at."
I asked Buchanan about this. We interviewed Buchanan for the Limbaugh Letter last week. The issue will come out soon, and he addresses this. I don't want to give anything away. But the point is that there are any number of people now -- and this what this Michael Lind piece is all about, too, trying to say populism is the new conservatism. Conservatism never really was anything big. It's always been this little minority movement over here, had a lot of powerful intellectuals in it but it's never been that big. Populism is really what it's all about, and Trump is proving that.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/01/20/understanding_trump_s_appeal
There's an all-out war on conservatives. That's what everybody's afraid of, folks. The Democrats are afraid of it, the media's afraid of it, the Republican establishment's afraid of it. They're using the Trump campaign to do any number of things. Among them is to try to take all the air finally out of the conservative movement and a lot of conservatives are playing along, unwittingly. What the Democrats are trying to do is use Trump to destroy the Republican Party. They are of the belief that Trump cannot possibly win and cannot possibly beat Hillary Clinton.
However, I would like to share with you two different takes on this. And one of them is from Salon.com, a writer named -- let me find it here -- well, the first one is John Kass in the Chicago Tribune. "Hillary Can't Win. She's the establishment candidate in a year of insurgency." Chicago Tribune. I don't know Kass. I don't know what leanings he has. The Tribune obviously is a -- well, it's journalism. What do you think they are?
Pull quote from the story: "Clinton is the political embodiment of the establishment. And that spells serious trouble for her, because the American people are in an insurgent mood, fueled by the holes in their bank accounts, all those jobs Bill Clinton sent overseas with his support of NAFTA, and the rifts in what we once called the common culture. It spreads across class lines like fire in a dry riverbed. It won't stop until the weeds are gone."
Hillary Clinton will not be elected president because she can't win and the sooner you Democrats figure this out the calmer you will be. That's one theory. Because she's the embodiment of the establishment, and that's what this election is all about. And, folks, by the way, this guy Kass is right. It is a real factor here. I know that people in the establishment, they cannot relate to this, they can't put their hands on it. The fact that in the middle class there has not been significant economic improvement in many years, over a decade.
The wages are stagnant, a college education has no longer become the route upward because it costs so much, you come out so indebted that it has become a shackle and a ball and chain rather than something that spurs you upward. All of the things that the special people have been in charge of have been destroyed. Look at the social welfare system. It's a mess. Obamacare's destroyed the health care system. It's not working at all. The stimulus didn't work. We're countlessly in debt, $19 trillion now.
The discord that average Americans feel for the Washington establishment is real, and a lot of it is rooted in economics. Now, I know people that are doing well don't even bother to think about it. If you're doing well, most people doing well think everybody is. And there are large sectors of our population who aren't, and many of them are what are called blue-collar former Democrats, white working-class people, who feel the deck has been stacked against 'em in any number of ways: economic and cultural.
I have sympathy for them. I have a lot. I know that they are not improving their lives economically. But they're not the slothful ones. They're not among the 94 million not working. Well, some of them are. They can't find jobs. But they don't want to be there. These are people that have always believed hard work has a payoff, and it hasn't. Now they find their hours being cut by companies to comply with Obamacare. The problem is they are not correct in who they are blaming. The mess is they are assigning blame to the wrong people.
George W. Bush and the Republicans are still getting the lion's share of blame for it when most of it is directly traceable to the Democrat Party and its policies. Ditto Millennials. They are a group of people that sees a bleak future. Many of them, not all, of course, but many of them. They don't know why. They don't relate it to current administration economic policies, like immigration and health care, you name it, all of the spending, the out-of-control growth in the size of government. They just think confluence of events and the country's finally reached that point where its best days are behind it. Because they're not educated properly, they don't know who to blame. They're just down on the country at large.
But all of this makes people rife for anybody that comes along and says they can improve it and change it for them. They feel powerless. They feel ignored. I know exactly who they are. And I don't think that they're a bunch of hayseeds. I don't think they're a bunch of low-lifes. I don't think that they're identified because they're uneducated or what have you. Look, they run the gamut.
There's all kinds of different -- (interruption) you have a question? The official Program Observer has a question. What's the question? Wait, wait. Wait. Who says can't win the nomination? Oh. Oh. Well, right. Well, I'll get to that when I get to the Democrats. But I'm still talking right here about this situation that exists on the Republican side.
All I'm trying to tell you is that the people supporting Trump, they are not what everybody thinks they are. They're not reactionaries and so forth. There's genuine frustration, whether it's trade deals or what have you, it's economics. It's always economics. It's always the money. But if you're doing well you tend to think everybody else is, too. You have to work at reminding yourself what it was like when you didn't have money, and there's a whole lot of people out there.
The middle class in this country used to be what defined its greatness. The middle class and its possibilities, the middle class and the ability to expand and grow out of it was what set this country apart from any other, in addition to our Constitution. And it's becoming harder and harder and harder to do it now because obstacles are being put in these people's way. Now, some of them it's their fault. There's enough blame to go around here.
But all I'm saying is that this is not illegitimate. You might think they're foolish for buying what Trump's saying. You might think they're fools for falling for it. Trump can't do what he's saying, that's another thing. You're trying to figure out why they're there, why they're supporting Trump. And nobody wants to ask the question, have we let 'em down? They're always trying to blame. Is Trump lying to 'em, is somebody else fooling them.
The people that do have some fingerprints on this mess don't want to own up to it and want to continue to absolve themselves of blame. And those that are really doing well want to protect it. So self-interest is triumphing over what used to be a concern for the entire population. I think this is actually a fundamental important thing. I've been thinking about it in spurts recently, and I haven't put together an entire thought process on it.
But let me try it this way. I was watching an episode of Blue Bloods, the most recent one on Friday night. And in this episode the commissioner of the police department of New York, played by Tom Selleck, has a meeting of police officials from Great Britain. And the subject of the meeting is for the officials of Great Britain to learn what the NYPD is doing to protect its people from acts of terror and violent crime and whether or not the NYPD has proprietary techniques that might be on the edge of the law that they therefore don't want to share with anybody because of it.
And what triggered in me watching this program was it was clear that the writers of this program were of the impression that the commissioner of the police department and the British officials were actually interested in protecting their entire populations, not just their friends, not just their donors, not just their special interest, powerful friends. And I think that's what's happened here.
I think a lot of people believe that the people entrusted with leading the country have forgotten all about large segments of it and care only about making sure that their buddies don't lose anything, making sure that their buddies don't get hurt, making sure their buddies are protected from terrorism, making sure their buddies have protected from economic collapse, such as bank bailouts and so forth, but the hell with anybody else.
It used to be that the people of this country trusted whoever it was they elected to lead them, that they understood that the entire population was worthwhile and valuable, and everybody in it was special because they were Americans. And a lot of people don't think that's the case anymore, that the establishment takes care of itself and of its own and of its friends and stops.