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Rush Limbaugh: Trump Will Beat Hillary “In a Landslide”

Rush Limbaugh (photo credit: Nicholas Shayko via Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Conventional wisdom says that Donald Trump will be a huge underdog against Hillary Clinton in November.

But yesterday on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said that conventional wisdom is wrong:

Let me give you one little thing: My instinctive feeling right now is that Trump is gonna win, beat Hillary badly, that it could be landslide proportions.

Limbaugh has always been a very measured commentator. While he’s known for a little bombast, he doesn’t throw out crazy predictions and dream scenarios very often. For him to go out on a limb and suggest Trump could win in a landslide, that’s certainly saying something. This is also coming at a time when many conservatives, including Erick Erickson, are suggesting Hillary Clinton has already won.

Limbaugh went on to explain the Trump phenomenon and why he believes Ted Cruz lost:

I still don’t think people understand why Trump won this. I don’t think they understand at all the reason people support Trump…

I’ve tried to help. During the course of this entire campaign, I’ve gone to great lengths to try to explain to people what it is about Trump, why he has his supporters, why they support him, and what you have to do to separate them from Trump. Basically, you can’t. That’s the bottom line. There’s nothing any professional politician can do. They’ve done everything that they knew how to beat a candidate. They threw everything they had at Trump.

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Rush Limbaugh: “There’s Nobody Closer” to Reagan than Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

Ted Cruz won high praise yesterday from Rush Limbaugh. Here’s what Rush said:

If conservatism is the dominating factor in how you vote, there is no other choice for you in this campaign than Ted Cruz. . . This is the closest in our lifetimes we have ever been to Ronald Reagan. In terms of doctrinaire, understandable, articulated, implementable conservatism, there’s nobody closer [than Cruz to Reagan].

Of course, I think Rush is right, and that is why I ultimately chose to endorse Senator Cruz. I also think one can certainly make the case, as Rush has, that on most issues Marco Rubio is a solid conservative, especially when it comes to values issues, foreign policy and the size of government.

On Hugh Hewitt’s show yesterday, Senator Cruz said the race is essentially a two-man contest now: “What Iowa and New Hampshire demonstrate is that the only person in this field who can beat Donald Trump is me.”

I think Senator Cruz is right too. He comes from the Tea Party wing of the GOP. He understands Middle America’s frustration with Washington and, unlike Trump, he has a clear record that conservative voters can trust. Just as important, polling indicates that Cruz would be the stronger candidate to take on and defeat Hillary Clinton.

Here’s some breaking news from my friend Bill Kristol: A trusted source tells him that new polling shows the race between Trump and Cruz in South Carolina is much closer than expected. Continue Reading

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Rush Limbaugh: “The Left Is In A State Of Shock”

Rush Limbaugh (photo credit: Nicholas Shayko via Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Conservative talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh keeps hammering home the importance of Republicans speaking out about the social issues.

Following Matt Bevin’s victory in the Kentucky gubernatorial race, Limbaugh reiterated that point on his show on Wednesday:

“The left is in a state of shock today because everything that they think means death for the Republican Party meant victory yesterday.  They think discussing the social issues is death for the Republican Party.  Discussing them got a man elected governor of Kentucky.  They thought in Houston, “Slam dunk, this civil rights thing on transgender,” whatever it was. “Slam dunk! The left’s gonna win this going away.”  They lost big.  They can’t believe it.  They’re in shock over this.

And it was not just localized in regions, although the South had a great night last night, other than one state. North Carolina still is an outlier, but for the most part this was all over the fruited plain, folks.  The Democrat Party was rejected over and over and over again.  Liberalism was sent packing over and over and over again.  Barack Obama — because he’s the leader of liberalism and the Democrat Party — by virtue of his association, he was rejected over and over again yesterday.”

Limbaugh argued back in September that social issues are a winner for Republicans:

“…this whole business of the Republican Party and/or conservatives needing to shut up about social issues is a trap…There are supposedly conservative media people that have arisen: “Carly Fiorina scares me.

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Rush Limbaugh Gets Pope Francis All Wrong

Pope Francis (photo credit: Aleteia Image Department via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Rush Limbaugh recently unleashed a scathing attack on Pope Francis as uttering Marxist doctrine.  Rush really got it wrong.  According to his official transcript, Rush inveighed:

Now, as I mentioned before, I’m not Catholic.  I admire it profoundly, and I’ve been tempted a number of times to delve deeper into it.  But the pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here, and this is pure political.  I want to share with you some of this stuff.

“Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny’ and beseeched global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality, in a document on Tuesday setting out a platform for his papacy and calling for a renewal of the Catholic Church. … In it, Francis went further than previous comments criticizing the global economic system, attacking the ‘idolatry of money.'”

I gotta be very careful.  I have been numerous times to the Vatican.  It wouldn’t exist without tons of money.  But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him.  This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.

I, too, am not a Catholic.  I consider Roman Catholicism the IPO of my own Tribes’ Start Up, taking Jewish theology and ethics from a tiny tribal affair to the Big Board.  That said, my admiration is perhaps more profound than that of El Rushbo.

The very first op-ed I wrote was in the Albany Times Union over 30 years ago, during the Cold War.  Continue Reading

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Rush Is Right: Candidates Must Talk About Social Issues

Rush Limbaugh (photo credit: Nicholas Shayko via Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Back in 2013, American Principles in Action released an analysis of the 2012 election, “Building A Winning GOP Coalition: The Lessons of 2012.” Our “autopsy” report of the election rejected the “truce strategy” — the GOP establishment’s effort to prevent its candidates from talking about social issues — and instead argued that social issues are winning issues for the GOP.

A few days ago, Rush Limbaugh put forward a very similar theory in the “See, I Told You So” segment of his September 18th show. Rush had this to say:

Isn’t it interesting how the Democrats and the media continue to tell us what we have to do to win, as though they are interested in that. We can’t win unless we support amnesty along with them. We can’t win unless we support gay marriage. We can’t win unless we get wise on gun control. We can’t win unless we understand to shut up about abortion and, quote, unquote, the social issues.

And if you’ll get the sum total of what they’re telling us, we can’t win unless we behave exactly like them.  But the whole idea of them telling us what we have to do to win ought to make everybody suspicious to begin with because they don’t want us to win.

Rush is right. Just as our autopsy diagnosed back in 2013, the GOP shouldn’t shy away from social issues because the Left and the media are telling us that they’re losing issues. Continue Reading