RUSH: There is some news in these upcoming primaries. “Poll: Cruz Within Striking Distance of Trump in Arizona — A poll of Arizona Republicans conducted last week but released today shows Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz 31% to 19%, with John Kasich and Marco Rubio tied at 10%. The most encouraging news for Cruz is that the poll finds 30% of Republicans remain undecided. Late deciding voters have broken against Trump in almost every state that has voted so far.”

Now, 31 to 19, that’s a 12-point split. Factor the margin of error in there three to four percent so you’re looking at seven- or eight-point spread here.  “If enough of these voters and Rubio supporters back Cruz, he could pull off an upset and capture all of Arizona’s 58 delegates.” There are 58 delegates at stake here.  That’d be a big hall.  Now,

“Trump is favored to win Tuesday’s primary not only because of his polling advantage, but also because he has the backing of former governor Jan Brewer.” The former governor is popular.  Of course, immigration’s a huge issue in Arizona, and Trump is personally identified with that issue. But it says here (it’s a Weekly Standard story) that “Trump may have hurt himself among these voters by announcing that he was ‘softening’ his position on immigration in a recent debate and showing himself to be ignorant about the details of his own immigration plan in an earlier debate.”

Now, you have to read that, or listen, take it with a grain of salt because that’s from the Weekly Standard which is William Kristol’s magazine. And the New York Times had a big, huge story yesterday: “Republican Leaders Map Strategy to Derail Donald Trump.”  One of the Republican leaders heavily involved is William Kristol of the Weekly Standard.  In addition to that, we have Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee who said, “I cannot 100% guarantee that one of the three remaining candidates will be the nominee.” He was asked about a contested convention.

“Well, probably not. You know, people like to talk.”

And then he was hit with the bolt out of the sky.  “Well, can you guarantee the nominee is gonna be one of the three?  Trump, Cruz, Kasich?”

“Well…” He started hedging his bets. “Well, I don’t know.  I don’t think I would 100% guarantee that, no.”

And if you read this New York Times piece on Sunday, you’d understand why. “Republican leaders adamantly opposed to Donald J. Trump’s candidacy are preparing a 100-day campaign to deny him the presidential nomination, starting with an aggressive battle in Wisconsin’s April 5 primary and extending into the summer, with a delegate-by-delegate lobbying effort that would cast Mr. Trump as a calamitous choice for the general election.”

That’s the lead.  The story goes on from there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Where was the GOP’s 100-day plan to take out Obama?  Anybody remember that plan?  Where’s the GOP’s 100 day-plan to take out Hillary Clinton?  Anybody heard of that plan?  Now, that plan doesn’t exist, either, but they’ve got a 100-day plan to take out Trump.

Now, folks, I’m not particularly eager to be repetitive here because there’s so much new every day, but I want to go back, I’ve spent a couple days here trying to make the case with analogies and everything at my disposal to try to illustrate and inform just precisely how the Republican establishment is not going to sit by and let somebody take away from them what they have.

It’s not just their power.  I mean, that’s a large element of it.  But it’s their entire reason for existing.  Positions of standing in one of the only two major political parties in the country, there’s so much tied to it.  Five of the seven wealthiest counties surround Washington, DC.  The networking there, the contacts, the power structure, the ladder of success that you climb there, it’s well laid out.  It’s perfectly structured.

It is a very exclusionary club, and it is not merit based.  Entry into the club is not something you can just apply for and become a member.  It requires breeding. It requires certain pedigrees and resumes and education and so forth.  It has provided a lot of power, a tremendous amount of wealth, huge self-esteem.  These are people that walk around feeling really big about themselves.  There’s a lot of swagger.

People walk around, they feel very happy with themselves, very powerful, very smug, very confident, because the future is laid out, the structure is what it is.  And members are taken care of.  Everybody’s got everybody’s back.  And the idea that something like this could be busted up with an election?  Sorry.  Not gonna tolerate it.  Not gonna even give that a chance.  They’re going to resist whatever effort is made to wrest power from them, to assume their positions or what have you, which is how they see Trump.

So, despite all the talk that you hear — and I think it’s smoke screen talk — from this establishment member or that particular Republican or that consultant or that lobbyist or whatever, despite talk of unity and coming together, believe me, behind the scenes there is none of that.  Behind the scenes all there is is scheming that is designed to protect what they’ve got.  That’s more important than the party winning elections.  Do not doubt me.

So when I saw this New York Times story headlined:  “Republican Leaders Map a Strategy to Derail Donald Trump,” I believe every word of it.  I think there’s probably even more to it than what the story includes.  But here are some highlights.

“Recognizing that Mr. Trump has seized a formidable advantage in the race, they say that an effort to block him would rely on an array of desperation measures, the political equivalent of guerrilla fighting. There is no longer room for error or delay, the anti-Trump forces say, and without a flawlessly executed plan of attack, he could well become unstoppable,” and that is unacceptable.’ 

“But should that effort falter,” should they fail to stop Trump, and his army of supporters, should that falter, “leading conservatives are prepared to field an independent candidate in the general election, to defend Republican principles and offer traditional conservatives an alternative to Mr. Trump’s hard-edged populism. They described their plans in interviews after Mr. Trump’s victories last Tuesday in Florida and three other states.”

Now, if your reaction is, “Well, wait a minute, that guarantees Hillary.”  Exactly.  And they know it, and they’re fine with it.  Hillary Clinton winning maintains the existing order.  The existing order is not based on winning elections.  If it were, half the people in this club would have been thrown out by now.  Half the people in this club are the reason Republicans don’t win elections, and they’re still there, and they’re still members in good standing of this power structure, whatever name you want to give it.

By throwing a third-party candidate out there where principled conservatives can once again vote to guarantee the continuation of socialist Marxism in the United States, that’s considered a wise move.  Because it preserves what’s important to the establishment.

“The names of a few well-known conservatives have been offered up in recent days as potential third-party standard-bearers, and William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, has circulated a memo to a small number of conservative allies detailing the process by which an independent candidate could get on general-election ballots across the country.’

“Among the recruits under discussion are Tom Coburn, a former Oklahoma senator who has told associates that he would be open to running, and Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who was suggested as a possible third-party candidate at a meeting of conservative activists on Thursday.”

So you got that conservative group that met on Thursday that could not come to a consensus, apparently.  This is an entirely different group.  We got the establishment and the conservative groups.  Now, Kristol was not a member of the conservative group.  He’s part of the establishment.  He runs the Weekly Standard.  And I’m sure he thinks, “Who’s gonna read this, who’s gonna want to read this if we’re not in power or if we’re not in charge of the opposition, if we’re not perceived to be in charge of the opposition?” 

“Mr. Coburn, who left the Senate early last year to receive treatment for cancer, said in an interview that Mr. Trump ‘needs to be stopped’ and that he expected to back an independent candidate against him. He said he had little appetite for a campaign of his own, but did not flatly rule one out. ‘I’m going to support that person,'” whoever this group comes up with to stop Trump. “‘and I don’t expect that person to be me.’ Trump opponents convened a series of war councils last week to pinpoint his biggest vulnerabilities and consider whether to endorse,” Cruz or Kasich.

You know what gives this up, what exposes this as not being about the party, why are these people not unifying around Ted Cruz?  You got a guy who is second in delegates. You have a guy who is in the Senate.  Look, it’s a rhetorical question.  I know the answer to the question.  It makes the point.  They don’t want any of these three.  They really don’t want Trump and they really don’t want Cruz.  They’re in a panic, they’ve gotta come up with somebody.  Why, if they were serious about winning and unity, why not, if you don’t like Trump, you want to take Trump out, why not unify behind Cruz?

And the fact that they don’t want to do that should be all you need to know about what really is going on here.  It isn’t about winning the presidency, folks.  It’s another in a long line of reasons of why Trump exists and why Trump has supporters.  You go back to these protests which are not protests, these criminal actions, I will guarantee you that Trump supporters, they are made up of a lot of people, folks.

There’s another thing happening, by the way.  The Trump supporter is being presented as a poor, dumb, uneducated, white working class person who lost his manufacturing job ten years ago and wants to blame somebody for his failures.  That’s who they want you to believe Trump supporters are.  It may be the most disadvantaged group in this country to be a member of today, the white working class.  It seems like everybody’s dumping on that group of people.  The white working class, in their view, in their minds, they’re the ones that have gone off to fight the wars. They’re the ones who have voted the existing Republican power structure into office year after year after year.  They are the ones that pay their taxes.  They are the ones who do the work that very few other people in the country want to do, including joining the military.  And now everybody’s dumping on ’em. 

Prior to joining Trump, you know what they did?  They were Tea Partiers.  And, by the way, the Tea Party and Trump supporters are not monolithic.  They’re not all poor white — look, let me just call a spade a spade.  What they want you to believe is the average Trump voter is an uneducated hick, white trash, upset over his own or her own personal failures looking to blame somebody else and Trump has come along and given them comfort.

That’s not who they are.  Sure some people in that group might fit that description.  The vast majority of them are Tea Partiers.  The vast majority of them are really middle class, some in the upper middle class, who are fit to be tied.  You look at these protests that — criminal actions that are called protests.  I don’t know how to emphasize this.  Since the 1960s, there has been a building anger and resentment at all of these protesters and everything they’ve gotten away with and everything they have destroyed. 

People have sat in their homes and watched this stuff, and they have cursed it.  They have opposed it.  They have wondered why nobody does anything to stop it.  They have wondered why malcontents like this get away with destructive, criminal behavior.  They know it’s not protest.  They know it’s not… These are rent-a-mobs. These are bought and paid for. These are anarchists. These are… They’re a miserable bunch, a miserable lot of collected leftists who are never happy and are never gonna be happy. 

They’re bought and paid for, and for years nobody has done a thing about them.  They have been permitted to become what is seen as an active political force for the Democrat Party.  The Republican Party doesn’t stand up to ’em. It tries to coddle them.  The Republican Party doesn’t do what… Trump comes along and simply isn’t taking it, and it’s another reason why people are supportive of Trump.  I mean, there’s a lot tied up in all of this in terms of reasons to explain Trump’s support so forth.

But the great misunderstanding exists inside the Beltway, a great misunderstanding of just who and what the majority American body politic is, who they are, what they think, what their dreams are. That’s foreign territory to people inside the Beltway.  And they are resented to boot.  The Republican Party had a chance to embrace… I never could understand why they wouldn’t embrace the anti-Obama coalition, Obamacare.  There was a built-in majority waiting for the Republican Party to join and become a majority.

And then the Tea Party came along, and they wanted no part of the Tea Party.  The Tea Party presented an opportunity to once again become the majority party, and they wouldn’t unite with the Tea Party.  What do they expect to happen when they reject their own voters, when they reject people that want to support them over and over again, when they mock them and laugh at them and make fun of them? What do they think’s gonna happen when somebody like Trump comes along?