Thursday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh offered his theory on why so many so called “Never Trumpers” on the conservative side remain so adamantly against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
According to Limbaugh, they have taken Trump’s nomination, which came against their urging throughout the Republican primary, personally.
Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of RushLimbaugh.com):
But the thing nobody gets… This is why the Never Trumpers are tripping up, and this is why so many people who are spitting mad don’t get it. It isn’t about Trump. I think… If I may be so bold, I think there are some people on the conservative side of the aisle and on the Republican side of the aisle who are not for Trump, and they are terribly offended that so many people are. They are beside themselves that Trump won the nomination.
Remember, these people think that the Republican field — those other 16, 15 candidates — was the best Republican field in 20 years. I think I remember Dr. Krauthammer even opining that he thought… Early on when Trump was pulling ahead, there were a lot of people wringing their hands and very unhappy ’cause they thought, “Oh, my God! This is the greatest Republican field. We got Jeb, we got Kasich, we go to Rubio, we got Cruz, we got Christie!
“Any number of these guys would be absolutely great compared to the Republican field in previous elections.” They were all excited about it. Trump’s come along and just dwarfed everybody, and the mistake that’s being made here, is that I think a lot of Never Trumpers that are conservatives and that are Republicans are taking it a little personally. Mistakenly so. It’s not primarily people investing in celebrity.
Everything thinks that this is a celebrity… Well, a lot of people. A lot of people think that it’s Trump’s celebrity that is causing people to support him or his recognizable factor, his recognition factor, or that they’re just personally enthralled or whatever. And that… Look, I’m not trying to ruffle any feathers here, but that could make some people unhappy, let’s say. I don’t want to go so far as to say jealousy or envious.
But if that’s the case, if they are jealousy and envious, they’re wasting their time and missing the point, because the Trump support is not rooted in just the fact that people like Trump more than they like Cruz or they like Trump more than they like Jeb or that they like Trump more than they like Rubio or pick a name. It’s what Trump represents. It is who Trump is in terms of being an outsider.
I think a lot of people are wasting a lot of energy, feeling rejected either ideologically or personally because they just… I mean, they think Trump’s a boob. They think Trump’s coarse, mean, rough-around-the-edges. Just… “He’s not at all of the character that we think we should have in the president,” and that’s not why people are lining up behind him. That’s not why they are staying loyal to Trump. It’s not that they don’t like him.
It’s that the movement that Trump leads now existed before Trump came along. This penchant, this demand, this desire for somebody outside the entire political system. This has been percolating in our culture, in our society for years. And all these politicians ran for office promising that they were the outsider, claiming to be the outsider? Some of them were even elected. They were outsider. Trump is the first one who really is.
And if Trump loses, their movement’s not going away, because the people voting for Trump are not gonna pack it in just because Trump lost. This is not intended to be a put-down of Trump, either. Don’t misunderstand me here. There’s no rejection. There’s no personal rejection going on. In other words, people aren’t choosing Trump because they don’t like Candidate A, B, C, or D, and it’s not…
You know, people are wringing their hands, “How could a guy like Trump be more popular than what I think? How can a guy like Trump be more popular than Cruz? How can a guy like Trump be more popular than a clean-living, great guy like Jeb? How can a…?” It’s not what it’s about. It really is about a whole bunch of people in this country thinking that they have been forgotten, taken advantage of, taken for granted.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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