RUSH: I didn't think it was possible, but the GOP establishment is panicked even further. They're now just out of their gourd. And you know what? They're getting a bunch of leftists to join them in their supposed fear of what will happen to the GOP if Donald Trump gets the nomination. We have audio sound bites of this coming up.

Now, one thing about this I've never understood, but I think now it's coming into focus, I have never understood, like at that now famous dinner that I had with Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham in New York where they tried to pitch me on amnesty, the Gang of Eight bill, and I steadfastly refused. Schumer kept talking to me about the future of the Republican Party was over if they didn't join the momentum for the Gang of Eight, if they didn't try to secure the Hispanic population vote by supporting amnesty and the Gang of Eight bill.

And I remember saying to Senator Schumer, "Do you really care that the Republican Party wins the White House? I mean, that's not what you want. You'd be happy if they never won the White House. So what is this?" And in this whole campaign now we've got people, both parties, but they all -- this is the key -- they all happen to be members of the establishment. They're all professing to be paranoid to one degree or another over what will become of the GOP if Trump gets the nomination.

And the original question still holds. Why are all these liberals in the news media, the Democrat Party, in the pop culture, wherever you find them, why are they so concerned that the GOP might fail to exist? Why are they so concerned that the GOP might be destroyed? And, of course, the answer is, given the current structure, the Democrat Party loves the GOP as it's currently constituted and as it currently operates.

The GOP has practically conceded to being a second-tier party. The GOP is practically the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. The Democrat Party is the Harlem Globetrotters. The Globetrotters could not have played if they didn't have a team to beat. They couldn't have played. They wouldn't have had an act if there was no patsy on the other side.

So if the GOP dwindles and fades away, the Democrat Party's got a little bit of a problem. Look, it's not something they'd lose any sleep over, but one of the primary ways they survive is by pitting their opposition as evil and Satanic. They need villains and if the Republican Party fades away to nonexistence, where's the villain? And in this the two parties are almost complicit in this establishment arrangement. They both feed off of each other and as long as the Republican Party knows its place, and that is for the most part, loser.

Now, you might say, "Rush, what do you mean? They won the Senate. They won the House." Yeah, but look how they operate them. They've not done much to stop Obama even after they won control of the House. And they certainly haven't done much to stop Obama since they won the Senate. So it's almost back to the days of Bob Michel when the GOP House was 150 members. But nevertheless the Democrats need them there. They need a foil. They need somebody to be victim. And the Republicans in this circumstance go along with it because they get to maintain their membership in the elite.

Now, one of the things that is really detrimental about this all this, aside from all the obvious things, is that for a republic like the United States -- not a democracy, although I'm not gonna split hairs here. But we are a republic. We're a constitutional republic. And for a republic to exist and for it to be on its continuum -- and this is a fundamental reality, and it goes all the way back to Socrates, Sophocles, Plato, and all those other Greek guys that ran around speaking with pebbles in their mouths so they could improve their articulation, a republic needs respect for the opposition in order for it to survive. And that respect for the opposition is what leads to ongoing competition. And that respect for the opposition is long gone.

The Democrats, the left, bye-bye, there is no respect for the opposition whatsoever. It's not even considered legitimate. We've gotten to a point now where the left and the Democrat Party really, in their dreams, would love to sweep away any serious opposition, not have a level playing field, but have no playing field at all. But now when they're faced with that possibility, when they're faced with the GOP imploding -- this is what they're all afraid of if Trump gets the nomination -- now they're worried, oh, no, they need their opponent, they need their enemy, they need somebody guaranteed and happy to come in second place.

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here's also, everybody's wringing their hands today over one of the sacred principles of journalism that may be being violated and just cast aside and thrown away by the New York Times. And you know what it is? The agreement between everybody involved that off the record means off the record. Yes. It's very, very dangerous out there. Very, very bad, folks, because the New York Times may be violating all of its journalistic integrity -- ahem, integrity -- because of this.

Apparently Trump had an editorial board meeting with the New York Times not long ago. It was off the record. It was taped, but it was off the record. And off the record means whatever is said cannot be repeated, cannot be alluded to, cannot be confirmed without the express permission of the interviewee, in this case Trump.

Off-the-record get-togethers are important for a lot of reasons. It's one of the only ways that people suspicious of the media will talk to them. And if it's ever disrespected or violated it causes all kinds of problems, and the New York Times thinks they're sitting on a bombshell.

Apparently... We shouldn't know this, but we do. Apparently Trump gave them the impression in this off-the-record meeting that his claim to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and build a wall is just an opening position in a negotiation. Somebody at the New York Times referenced this interview to BuzzFeed, which is... How would you categorize BuzzFeed? BuzzFeed is like a Teen Girl for the... I don't know. It's a specialty site. Ben Smith's place. Anyway, Smith was the guy that they leaked it to.

And so Smith is out there saying this tape exists, and Gail Collins -- who's on the editorial board of the New York Times that would have been involved in this off-the-record meeting -- wrote a column, and Ben Smith as BuzzFeed referring to the column suggests that the second sentence that she wrote in this piece is actually a great indication of what Trump had said. This happened on Tuesday, January 5th. And Gail Collins refers to the fact... It's an opinion piece. She doesn't refer to the tape. She doesn't refer to the interview with Trump.

She just seems to know that with Trump, whatever he says is really nothing more than an opener in a negotiation. And from that point, negotiation takes place. And then if you read The Art of the Deal, you find out that Trump's openers are sometimes three times more than what he actually will settle for. So they're trying. They're talking about violating the off-the-record sacred cow. They are attempting, at the New York Times, to leak out there that Trump is lying to his support base about the number one issue they support him.

Nobody will confirm. What this has led to now is everybody and their uncle calling on the New York Times to release the tape. They're calling on Trump to demand that the New York Times release the tape. They're calling on the New York Times to release it. "Since we know about it now, since it's out there, it would not be fair -- it would not be right -- to hide the contents."

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