The "elites" in the Republican Party have no chance of figuring out why Donald Trump has become such a phenomenon until they realize they are the reason for his rise, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday.
The Republican Party has been playing the role of "second-tier party" for decades, Limbaugh told his listeners, and has held onto that role even though it controls both chambers of Congress.
Now, many of them are plotting ways to keep Trump from getting the party's nomination, he said.
"They're now talking about [Mitt] Romney as a safety valve emergency candidate at the convention.
They're talking third party," he said. "All of this is happening precisely because they have accepted the role of Washington Generals, primarily since the election of Barack Obama."
The Washington Generals are the patsy team that always plays the Harlem Globetrotters, and Limbaugh said that just as the Globetrotters need the Generals in order to display their superior basketball prowess, Democrats need a Republican Party, albeit it a weak one, as a foil.
"They need somebody to be victim," he said. "And the Republicans in this circumstance go along with it because they get to maintain their membership in the elite."
Meanwhile, average voters are fed up, Limbaugh said.
"It's not hard to figure this out at all, but the people in the establishment still don't get it," he said. "They still think of this as a temper tantrum that the children are going through — and this is not a temper tantrum. This is not going away. This is not a phase."
Though anger at the establishment has many elements, it is for the first time in this election also about class, he said.
"There hasn't been any significant improvement in the economic status of the middle class in many, many years," Limbaugh said. "And yet the smart people — the establishment, the elites, the special people, whatever you want to call them — look at what they have done."
College education, seen as a necessity to bettering oneself, has become unaffordable, and the upper class now publicly ridicules those below them, he said.
Trump's popularity isn't a personality cult, Limbaugh said, but his followers are devoted to him in a hero-worship sense.
"It's what Trump represents. It's the opportunity ... It's the voice that they haven't had. It's the voice that hasn't been listened to," he said. "It's the voice that they've been shouting but nobody's been doing anything but making fun of them for speaking. It's perfectly understandable."