posted 03-12-2016 07:52 AM                  

Michael Savage drew media attention with his argument that the Republican presidential nomination battle between Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, amounts to a conflict between purists and pragmatists.

He contends it's only the pragmatists who stand a chance of winning the general election.

Savage said the Democrats "are laughing because they see the entire Republican Party split in two, with the purists attacking the pragmatists, and the pragmatists mocking the purists."

"Of course we would all like a purist candidate," Savage told his listeners. "However most every election in the past has been lost on the Republican side by purist candidates who did not appeal to the masses."

Savage, an avid supporter of Trump, said he considers himself a pragmatist "after seeing what purists have gotten politically, which is near zero."

"Purists have rarely elected anyone. Ever. And they will not in 2016," he said.

He compared the divide between purists and pragmatists to the schisms within religions, such as in the Jewish faith, "where you have the ultra-Orthodox purists vs. the reform movement, and the conservative reform movement, which are the pragmatists modifying the religion to appeal to a larger mass of people."

"There's an adage in biology that I learned in high school," he said, "which goes like this: 'Adapt or die.'"

"Either you want to wind up stuck in amber with your purist philosophy, or you want to go on and adapt and evolve."

He explained that it doesn't mean all beliefs must be compromised, but "it means you have to compromise some of your beliefs."