The immediate reaction to her speech — the immediate reaction — the Drive-Bys were not gonna tell us. If I saw one, I saw 50 people last night warn us, “Look, there’s no way you could follow Obama! (chortling) Come on. There’s no way you could follow Michelle. (chortling) Oh, my God, it was the greatest speech in the convention! There’s no way you could follow that. No! Bill Clinton, even with a weakened voice? No, no! No way you could follow Bill. Barack Obama? For crying out loud, no. Nobody’s expecting Mrs. Clinton to.”
So they were tamping down expectations, but they were hoping that they would see a Hillary they haven’t seen. They were hoping they would see a human Hillary, a lifelike Hillary, an energetic Hillary. They were hoping they would see a stem-winder Hillary. They were hoping they would see a Hillary that doesn’t exist — and they didn’t. And when you listen to the sound bites; you plainly hear that, discover that. We’ll first start with NBC Special Election Coverage, Lester Holt asking F. Chuck Todd, “Chuck, the bar was high tonight.” The bar was really high for Hillary Clinton. “How did she measure up?”
TODD: Stem-winder and Hillary Clinton are never gonna be in the same sentence. I was amazed how comfortable she is pushing a very progressive agenda. This was a speech that Bernie Sanders could have given. By the way, more references by her about Trump than Trump did in his speech last week about her.
RUSH: Okay, so how do we parse this? Because we just played the sound bite where the Drive-Bys just loved the fact that the Democrats put on this all God, all America patriotic convention night last night. They ate it up. They loved it. They hate it when Republicans do it, but they loved it last night. And yet F. Chuck comes along, says he was amazed at how comfortable she is pushing a very progressive agenda.
Well, what is it? We either got a pro-patriotic, pro-American, red, white, and blue, lots of flags everywhere, America’s great night at the convention, or we didn’t. Which is it? How could she give this massively great progressive agenda speech with all that other stuff going on?
My point is the Drive-Bys will mislead you no matter how they have to. They will lie to you, they know full well what they’re doing. Not to say they’re not closed-minded and ignorant at the same time, but they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re trying to do. Does it matter, by the way, that she mentioned Trump’s name a lot more than Trump mentioned hers?
Well, there’s two schools of thought on that. One is you can react and say, “Boy, is Trump living rent free in her head.” On the other token, I got a piece — this is a really good piece by Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal who says that essentially this is a one-candidate race, a one-person presidential race, it’s Hillary against Hillary. That Hillary’s problem is Hillary. She’s running against her own ethical morass. She can’t erase who she is. The only hope she has is to destroy and decimate Trump.
So if you look at it from that standpoint, of course she’s gonna mention Trump much more than he’s gonna mention her. The political professionals will tell you, of course you do that. Mrs. Clinton’s a known figure, 30 years. She’s got to define Trump. She’s got to destroy Trump. Because she can’t build herself up. Been there, done that. I mean, that ship has sailed. She is who she is.
So I think you should expect from here on out nothing but a never ending, continual assault on everything Trump. In fact, the latest one, last night Trump had an appearance somewhere, and he got all ticked off about Bloomberg. Trump started saying (imitating Trump), “Boy, you know, I really wanted to hit him,” and he made a fist and pounded the palm. So the story today is Trump’s deranged, Trump’s dangerous. Trump would actually hit Hillary. Trump would actually use fists on his opponent. This is how they’re gonna do it. Yeah.
So, anyway, Hillary telegraphed what they’re gonna do. They don’t care that the reaction is, “Oh, my God, Trump must be living rent free in your head.” No, no. They really don’t have much they can do to build her up. They can’t defeat us in the arena of ideas. The Democrats try to destroy every one of our prominent people every day. That’s their modus operandi.
The Democrat Party does not deal with ideas. They do not debate us on those things. Their objective is to destroy the character, the career, the lives of every credible opponent they face. Why should it be any different here? Trump is gonna be a target, and he’s gonna be a never ending target, and they’re not gonna let up no matter how it works, good or bad.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Audio sound bite number five, Bob Schieffer last night on CBS. Scott Pelley said, “Bob, you’ve been at every convention since 1968. You were in Cleveland. We now have seen the end of this one. How do you assess where we are, Bob?”
SCHIEFFER: The way they were telling it tonight, all you need to do is print on the bumper sticker “Donald Trump: yes or no.” This is a campaign that’s going to be about Donald Trump. Do you want him or do you not want him? Are you willing to trust him in the most powerful office in the country?
RUSH: See, folks, they’re not out singing the praises of Hillary Clinton. They did it in the immediate post, great speech, they had to do that, but they’re acknowledging, everybody’s admitting here that Hillary cannot, she can’t raise her negatives. She’s too well known. She’s baked in. They’ve got to go out and try to destroy Trump. Any defection from Trump, any high quality, high profile defection is gonna be a hero. Somebody currently in the Trump camp decides to politicize for whatever reason, they’re gonna be the biggest hero you have ever seen.
So we’re gonna find out, you’ve got the professionals, the political professionals in the establishment running a campaign like they think they ought to be run versus the novices over here, the outsiders. You got some professionals in it, but it’s basically an outside-the-establishment campaign. We’re gonna find out where America is.