JOHNNY DONOVAN:  And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH:  Yes siree, Bob, Open Line Friday.  It’s great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh wrapping up a sterling, busy broadcast week.  It’s a delight, it’s a thrill to be with you and to have you here, all at the same time.  Telephone number if you want to be on the program — and I know you do — Mr. Snerdley is standing by eagerly.  Open Line Friday at 800-282-2882.  And remember what Open Line Friday is.  Talk about whatever you want to talk about.  I can kind of guess what it’s gonna be, but, if it isn’t, could be anything.  That’s the purpose of Open Line Friday.

It’s amazing how things repeat, despite people’s best instincts and despite how prepared people are.  I began to get word today that — and I do not spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter.  I find out what’s happening there by other people spending time there and telling me.  So I don’t really know from firsthand knowledge, but I’m being told by two or three people that the Republican side of things is really down in the dumps on Twitter and Facebook today.

I gather that one of the main reasons for it is, again, the Drive-Bys.  For some reason, people were expecting the Drive-Bys to focus on the negatives of Nurse Ratched, and, since they’re not, since they’re actually building her up, it’s a bad sign. What did you think was gonna happen?

Look, I don’t mean to sound lecturing here, and I’m not wagging my finger, but come on, what did you expect was gonna happen?  In fact, this is an interesting observation.  Grab audio sound bite number.  We’ve put together a montage, and I’m gonna play this montage. I’m not gonna tell you what it is, I just want it to hit you, I want you to listen to it, 41, 42 seconds here, and I of course will have expert commentary and analysis after playing this, but get a load of this.

SUSAN DAVIS: (convention background noise) I felt like I could have been at the Republican convention.

JUDY WOODRUFF: (convention background noise) I don’t think it gets any more red, white, and blue on a convention floor.

GWEN IFILL: (convention background noise) To see a Democratic convention in such a spasm of patriotism.

JENNIFER GRIFFIN: (convention background noise) They were taking, it seemed like, a page from the Republican playbook.

KEVIN MADDEN: (convention background noise) Republican messages being delivered at a Democratic National Convention.

VAN JONES: (convention background noise) Remember when “USA! USA!” was considered a solely Republican chant.

ANDERSON COOPER: (convention background noise) Morality of religion, of patriotism. I mean these are not ordinarily — I mean the tone of this that we’ve heard is not your typical Democratic convention.

JOHN KING: (convention background noise) You heard more about God and more about the (crosstalk) military at the Democratic convention (crosstalk) than you did at the Republican convention.

MICHAEL STEELE: I thought this was the best Republican convention I’ve been to (laughter starts) in a long time.

RUSH:  That was Michael Steele, the last voice.  Let me tell you who you heard here. You heard Judy Woodruff, Susan Davis, Gwen Ifill, Jennifer Griffin, Kevin Madden, Van Jones, the known communist at CNN, the admitted, the admitted, the lone admitted communist at CNN.  They have Anderson Cooper in there from CNN and John King.  This is stunning to me.  There are many things going on.

Number one, this montage is filled with Drive-By Media people admitting that you normally don’t get anything pro-America or patriotic at a Democrat convention.  You have a Drive-By guy admitting here that chants of “USA, USA,” why, we’re not used to hearing that at the Democrat convention.  We only hear that kind of thing at the Republican convention.

I even saw there was a tweet one night earlier this week.  I think it was Shannon Bream at the Fox News Channel tweeted that somebody sitting in the crowd at the convention got mad when the chant in the hall was “USA, USA,” and this conventioneer says, “We gotta stop doing that, that’s Trump, that’s Trump’s slogan.”  “USA, USA.”

So here you have a bunch of left-wing Drive-By Media people acknowledging that you don’t get patriotism at a Democrat convention, usually.  You don’t even get pro-America at a Democrat convention, usually.  Gwen Ifill called what happened last night a spasm of patriotism.  They’re not saying this in the slightest bit critically, folks.  They’re just observing.  You heard more about God and more about the military at the Democrat convention than you did at the Republican.

So they know.  The bottom line is they know that you don’t get patriotism, you don’t get God, you don’t get the American founding, you don’t get American tradition at a Democrat convention.  Okay, fine.  But when you do get those things at a Republican convention, what happens?  The media rips them to shreds, do they not?  The media rips them to shreds for phony displays of patriotism, cheap theatrics.  They go out of their way to try to convince everybody that the Republicans are a bunch of phonies, because they’re embarrassed.

They’re embarrassed that the Democrats never do it so they have to circle the wagons and somehow defend the Democrats’ lack of this no God, no patriotism, no flags, no “USA”. At the Democrats’ convention every four years they have to cover that by mocking the Republicans’ inclusion of all those things.  But last night, why, here come the Democrats looking like Republicans within and they’re all atwitter, why, they’re all approving, they’re all happy, they all think it was great.  You talk about people with an identification problem.

I mean, this just illustrates so much to me.  It illustrates their partisan nature.  It illustrates that they know exactly what they’re doing.  They know exactly who the Democrats are.  They know exactly what patriotism is and what it isn’t.  They know what pro-America and anti-America is, and they know that anti-America, or the lack of pro-America, let me put it that way, is the usual fare at the Democrat convention.  But last night we got it and they’re all excited about it.

Why are they all excited?  ‘Cause they know it works for the Republicans.  That’s why.  They resent that it works for the Republicans.  They think it’s cheap.  Don’t forget the surveys that we reminded you of yesterday from Harvard University.  These are a couple of years old.  These are public opinion surveys that indicated the Democrats should never use the American flag ’cause all it does is make people feel like Republicans and Fourth of July celebrations are bad because they tend to make people pro-Republican.  The flag, celebrations of the country, our independence, our founding, bad for Democrats.  Why?  Well, because the Democrats are not on that page.

So last night the Democrats decided after three nights of not being able to spot an American flag, after three nights of not hearing much at all positive about the founding, they decided to dip their toes in the water and go there, for whatever reasons.  And I think my best guess is that they concluded that the Republican convention with Trump detailing the problems that we face in this country was dark and it was negative and it was pessimistic, and that’s where they don’t understand.  When they do that kind of stuff it is pessimistic.

When they sit there and whine and moan about the lack of quality or the racism or the bigotry, that is negative.  They are beating up on America.  The Democrat Party’s known for that, and this sound bite kind of proves it.  This sound bite illustrates, this montage, that the Drive-By Media is aware that the Democrat Party normally and is known for beats up on America.  They know it.  And they never call ’em on it.  They cover for them on it, by mocking the Republicans when the Republicans are all patriotic and pro-America red, white, and blue, God, Second Amendment.  Oh, they hate that.  But the Democrats doing it, all of a sudden they’re in love with it.

But the Republican convention was not dark and it was not pessimistic.  It was an identification of problems that we face with a call to fix it, a call to change the direction the country’s going. And the Drive-Bys are doing their best to convince everybody that the Republican convention was nothing but dystopian.  They know that’s what the Democrat Party is 999 out of every 1,000 days, last night being the exception.  And last night was an act.  Last night required a script for people to say what they said last night.  Last night they had to put it all on the prompter because none of it comes naturally to any of the people that spoke last night, including Nurse Ratched.

When’s the last time you can remember the media hyping and celebrating the flag, patriotism, USA?  They don’t do it because it’s associated with the Republicans and conservatives.  And they can’t bring themselves to do that.  But when the Democrats go and appropriate it for one night, oh, my gosh, it’s the most wonderful thing, it’s a beautiful thing.

Now, as you will hear coming up in the audio sound bites, the initial reaction after Nurse Ratched’s speech last night was from liberal Democrats and from people who wanted her to do well, was not good.  It was not great.  You had the obligatories who were going to say, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, it was historic, oh, my God, it was a woman.  Do you realize what it means for our country?”  And so people assigned greatness to the speech simply because it was given by a woman, which is nothing more than identity politics.

So what?  What does that matter?  Doesn’t it matter who the woman is and doesn’t it matter what that woman believes?  Or are we all just supposed to forget everything, bow down, and celebrate the fact that once again America has shed a horrible vestige of its past: Discrimination against the babes.  “Yes, and for that alone we are to openly accept whatever the woman on the stage said last night.”  Sorry, don’t sign me up for that.

I don’t get caught up in this identity stuff.  It doesn’t matter to me that she’s got a vagina or not.  What matters to me is the fact that this woman is Barack Obama. She is exactly Barack Obama, and is going to enact Barack Obama and even more.  She is a liberal.  You could almost get away with… Some people have alluded to this on certain websites today, that what we really saw last night was the Communist Party USA on display, complete with all the deception, patriotism and this and that and all the other.

But there were the obligatory, “Oh!” They were fawning. “Oh, it was so wonderful! Oh, she’s gonna get a big bounce! Oh, it was so great.”  It wasn’t.  It was workmanlike.  She been in public life 30 years; she hasn’t improved giving speeches.  She hasn’t improved at anything.  Anyway, we’ll parse it. We’ll go through it a little bit.  I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time doing that, but there are some things worth mentioning, and we’ve got a pretty good audio sound bite roster here.

But, folks, don’t get down in the dumps here, especially because of the media.  The media, you know what they’re gonna do before they do it.  I have been cajoling, I have been warning, I have been advising, I have been begging, I have been pleading with people: Do not include the media in however you define success.  In other words, don’t think the only way we have a chance is if the media comes around and starts criticizing the people we criticize, ’cause it isn’t going to happen.

Hell, Wolf Blitzer was having wine and dancing and drinking and just having a ball in the CNN booth at the convention last night.  I saw the picture during show prep today and Drudge found it. Yep, it’s his lead photo.  I mean, they are who they are.  They do what they do.  They are hypocritical as they can be, and they’re fully aware of everything.  And one of the things they want you to do is get down in the dumps.  One of the things they want you to do is get dispirited.  One of the things they want you to do is to think it’s over.

But don’t, because it isn’t, because it’s not a cliche to say the whole thing’s just now beginning.  I don’t recall any Drive-By saying an election is won at a convention.  We’re not a world governed by the aggressive use of speeches, and I don’t recall anybody saying that the election was won because, “Remember that speech? Remember that speech FDR gave? Remember that speech LBJ gave? Do you remember that speech Nixon gave?” Do you?  I don’t remember that, do you?

Maybe with some of the debates, yeah, but not convention speeches.  The best the Drive-Bys could do was try to tell us the election was over in June. (interruption) Oh, yeah, you didn’t remember that?  “The polling data indicates that whoever is leading in June usually wins,” and Hillary was up 11 in June so it was over.  A new metric.  “Polling data in June tells us who wins,” except now Hillary’s not leading.  We’ll see how big a bump she gets. She’ll probably get some. I don’t know how much.

But her negatives are still sky-high: 73% untrustworthy, unlikable. That didn’t change from anything last night.  Here’s another way to look at this patriotism stuff — and there were some protests. There were some Bernie Sanders people not happy with what they were hearing last night.  It’s just the Clinton people knew when they were gonna erupt. When you were watching last night and heard, “Hillary! Hillary!” that’s when the Bernie people were revved up, and they were on several occasions through the speech last night.

But imagine that you are a Bernie Sanders voter — you’re a standard, ordinary, everyday progressive Democrat today — and you hear all this patriotism stuff. You’ve got one of two reactions.  You either get mad or you stop and think, “Ah, I know she doesn’t mean it. She just has to say this.”  But it’s still gotta grate on you. As a progressive, as a dyed-in-the-wool, extreme radical leftist, doesn’t it have to grate on you that your party thinks, in order to win, they have to sound like Republicans?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Okay, folks, some observations here as I again attempt to… For those of you not panicking but feeling down in the dumps, I’m trying to talk you back from that.  Look, we gotta admit some things.  We’re a divided country, and we don’t know yet if we’re outnumbered or not.  Many people fear that we are, but we’re divided. There are two Americas minimum.  There’s not a single common America where there’s overlap.  We are at least two distinct Americas, and those two distinct Americas just happen to be represented in the upcoming election.

We’re gonna learn a lot.  On the one hand, we have the Democrats who are seasoned professional BSing politicians and lobbyists and consultants and pollsters.  They are the epitome of the quintessential establishment of Washington.  In fact, the Hillary Clinton campaign epitomizes the dominant class of the Washington establishment, because Republicans are in it, too.  But they don’t run it.  The Republicans in the establishment are essentially trying every day to earn their daily membership, and that means going along with Democrats.

Democrats run the establishment.

Here we have Trump and the anti-establishment America that he represents, and it is going to be a battle all the way down to the wire.  And we’re gonna find out who outnumbers who here.  By the way, that’s still up for grabs.  The campaign’s all about inspiring, motivating, changing minds, persuading, you name it.  But we are divided.  That’s why this whole notion of crossing the aisle and working with people? That’s not what this campaign’s about.  In fact, I was a little surprised to hear Hillary use it last night in her speech.

The Democrats don’t want crossing the aisle.  The only thing those progressive liberals and those extremist radicals care about is burying us.  They have no desire for compromise, to find out whatever there might be that’s good about what we believe.  There isn’t anything.  So don’t expect the part of the media that represents the Washington establishment to in any way be open and accommodating and understanding of those of us who are not in it.  You’re gonna be forever doomed to disappointment.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Dave in Sandusky, Ohio, as we hit on the phones today, Open Line Friday, you’re first, and welcome.  Great to have you here.

CALLER:  Hello, Rush.  Many dittos from Mazomanie, Wisconsin.  We’re just traveling through Ohio, heading back from Canton.  My boy and I, Dawson and I wanted to see the football Hall of Fame.

RUSH:  Oh, yeah.

CALLER:  I wanted to assure you, Hillary’s not fooling us and let her keep talking.  Last night it really caught our attention when she started talking about the royalty and the king and our Founding Fathers fighting the king and establishment.  She’s the epitome of it!  And it’s the last thing we want.  And we are so enthusiastic about Trump and beating that trend and a new beginning for our country or getting back to the basics of the Constitution and upholding the laws that we have.  So no worries.  I didn’t want you to stress all weekend.  I thought my phone call would lend you much comfort.

RUSH:  Oh, whoa, whoa.  I appreciate that.  I’m not stressed.  I didn’t mean to convey that.  I’m detecting stress and depression and down-in-the-dumpsism and pessimism.  Well, look.  I have not seen it myself.  I’m told it’s out there on Twitter and Facebook, and I just believed it because it’s been the case in the past.  And it’s usually rooted in — you know, you have a great week you think the Democrats have made fools of themselves and all this various stuff that Fox News tells you, and the blogs that you read tell you, and then you watch the Drive-Bys, and you think, well, they’re lying.  And you think there’s no way to overcome and you get depressed.

And I’m telling you, that’s nothing new.  But they’re never gonna be on our side, so it’s a phony definition of success.  Anyway, I appreciate it, Dave.  I’m not pessimistic in any way, shape, manner, or form, or stressed in any way, shape.