RUSH: Have you seen this headline at the New York Times? You probably haven’t. Let me share it with you, and see if you’ve heard this somewhere before. “Republican Hopefuls in New Hampshire Attack Clinton More Than One Another.” Where have you heard that, folks? I think you heard that on this program some days ago, maybe last week or the week before, in which I suggested this.

I imagine myself to be the campaign consultant for all 16 as a group, and I was advising them as a group. I said, “One of the pieces of advice I would offer is do not do what you normally do during a primary like this and go out and destroy each other. Go out and focus on Hillary Clinton. She is already the presumptive Democrat nominee, and you combine two things when you focus on exposing Hillary Clinton.

“The media is not gonna vet her. The media is not gonna define her. Half the country doesn’t know of the Hillary Clinton of the nineties. The Millennials only know Hillary Clinton as secretary of state working with Barack Obama, first female president, all good stuff. They don’t know the real Hillary Clinton.” I said, “It’s up to you guys to tell the people of this country who weren’t alive or who weren’t paying attention in the nineties who Hillary Clinton is.

“And in the process of doing that, you leave each other alone. You sink and swim on the basis of whether you can handle it yourself or not, and you expose liberalism at the same time because Hillary is. This is what needs to be done.” Well, the New York Times followed the Republicans in New Hampshire, and by gosh, that’s exactly what the Republicans did.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Chuck in Virginia Beach. Chuckster, great to have you here. You’re up first today on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Dittos, Rush. It’s great to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Look, you just said on your program that the Republicans need to focus on Hillary Clinton. I disagree. Why? Especially during the primary, why can’t they put forth a good, sound, conservative plan for America rather than sink to the Democrats’ level of campaigning, using personal attacks against Hillary?

RUSH: No, no, no. That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.

CALLER: Good.

RUSH: I’m suggesting that they go after Hillary by drawing a contrast between — I’m not saying attack her just for the sake of it.

CALLER: Oh, no, no, no, no, I know that. But I’m just thinking, forget Hillary altogether, especially during the primary. Go ahead and put forth our conservative plans for America —

RUSH: I don’t think they can wait for the general because by the time the general comes around the Republican candidate is gonna be so damaged. Whoever the Republican nominee is gonna go into the general election already damaged, maybe beyond repair, by the media, by the Democrats, and Hillary is gonna be unscathed, if we follow your theory. Hillary needs to be damaged right now when there’s a chance to do it, with 16, 15, whatever it is, Republicans defining her. I’m not talking about being mean to her. I’m talking about —

CALLER: I don’t care about being mean to her.

RUSH: — informing people who she is.

CALLER: I don’t care about being mean to her. I’m just thinking that the important thing for us to do is to put forth a plan that works for America and let the American voter hear it and know it. Yeah, don’t attack each other, remember the Eleventh Commandment and all that, just go forward and put forth our plans, and argue the merits of our plans. If the Democrats have something to say against that, say, “What do you got that’s any better?” I think the American people are smart enough to know that a good plan is gonna work and we can win with a good plan rather than going ahead and doing this political sniping at each other.

RUSH: Well, let me make a prediction to you.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: The Republican candidates are, at one point, gonna start in after another. It’s the nature of the game. I would like to see it delayed for as long as possible. What I don’t want to see, Chuck, in the process of us putting together our killer idea and killer plan, I don’t want to see conservative nominee after conservative nominee after conservative nominee taken out and disqualified because he might not be a full-fledged conservative on a certain issue that, say, the Tea Party or some other conservative group demands. The history of these things is that we take out all the conservative candidates and leave the moderate establishment as the only guy standing. It’s how we got Romney. It’s how we got McCain.

So rather than go after each other as being impure on conservative issues here or there, going after Hillary is an opportunity based on the fact that there are a lot of Americans, Chuck, who do not know her the way you do, and you can’t leave it to the assumption, you can’t let it be assumed that people now know everything about Hillary because many of them were not alive or were not old enough to know who Hillary is and what she was and what she did.

My whole point has been that if you go after Hillary, you’re going after liberalism, you’re drawing a contrast between Hillary and liberalism and conservatism. Obviously you advance your own agenda at the same time, and you point out how Hillary’s doesn’t work by pointing out the last six years and her role in it. It seems to me to be a slam dunk. But it’s not one of these either/or things. It’s not as though if you go after Hillary, you don’t advance your own agenda. You do both at the same time.