RUSH: Now, get this.

The chairwoman of the Democrat National Committee is Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz. She called Marco Rubio a prune wrapped in tinsel today in an attempt to rebut the idea that he makes a fresh contrast with Hillary Clinton. Now, when you’ve got Hillary involved in the equation and she’s not the prune, then somebody’s perspective is off.

This is the thing that the Democrats fear the most, if you ask me. What the Democrats are trying to pull off here — and you’re gonna hear this in the sound bites coming up here in uno momento. The Democrats are trying to replicate what they’ve done with Obama, first African-American president, historic, and therefore above and beyond criticism. You can’t criticize the first black. Why? Well, we feel sorry for him in the first place. They’ve been so mistreated and maligned as the original minority in America — and the left does. The more I think about this, the more convinced — all I need to see is your average, ordinary media person coming to the defense of an African-American, and I know I’m looking at somebody who really does look at them and see incompetence.

They see people who need help. They see people who can’t do things on their own. And as good liberals, they are the ones that can come along and provide the needed boost for little minorities, and not just racial, by the way, minorities that cannot do it on their own because the decks are so stacked against them, and I really believe that it’s the soft bigotry of low expectations that the left throws on all of the minority groups that support them that informs and inspires their treatment of them.

They feel sorry for them. They really think that they are incapable of success on their own, need help, need a boost, what have you. So here comes Obama, first African-American president, and he is immune to any criticism for that, because it’s built in. Any criticism they’re gonna accuse of originating in racism, they’re gonna charge any critic with being a racist, which is supposed to silence all the critics. They’re supposed to say criticism is invalid anyway because minorities have been so beaten down for so long in this country that we need to cut ’em some slack. They’re allowed to make mistakes. They’re allowed to be wrong about things simply because they’ve been so discriminated against. So it’s kind of a double whammy.

Now, they’ve seen how successful this has been in silencing opposition to Obama, at the elected Republican level. Elected Republicans are scared to death of the media, scared of the racist tag, they’ve basically shut up and have avoided any substantive or otherwise criticism of Obama. There are exceptions, of course. And Democrats are trying to replicate that whole thing with Hillary. That’s why I said last week the gender wars have begun. We’re now moving on from race wars sponsored by the Democrat now to gender wars and a revival of the War on Women and they want to pull off the same thing.

Mrs. Clinton, above and beyond and immune to criticism because any such criticism is unreal. It’s only rooted in sexism and hate. But then along comes Ted Cruz and along comes Marco Rubio, and both of them are Hispanic. That means they are minorities as well. And they are young. Side-by-side comparison, they are young, they are energetic. They have not been on the public scene for 25 years. They’re not buying support. They’re not faking Twitter followers. They’re not manufacturing anything. They’re just going out, letting it all fly, and they’re being who they are and letting the chips fall as they do. And the contrast is striking.

So here comes Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz with talking points for the media in which she says that Marco Rubio looks like a prune compared with Hillary Clinton. (laughing) My manners and class and dignity cause me to exercise great restraint here. But if you want to talk about — if you’ve got two people pictured side by side and one of them is a prune and it isn’t Hillary, ha, I’d say your perspective and your eyesight are off. Young, handsome, articulate, Marco Rubio, a prune? (laughing)

So let’s go to sound bite 24. We have this afternoon on CNN Wolf Blitzer speaking with the chief political analyst there, Gloria Borger, and they’re worried. They’re worried about the Rubio side by side with Hillary.

BLITZER: Does he risk, Marco Rubio, by suggesting Hillary Clinton may be too old or even Jeb Bush may be too old, does he risk alienating the people who actually go out there and vote in the biggest numbers, which are older Americans?

BORGER: There is no evidence that younger voters would not vote for somebody who’s older. Also one thing you have to consider with Hillary Clinton is that she’s a woman, and there are lots of younger voters who are attracted to the gender issue and think, okay, it’s time for a woman, so I don’t really care how old she is. She’s the most famous woman in the world, one might argue, and I care about her ideas, so who cares about her age.

RUSH: Now, I hear that a little differently. Some of you might be saying that they’re actually ripping Rubio and praising Hillary. Look at what they’re having to assume here. First off, Wolf Blitzer, “Does Rubio run the risk of alienating the people who actually go out there and vote in the biggest numbers, older Americans?” When is the last time Wolf Blitzer of CNN cared about older voters? They’re always focused on the youth vote, aren’t they? Now all of a sudden they’re trying to prop themselves up. They’re trying to talk themselves into feeling good about Hillary ’cause Rubio might have insulted older voters, oh, yeah, and he needs those older voters.

They’re hoping that Rubio screwed up because what they know is, side by side, there’s no comparison. And then Borger has to chime in, “Hey, Wolf, you know, there isn’t any evidence that younger voters wouldn’t vote for somebody who’s older.” Yes, the hell there isn’t. Have you ever heard the movie Logan’s Run? The hell there isn’t. This is what every aging candidate fears, is what the youth vote’s gonna do. But to Gloria Borger, “Oh, we don’t have any evidence of that, no, no, no, and Hillary’s such a big star, she’s the most famous woman in the world.” I’d say that’s Monica Lewinsky, but it’s a toss-up, take your pick.

Still, they’re having to talk themselves into this. Clearly they’re worried about it. Let’s move to Ron Fournier, Special Report with Bret Baier last night, fill-in host, Shannon Bream, said, “There were some people that thought that Hillary, by making her announcement yesterday, might steal some of Rubio’s thunder. But it sounds like she actually gave him a little bit of ammunition, because he used it to go after her directly, linking her to yesterday and saying point-blank that yesterday is over.”

FOURNIER: The Clinton campaign’s really worried about him, they really are, and I think Hillary gave him an advantage. So every time he said yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, past, past, past, he might as well said Clinton, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Bush, this was a not too subtle hit at Jeb Bush as well. I do agree was very Clintonesque, very aspirational, very forward looking.

RUSH: Clintonesque? So anybody good at politics is Clintonesque. So Rubio was Clintonesque. They’re right about this, though. Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, no question was that a reference to Clinton, maybe to Jeb Bush, too, but clearly a reference to Clinton. I think these guys got it wrong. I don’t think that Hillary going first helped herself at all. Hillary going first with this so-called Twitter rollout, and we now know that over half of her Twitter followers don’t even exist. She’s buying, with taxpayer money, by the way, when she was secretary of state, she bought all these Facebook likes, she bought ’em, 38 bucks a like is the going price is what we’ve been told she paid.

So Rubio goes out, does a traditional announcement, but at an odd time. He goes out around six p.m., and the Drive-Bys criticized that. “That’s not how it’s done. This proves he doesn’t know what he’s doing. This proves his youth and inexperience. You don’t announce at six o’clock.” And then they said, “Wait, wait a minute. He announced at six; that means he’s guaranteed to dominate Fox all night. Aw, damn.” So they start criticizing that, because he wanted to dominate Fox. If you ask me, it’s rather smart. After all, he’s first got to win the Republican primary. Fox News is where the majority of Republicans voters happen to get their news. They don’t watch CNN or MSNBC. Nobody else is, either.

So it’s quite smart for Rubio to make his announcement so that he would dominate the nighttime news cycle and discussion topics on Fox News. And, by the way, he also did on CNN and PMSNBC, which the Drive-Bys conveniently ignored. Here’s Mark Halperin. Now, this is last night on Bloomberg, their show All Due Respect, and he’s talking to John Heilemann, the cohost of the show, who says, “The interesting thing about him here, people now forget because we talk about him so much as an establishment candidate, but he was a Tea Party guy originally. That actually gives him some type of power. You think of him against Bush all the time, but he’s really actually more in the Scott Walker mold. He can straddle both of them in a way that Bush is a straight establishment candidate.”

HALPERIN: If you held Bill Clinton down and pumped him with truth serum, he would tell you that besides Bush, the candidate right now who they think is the most dangerous for Hillary Clinton is Marco Rubio.

RUSH: Okay. So here we have Mark Halperin and Ron Fournier both saying that if you get truth serum in ’em, that Rubio is who the Clintons fear the most. Up next, The Forehead, last night on Anderson Cooper 97 said, “Rubio’s been compared to Obama back in 2007, young, first-term senator, not a lot of experience, great speaker, but at this time eight years ago, Obama held 26% in early voting, Rubio is at 6%. Forehead, do you think he’s got a real shot here?”

BEGALA: I do. I really do. This guy’s got a lot of talent. He has a really compelling personal story, as does Barack Obama. It’s an all-American story. His bilingual, he’s from the closest state in the last presidential election, Florida, which Barack Obama only won by less than 1%. I wouldn’t count him out at all. I mean, I think he’s got a ton of talent. Let’s see if he can develop that talent and actually perform now that he’s on the track.

RUSH: Well, well, well, now, what are we to make of this? Are they telling us the truth? Are they really more worried about Rubio than anybody else? I’ve never heard The Forehead as respectful of any Republican candidate as he was there with Rubio. I mean, Ted Cruz is another Hispanic, but you wouldn’t have The Forehead or anybody else getting anywhere near praising him the way they just did Rubio. I know what some of you Tea Party people are saying. I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking they like him because he was for amnesty originally and they think he still is. And the establishment likes Rubio because he really made it clear he was one of them. He first came out, gets elected to the Senate and immediately jumps on this — they used him, in fact, the establishment corralled him into supporting amnesty, as a means of trying to quell the Tea Party, and you think that he fell for it. You’re thinking The Forehead and the rest of these guys look at Rubio as more of an establishment type in truth, that may be one of your fears, but is The Forehead, are these guys being truthful, or are they trying to head fake everybody?

In other words, do they really think that Rubio would be the easiest of all these people to beat and so they’re gonna pump him up? (interruption) You doubt that? Now, one thing that we know, one thing that I think has been proven, they will always tell us who they fear most. Not in so many words you can tell by who they attack or who they try to destroy. Now, in this case, they’re not trying to destroy Rubio, at least not openly. So you don’t think that this is a setup? You don’t think that they actually think beating Rubio would be easy because they know he’s lost Tea Party support and they know how important that is.

They know he’s lost Tea Party support, so let’s go out and let’s praise him to the hilt, let’s get him nominated because ’cause that’s the easiest guy in this bunch we can — they don’t want to face Jeb, so let’s go out and let’s get these guys to get Rubio nominated ’cause that’s who we think — (interruption) You think they’re really afraid of him? You think Forehead is being truthful there? (interruption) You do? All right, well, we’ll throw it to the crowd and see what you think.