RUSH: Lanny Davis was Mr. White House during the Clinton years. Lanny Davis is Mr. Democrat. I mean, you couldn’t have a more loyal Democrat, a more loyal foot soldier than Lanny Davis. I’ll tell you, if any Democrat ever got in trouble, there is nobody better they could hire to have them being defended by on television than Lanny Davis. Lanny Davis kept Clinton in office. The truth can be told. Lanny Davis was indefatigable. Lanny Davis was omnipresent all during the Lewinsky scandal.

Lanny Davis did everything he could, and he did it aboveboard. He didn’t do the sex stuff. They sent Carville out to try to characterize Ken Starr as a sex pervert. Lanny Davis didn’t touch that very often, if at all. Lanny Davis. If you ever get in trouble and you’re a Democrat, you want him on your side. By the same token, you don’t want Lanny Davis not on your side, and that might be happening. Lanny Davis was on some obscure radio show on Friday.

And whoever was hosting this show said, “Republicans are smiling from ear to ear, saying that President Clinton received the Cory Booker treatment. Then we get out of the New York Post this morning word that a senior administration official, some of the folks in the campaign headquarters of Chicago, are saying, ‘Cory Booker’s dead to us.’ That’s a quote they’re attributing to the Obama campaign because he had a moment of honesty on the Meet the Press one Sunday, defending Bain Capital, defending private equity and saying how he hated politics descending to this depth. “

And this was Lanny Davis’ reply…

DAVIS: You have vicious people who are working for the president — not the president — who are saying that Cory Booker, one of the great supporters of President Obama’s policies, is, quote, “dead.” Because he’s giving the president good advice. Disagreeing with the Kool-Aid-drinking people in the campaign who think the way to win the presidency is to trash the other guy, rather than to defend your own guy’s record.

RUSH: “Vicious people.” Lanny Davis says, “Vicious people” are working for the president. It’s not the president, he said. Okay, we’ll let him have that, but you and I both know that people in the campaign are simply reflections of Obama. You don’t have accidents get hired. You don’t have people off the wall get hired by the campaign. They’re vetted. They’re saying things Obama wants said. Obama’s out there ripping Bain Capital, he’s ripping private equity, and he’s having everybody else doing it, too.

And here’s Lanny Davis, Mr. Democrat, talking about how vicious it is. So you’ve got Lanny Davis going off on Obama aides. I’m gonna tell you, folks… Before I do, Ralph Nader. “Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader told The Daily Caller that former President Bill Clinton is ‘undermining (President Barack) Obama’ to lay the ‘groundwork’ for Hillary ClintonÂ’s presidential run in 2016. Clinton recently told CNN that Republican candidate Mitt RomneyÂ’s business record at Bain Capital is ‘sterling.'”

Clinton said people that do that kind of work are good people. We don’t need to be criticizing them. He defended and practically endorsed Romney, if you recall. So Ralph Nader says, “HeÂ’s laying down the groundwork for Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016. Everything she is doing and everything he is doing argues that they want to run Hillary Clinton for president in 2016…” Yeah, well, here’s what’s not being said: They want to run Hillary against Romney.

Because, folks, we have known — you and I have known — for the longest time that the Hillary campaign was underway. That’s what this is. When Bill Clinton’s out there ripping into Obama and defending Romney, that’s the Hillary campaign. Now, where I think a lot of people made a mistake was that they assumed this was for 2012. A lot of people assumed that what was really on the agenda here was trying to get rid of Obama at the convention to put Hillary in there. A lot of people in the Democrat Party, as you know, are not happy with Obama. The unions feel slighted.

The economy’s in the toilet and we’re about to get flushed.

There’s no end in sight to this.

Obama’s losing his popularity, likability, and all this. He’s not holding together. The worst week Obama has had in 3-1/2 years was last week, ostensibly. So everybody assumed that what Bill was doing was trying to set Hillary up for this year. But I think that with Lanny Davis out there talking about how “vicious” the Obama people are… And Ralph Nader gives me a little hint here. I think what they’re setting up is Hillary in 2016. And I think that they’ve made a calculation that Hillary has a better shot against an incumbent Romney than against whoever a reelected Obama would choose as his heir apparent.

And it wouldn’t be Biden.

So I stand by what I said last week. I think Clinton was endorsing Romney. I know he’s walked it all back now. I know he’s been taken to the woodshed. I know he went on CNN and he apologized and all that, but it doesn’t matter. It’s like saying something in court that you shouldn’t say, you’re objected to, and the judge tells the jury, “Forget what you just heard.” They never forget it. It’s on the record. It’s in there. It may be taken off the record, but the jurors heard it. Well, everybody heard Clinton’s endorsement of Romney. Everybody heard his defense of Romney.

I think what’s going on, they’re setting Hillary up for 2016. We know the Clintons want back in there bad. It’s an unfinished bunch of business, Hillary’s turn in the White House. It was gonna be hers in ’08. We all know what happened. But they’re not angling for 2012. They’re angling 2016 against Romney. Lanny Davis is a Clintonite. Lanny Davis is now talking about the vicious people in the Obama campaign who are being critical rather than defensive of their own record and so forth. So we’ll see. Time will tell. But I think I’m right about this.