Rather than hijack this thread about Rush and Ted Kennedy, I wanted to start a new one. Have you heard about Operation Chaos? Of course you have. Every news team has covered it, but does it really do more than get voters out to vote? Does it do more than promote the EIB network?
I really can’t see anyone who wasn’t planning to vote going out to cross party lines to vote for a Democrat. Yes there may be a few who do, but I sincerely believe that they would have voted for the stronger Republican candidate regardless of who that would have been.
In short, Rush will claim victory whatever happens if his ratings increase, and they will if the race is close.
Finally, on a hijack of my own OP, what is wrong with a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat? Didn’t the US survive that before?
In this part of Pa. there has been a mass defection from the GOP. This an area where there might be 1 Dem for every 1,000 Pubs. Conversation with the locals indicates large dissatisfaction with Iraq policy and economic outlook but no Donkey cut and run en masse.They won’t vote for Obama.
So Mr. Limbaugh will claim success, though the party leadership had the idea before he did AFAICT.
As for your hijack, I prefer moderates but anyone willing to compromise with the other party cannot be the true spokesperson for their own. Just ask J.McCain.
I know several Republicans here in Indiana who crossed party lines to vote for Clinton. (Quick total off the top of my head-- at least four of them.)
Since the GOP already had settled on McCain by the time of our primary day, they felt no need to vote for their party, and they voted for Clinton because they felt her to be the weaker candidate and to help prolong the Democrat’s process, which they believe is weakening Democrat support across the board. They didn’t do it because of Rush, at least directly, but as a strategy espoused locally in their Southern Baptist church.
Now, whether this is effective, I’m not sure. Even at that late date, I’d heard similar ideas from other Republicans who believe Obama is the candidate more likely to lose against McCain. It’d be kind of funny if the “Chaos” votes were cancelling themselves out-- did Rush request participants vote specifically for one candidate or the other?
Once McCain clinched the Republican nomination, Republicans had no further reason to vote in their own primaries. Before that, there’s no way Operation Chaos would have made a bit of difference, because people would have more incentive to get the candidate they want elected than sabotage the opposition.
I think since McCain clinched the nomination, Operation Chaos has been quite successful. Rush told his supporters to vote for Hillary, and there’s strong evidence that a whole lot of them did in places where it might have mattered most - Texas and Pennsylvania.
Isn’t another measure of success keeping HRC in the race and keeping the Democrats fighting rather than rallying around a single candidate?
That is, is the protracted primary debacle detrimental to the Democratic candidates/party? (Isn’t that an entire thread?) Did enough OCers participate in the primaries to make a statistically significant difference? If so, was that statistical difference enough to keep her in the race?
That may be true in Texas, where anyone can vote in any primary, but it’s not so easy in Pennsylvania.
Texas does not require voters to declare a party affiliation; PA does. Voters must declare a party when registering to vote, and when a voter wants to vote in another primary, he must re-register. There is no online option to do so, so the voter must fill out a paper form then mail or bring it back to the county elections office by the set deadline, which in the case of this year’s primary was March 24th. It’s not a major hassle, but it is a hassle, and most people don’t go through that to maintain the status quo.
In any event, Clinton was supposed to blow Obama out of the water in PA and he managed to keep it to 10 points, including winning Ed Rendell’s Philadelphia.
Lots and lots of people changed party affiliations to vote in the dem primary in Pennsylvania, and a whole lot more of those voted for Hillary than polls suggested or anyone predicted. I think it’s safe to say a significant number of those party-changers registered Democrat to try to sabotage the election there.
Yes, but that’s a two-edged sword. So long as it goes on, McCain gets relatively little attention. The Obama-Clinton fight comes to look like the real fight, with the November election a mere formality or sideshow, Dem victory a foregone conclusion.
Did it happen? Sure. Did enough Limbaugh Republicans vote to make even a 1% shift? Erm… maybe, although I kind of doubt it.
However, the only state where it might have made a difference was in Texas, but with the final results of 51-47, I really doubt there was a 4%+ Operation Chaos shift. As for the other states, Ohio wasn’t close. Pennsylvania wasn’t close. Republican “sabotage” voting or not, the results would have been the same in terms of Clinton staying in the race. Indiana was a squeaker and I could accept that, without Operation Chaos, Indiana might have been a tiny Obama win but it didn’t make any difference. A tiny Obama win in Indiana wouldn’t have made changed the game any more than the tiny Obama loss did. Clinton would have still stayed in for W. Virginia & Kentucky. Her campaign would have been declared dead by the media either way.
So I’m sure some Limbaugh listeners did it but it didn’t affect the actual Democratic primary race at all. Made for good ratings and ego-stroking exercise for Rush though, I’m sure.
What? The Real Clear Politics site for the PA primary shows a Clinton win by as much as 13 points immediately before the primary, and polls before that had her winning by larger margins than what she eventually got; everyone in PA was surprised that Obama had done as well as he had.
Having survived the Democratic primary with its saturation advertising, constant discussion and stumping by national-level officials, I think it’s safe to say that Rush’s influence, if he had one, was minimal. Chalk it up to the usual frantic campaigning that happens in large, delegate-rich states.
Once again, methinks that the fat gasbag has an inflated view od his own self-importance. And this story does nothing to diminish the idea that his listeners are nothing more than unthinking sheep. I sincerely hope that he doesn’t encourage them to committ suicide if Obama wins in November, because quite a few will no doubt do as he says.