Thursday, May 8, 2008

Operation Chaos Shows Rush Limbaugh's Cynical View of Democracy

One needs to remember that Rush Limbaugh likes others to think he is a kingmaker and a player in national politics, but when pressed on that, he will fall back that he is just an entertainer, really.

So, there is Operation Chaos, his plan to encourage Republicans to crossover and vote for Hillary Clinton to beat "Barack Obama up." According to news reports, now Limbaugh has called it off because he thinks Sen. Obama is the weaker candidate anyway. (And there won't be any more evidence to see if he can influence an election or not).

While I think his influence was probably nil in Indiana, there is some evidence to suggest Operation Chaos was influential, the best evidence was anecdotal, however, what about the other races, the races that were really undermined by Republican "dittoheads" following Limbaugh's suggestion?

How about Republican challenge to Dan Burton in the 5th Indiana CD? If a Republican is going to cross over to try to create "chaos" in the Democratic Primary, what does that leave the Republican primaries? McGoff, Burton's challenger, attributed Republican crossover to his defeat. "McGoff says the Republican crossover vote was probably the biggest factor in his loss.

Even Burton thought the crossover voting hurt him, he even attributed the narrower margin to Operation Chaos:
"I think the crossover vote today hurt us quite a bit. The conservatives that Rush Limbaugh asked to vote in the Democratic primary, they did, and an awful lot of those conservatives were my voters, I believe, and it cost us several points," Burton said.


I don't know anything about McGoff, but I suspect that Burton is likely more conservative, so wouldn't it have been ironic if Operation Chaos costs "real conservatives" an election? How many might this have affected? How many might have lost their election bids due to that crossover margin?

Limbaugh doesn't care a wit about local races, only the national stuff, but to suggest to crossover to craete chaos for Democrats means to abdicate one's support for local pols, conservative or otherwise.

Rush Limbaugh demonstrates what he really has, which is contempt for the democratic process. I also bet he laughs at his dittoheads who followed such a corruption of what voting is all about.

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