Limbotomized Crossover Voters and Operation Chaos

[TexasObserver]

"Limbotomized" is my term for the Rush Limbaugh dittoheads who are following his urging and crossing over to vote for Hillary in the Democratic primaries, under the theory that want and need to run against her.

His campaign, which he calls Operation Chaos, is getting heavy play by all the news channels. Last night many times each channel came back to it, and this morning similar discussions have occurred. This part of the Indiana election has legs.

The reality appears to be that Hillary's margin of victory in Indiana was the huge number of crossover Limbotomies who voted for Hillary, with no intention of voting for her in the fall.

Do you agree that Rush Limbaugh is impacting the Democratic nominating process?

Do you think the superdelegates should consider this fact when evaluating Hillary's "wins?"

[Jennifer C]

1. I heard they made up around 2%

that voted for Clinton.

[TexasObserver]

3. I heard they made up 7%, which would be 14 of Hillary's 51 points

7% of all voters, but 14 of Hillary's 51 points

[Jennifer C]

7. Thanks

The superdelegates better take his impact into consideration.

[TexasObserver]

10. I heard a variety of numbers, but one commentator clearly said ...

... "based upon the exit polling, we think about 11% were crossovers, and 7 of those 11 points were Republicans who voted for Hillary, but reported they would not vote for her in the fall."

I think it was MSNBC, but cannot recall. I'm hoping to see something written on it today, and then I can bring those numbers in.

When it happened in Texas, we felt pretty sure about 5% of the Democratic vote was Limbaugh Republicans, and they were voting heavily for Hillary in rural areas.

[TexasObserver]

18. Here's what ABC News wrote about it.

I just read this in another thread here.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/05/is-limbaughs-op.html

[LTR]

30. People who give so much credit to "Operation Chaos" are being too generous

Limbaugh's listening audience is roughly 5-7% of the population. I would assume most are casual listeners. Of the die-hards, does anyone, particularly him, really think more than even 10-20% of his listeners will get up off their dead asses, take time away from work, family and "American Idol" to go all the way down to the polling place, stand in line and vote for a Democrat??? I don't think so.

Operation Chaos is overrated. Aside from a few FlavorAid-sipping nimrods who have anointed Fats Lowbrow as their own personal deity, most people don't really give a flying fuck.

[Boz]

5. Up to 7%, Republicans that said they wouldn't vote for her in GE, but voted in the Primary was 12%

That results in 7% of the aggregate

[ingac70]

2. He had enough impact in IN for Hill to eke out a win...

same in TX... I think Hill still woulda won Ohio, but I'm willing to bet at least a 3-5percent of the vote for her there was dittoheads.

The SD's should definitely take Rush and his followers into consideration. The silly bastards have openly admitted to doing it even where it is punishable by law.

[qanda]

4. Isn't this election fraud or tampering with an election

Shouldn't the feds be investigating.

[TexasObserver]

6. They should be, but they won't. They love it, too.

This was a very important part of the GOP getting everyone to drop out early for McCain. They can foul our nominating process, try to get the easiest opponent to defeat, and cause us to have these "wins" for a losing candidate who would not have won ten states with these R crossovers.

[kevinbgoode]

8. Several years ago, I crossed over in a primary

to help get rid of a rabidly, right wing conservative Republican crazy-ass state representative, and voted for her far more moderate Republican opponent - who won! There were quite a few cross-over votes in that contest - it was a heavily Republican district that always elected a Republican (which is how her sorry-ass got into the state legislature anyway). I gave up voting in the Democratic presidential primary that year (Clinton's first run) just to help get her out.

[qanda]

11. But, I wonder if it was a concerted effort

Did you have a national figure telling you to disrupt a local election? Just wondering.

[TexasObserver]

13. yes, this is an official campaign getting a lot of air time

It's not just Limbaugh. It's Hannity and others fanning those flames of sabotage.

[TexasObserver]

12. you were wise to stick with voting in only one primary

That's a sticky wicket some people don't realize, and it gets them in trouble. In Texas, we had a number of Limbotomies who voted in the Democratic primary to vote for Hillary, then found out they couldn't vote in the Republican primary for other office races. They got mad when they realized they had been stamped for the Democratic primary.

[kevinbgoode]

14. That's the good part, in my opinion

Because the crazy wingnuts, urged on by their hatred of all things Democrat, don't realize they gave up their chance to vote for wingnut crazies running for the state and local offices in the Republican primaries - which hopefully opened the door for more moderates.

[Mist]

15. Well, they learned their lesson the hard way--gave up voting an entire slate

to cast a vote based on what the wart-butt told them to do. Maybe this will reduce the number of
other cross-over Repubs re: voting for HRC.

[TexasObserver]

27. some were outraged when they got the DEMOCRATIC stamp

[LTR]

31. The lesser of two evils

Gotta do what you gotta do.

I probably would have done the same.

[kevinmc]

9. Now if Hillary could get them to donate.... Limbaugh missed that part of the plan. n/t

[TexasObserver]

16. Up to date entry at Wikipedia on Operation Chaos

In late February 2008, Limbaugh announced "Operation Chaos", a political call to action with the initial plan to have voters of the Republican Party temporarily cross over to vote in the Democratic primary and vote for Hillary Clinton, who at the time was in the midst of losing 11 straight primary contests to Barack Obama. The previous month, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos suggested a similar idea to have Democrats cross over to vote for Mitt Romney in Michigan in order to lengthen the Republican primary, in which Mike Huckabee and eventual presumptive nominee John McCain were seen by Moulitsas as being in the lead.<11> Limbaugh has also cited the open primary process in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, which allowed independent voters to cross over into the Republican primaries to choose John McCain over more conservative candidates (such as Fred Thompson), as an inspiration.

At the point in which Limbaugh announced his gambit, Obama had seemed on the verge of clinching the Democratic nomination.<12> However, Clinton subsequently won the Ohio primary and the Texas primary (while losing the Texas caucus and the overall delegate split) with large pluralities from rural counties; thus reemerging as a competitive opponent in the race.<13> Statistics released by the state of Texas show Hillary Clinton won the primary due to a large number of Republicans crossing over to vote for her. Over 150,000 Republicans voted for her which is more than her margin of victory of Senator Obama. Whether those voters were Operation Chaos Operatives or simply Republicans who like Hillary is impossible to tell.

On March 27, 2008, Limbaugh said "The dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention, and that we have a recreation of Chicago 1968 with burning cars, protests, fire, and literal riots and all of that, that is the objective here ." Since then much progress has been made as he has stated multiple times on the air. Hillary Clinton now legitimately has a chance to win the nomination. His goal is to also make the two use up money and "mud sling" each other.<14>

On April 29, 2008 Limbaugh declared an "operational pause" in Operation Chaos, saying that Obama's defeat in the 2008 Pennsylvania primary and fallout from statements from Obama ally Reverend Jeremiah Wright could have damaged his campaign to the extent superdelegates would shift to Clinton's side.<15> Determining Obama had weathered that storm, Limbaugh lifted the pause the next day and renewed his call for his listeners to vote for Clinton in the upcoming Indiana and North Carolina primaries.<16> Obama won the North Carolina primary but was narrowly defeated in Indiana, where Clinton won decisively in rural counties that normally vote Republican in presidential elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rush_Limbaugh_Show#Operation_Chaos

[colonel odis]

17. of course, another way of looking at Operation Chaos is that it's their way

of justifying the fact that republicans are crossing over in huge numbers.

sort of like the fat kid on the playground who slips on a banana peel and says "i meant to do that."

[raebrek]

19. I hope you are right and that limp balls is not.

I prefer to think it was not collusion by the re-pugs.

Raebrek.

[colonel odis]

28. it's like in Polgergeist. "run to the light, carol ann!"

[TexasObserver]

20. that's a theory, but the reality is they're really coming over

Ask any of the Texas precinct chairs, like voiceofreason or crispini. They saw it, GOP voters coming in to vote for Hillary.

Read the online reports of the number of crossovers who say they will not vote for Hillary in the fall, but are voting for her in the primary.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/05/is-limbaughs-op.html

[seabeyond]

21. geez, even a handful during working day for hubby told him what they were doing

and had such a laugh over it. these are the people that preach morality and integrity. just weird

[TexasObserver]

23. Tell me about it! In my community, there are many such church goers who gleefully crossed over.

And they do not take their promise to support the party nominee seriously, of course. But their butt is in that pew on Sunday morning, full of ... righteousness?!

[TheCowsCameHome]

25. And the fact they don't want the guy their party chose

They have nothing good to say about him - they've already lost - the didn't get Reagan II.

[frickaline]

22. I think this effect does exist but its pretty minor

I'd like to think that most people vote their mind and not someone else's. Just because a usual republican crosses over doesn't mean they do so for 'Limbotomized' reasons. If you wish to discount these voters, would you not have to throw out any Dem vote made by typical Republican voters?

From what I've read there have been plenty of cases where Republicans have voted for Obama for various reasons, many of them still intending to vote McCain in the GE. Also there have been cases of Hillary voting Republicans that didn't vote for any Rush related reasons.

Plus, not every state is going to allow this to the extent that Indiana did, making the overall impact on nationwide totals pretty minor.

Personally, I'd be more concerned over the mandatory state issued ID law there since that not only impacted this race but it is also going to impact the GE.

[TheCowsCameHome]

24. When Gramps gets his ass kicked in Nov., it won't matter

how much GasBag has stirred the pot, eExcept his followers will be out to tar and feather him for getting the Dem vote out.

He's screwed himself this time.

[mrgorth]

26. I contacted the FEC about this

The whole thing makes me nauseas. It's one thing for individual citizens to do it on their own. It's another for a national figure to attempt to distort an election. The FEC sent me back some bullshit excuse. No way they ever do anything to him.

[MonkeyFunk]

29. Didn't Kos promote the same thing

to get dems to vote for Romney in michigan?

Sorry, it's not against the law to urge people to vote a certain way.