Limbaugh: Up to something?
(AP Photo/Jennifer Graylock)
Rush Limbaugh: Clinton’s secret weapon?
What happened
Fox News credited Rush Limbaugh with encourging enough Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton to give her a narrow victory in Indiana’s Tuesday Democratic presidential primary. Exit polls indicated that Clinton beat Obama among Republicans who voted in the open primary by 52 percent to 46 percent. Under what Limbaugh called “Operation Chaos,” the conservative radio host has encouraged fans to vote for Clinton to make the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination as long and nasty as possible, to help presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in November. (Los Angeles Times’ Top of the Ticket blog)
What the commentators said
Obama certainly believes in the “Limbaugh effect,” said Michelle Dubert in Rolling Stone online. His campaign fired off two memos immediately after the voting ended, and Obama supporter Sen. John Kerry accused Limbaugh of ““tampering with the primary.” The math “is a tough nut to crack, as no hard and fast evidence exists to prove how many Republicans came out for Hillary simply because El Rushbo said so.” But Clinton’s margin of victory in Indiana was razor thin, so, who knows?
It’s silly to deny that Limbaugh has influenced this race, said Kathryn Jean Lopez in National Review Online. The goal of Operation Chaos was to “divide and conquer. Create chaos on the Left. Weaken the Democratic nominee. And so it has.” Just a few months ago California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and New York Times columnist David Brooks were declaring Limbaugh irrelevant. Well, who’s irrelevant now?
Limbaugh certainly thinks he’s running the show, said DeAnn Smith in the Kansas City Star’s Prime Buzz blog. He claims to be “gleeful about Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee,” but continues to push Clinton to keep up the fight because he wants to drive as big a rift as he can between her base of white, working-class voters to boost McCain’s chances in the general election. Limbaugh says it’s now up to McCain to “take advantage of the gift he's been given of a blooded and bruised Obama who is no longer the Messiah.”
