No wonder Hillary Clinton thinks Rush Limbaugh has a crush on her. If not for El Rushbo Hillary would probably have gotten up this morning as a former presidential candidate. Oh, she stands no chance of getting the nomination of course but her narrow win in Indiana last night left enough wind in her sails that ditching the vessel at this point would damage that image of being her being a "fighter" that she has tried so hard to develop and which she'll need as, no matter what happens this year, her eyes remain fixed on the prize.
And Operation Chaos, which the msm has sneered at and heckled has proven to be a huge success. Even the Obama campaign is acknowledging as much,
Barack Obama’s campaign issued an e-mail on Tuesday night that appeared to relegate Hillary Clinton’s lead in Indiana to efforts by Rush Limbaugh to wreak havoc in the Democratic presidential primary contest.
In an e-mail entitled “The Limbaugh Effect in Indiana = 7 percent,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton wrote: “According to the latest exit polling data, 17 percent of voters in the Indiana primary today said they would vote for John McCain in a Clinton/McCain match-up. Forty-one percent of that number is constituted by people who voted Clinton in the primary but also indicated they will vote for McCain in the general election. That comes out to just under 7 percent of the primary electorate the number that may be attributed to a Limbaugh Effect.”
Rush, of course spells out the true dimensions of Operation Chaos' impact best:
RUSH: Three times in the last 12 hours, maybe 18 hours, three times in the last 18 hours, the Obama campaign has said, most recently in a conference call with reporters about 20 minutes ago, that the only reason Mrs. Clinton won Indiana was because of me and Operation Chaos. They have the numbers to back it up. The Obama campaign putting out the number that Operation Chaos was responsible for 7%, she got a seven-point bump as a result of Operation Chaos. They made that point again today in a conference call. On that conference call, the haughty John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts who served in Vietnam, also made this point to the reporters on the Obama conference call.
KERRY: If it hadn't been for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, he likely would have won in Indiana, too. So you have -- really there's no masquerade now. Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary, and the GOP has clearly declared that they want Hillary Clinton as the candidate.
RUSH: Senator Kerry and those of you in the Obama campaign, first off, Operation Chaos has nothing to do with the Republican Party. The Republican Party hasn't the guts to do Operation Chaos. Were there no Operation Chaos, the Republican Party would not have a plan. But I am not affiliated with the Republican Party here, sir, and the rest of you in the Drive-By Media and in the Obama campaign, Operation Chaos had nothing to do and to this day has nothing to do with seeing to it that Hillary Clinton was the Democrat Party nominee. Operation Chaos began when it was a fait accompli that the nominee would be Obama. But because Senator McCain and the Republican Party refuse to enter this campaign and be critical of Obama because they're afraid of racial charges, it was up to somebody to bloody up Obama politically, and that had to be Clinton. Who else could it be? Operation Chaos thus was born to keep Mrs. Clinton in the race, and it worked. Obama has been bloodied, the superdelegates are refusing to talk to her today. They don't want to meet with her today, but she has an ace-in-the-hole, and that's the superdelegates in Florida and Michigan. Those delegations, she controls the committee that will determine the outcome of Florida and Michigan. So this is not over.
Could it have been more perfect? Had Obama won in a landslide, Operation Chaos would have been mocked by those who live to mock your host. But I had courage, and I took the great political risk, the career risk, knowing full well that if Operation Chaos could have been minimized in any way, it would have been, and once again the cycle would repeat and the Drive-Bys would once again claim this program irrelevant. Had Hillary won in a blowout in Indiana, Operation Chaos would have been relegated to a token split-screen debate: "Was or wasn't Operation Chaos a factor?" But this cliff hanger, this 2% margin, this 20,000 vote difference, there can be no doubt that the difference was indeed Operation Chaos. I'm watching last night the returns, and I receive an e-mail blast, the first of two that went out last night from the Obama campaign: Bill Burton blaming me and Operation Chaos. The first one around 7:50, I think, the next one came around 10:50, and that blast at 10:50 from the Obama campaign to all the political reporters covering this campaign, said, "Limbaugh has to be responsible for this." It was Republicans, and the exit polls show that 65% of conservative Republicans voted Hillary, 53% of Republicans voted Hillary. There can be no question here, despite the Drive-Bys' attempt to downplay it, and there are some who are doing that. But that second blast went out about 10:50, and it established that as far as the Obama campaign is concerned, Operation Chaos was worth a seven-point bump to Mrs. Clinton.
In a year when Republicans have every reason to be demoralized, Operation Chaos has actually thrown real enthusiasm into conservative ranks by sewing discord among the Dems and allowing time and circumstances to start to reveal the Dems in ways that, if Obama had taken this race earlier, the msm would never have done.
And, needless to say the Left is not happy with the wildly successful Operation Chaos. From the Huffington Post:
How can you not love a guy who 's got enemies this vile? We all owe Rush a debt of gratitude...again.
Allahpundit at Hot Air also talks about OC
Ed Driscoll also gets Chaotic
No comments:
Post a Comment