Limbaugh tactic skewed results, Obama aides say
Posted on Friday, May 9, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/225150/
Barack Obama’s aides say his campaign would have had an even stronger showing Tuesday were it not for meddling by an unlikely booster of Hillary Rodham Clinton: the conservative radio host and longtime Clinton family nemesis Rush Limbaugh.
The impact of Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” emerged as an intriguing point of debate, particularly in Indiana, where registered voters could participate in either party’s primary, and where Clinton won by a mere 14, 000 votes out of 1. 28 million cast. As he had before in several recent primaries, Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Clinton to “bloody up Obama politically” and prolong the Democratic fight.
Limbaugh crowed about the success of his ploy all day Tuesday, featuring on-air testimonials from voters in Indiana and North Carolina who recounted their illicit pleasure in casting a vote for Clinton. “Some of the people show up and they ask for a Democrat ballot, and the poll worker says, ‘Why, what are you going to do ?’ He says, ‘Operation Chaos,’ and they just laugh,” Limbaugh said Tuesday.
Calling off the operation Wednesday, Limbaugh said he wants Obama to be the party’s pick because “I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees.”
He added, “He can get effete snobs, he can get wealthy academics, he can get the young, and he can get the black vote, but Democrats do not win with that.”
The Obama campaign and many of its supporters condemned Limbaugh’s tactic, which they called a major factor in Clinton’s narrow victory in Indiana.
“Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary, and the GOP has clearly declared that it wants Hillary Clinton as the candidate,” Sen. John Kerry, DMass, an Obama supporter, told reporters on a conference call. On the same call Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Limbaugh “had a clear factor in the outcome.”
In Indiana 10 percent of Democratic primary voters described themselves as Republicans, a higher rate than in any state but Mississippi, and they went for Clinton by 8 percentage points, according to exit polls.
But Clinton’s edge among Indiana Republicans was relatively small if set against the broader racial divisions in the contest. Her 8-point advantage among Indiana Republicans, nearly all of whom are white, was much narrower than among white Democrats, whom she won by a nearly 2-1 ratio.
Edward Carmines, a political scientist at Indiana University, said that he concluded from the data that while Operation Chaos “existed to some extent, I don’t think it was a major factor.”