Operation Chaos: Rush the Vote
Talk radio superstar Rush Limbaugh occasionally breaks out of his insular bubble and gains mainstream media attention. Recently pundits have been discussing Limbaugh’s latest effort, which he calls, “Operation Chaos: Rush the Vote“. Rush Limbaugh has been encouraging his Republican listeners (aka “dittoheads”) to vote for Hillary Clinton as a way to prolong the Democratic Party nomination process. The dittohead hope is that by keeping the Democratic contest going, the Democratic Party nominee will be damaged and the party will be further divided.
Cross-over voting is an interesting phenomenon and has been a political tactic for many years. It requires a bit a of sophistication in that people vote for someone they don’t want to be elected. I don’t fault people for promoting or engaging in this type of cross-over voting. People have the right to cast their vote any way they choose without providing reasons. One could argue that it’s “poor sportsmanship”, but I say “deal with it”.
Limbaugh argues, probably correctly, that Democratic voters helped John McCain win some primaries, especially in 2000.
Generally, this cross-over voting tactic has only marginal impact at best because relatively few voters actually vote this way. Operation Chaos may end up being the largest implementation of the tactic ever organized because Limbaugh has thousands of listeners in states still left to vote after McCain clinched the Republican nomination.
Today’s primaries in Indiana and North Carolina are probably the best test of Operation Chaos’ impact so far. My guess is that enough Republican voters will vote for Hillary Clinton to sway the contests by a few percentage points. Someone who is only an occasional dittohead might be confused because in the past they’ve been told to hate Hillary Clinton. Casual dittoheads might accidentally vote for Barack Obama. The vast majority of Republicans will not vote in the Democratic primaries.
Limbaugh goes beyond this call for “cross-over” voting. According to Wikipedia:
On March 27, 2008, Limbaugh said “The dream end of this [of Operation Chaos] 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 [of Operation Chaos].”
Hyperbole is the lifeblood of political talk radio and the Rush Limbaugh show especially. Obviously, sharing his wishes for violence is incredibly irresponsible to say the least. I don’t believe that Limbaugh actually believes most of the nonsense he projects. Unfortunately, probably some of his listeners take him literally and even agree with his most reprehensible proclamations.
Getting overly upset about Rush Limbaugh is like yelling at rain.
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