Free Republic

Limbaugh: 'My impact will increase' Jonathan Martin 55 minutes ago Conservatives are despondent, liberals are as enthused about a presidential candidate as they've been in 40 years, and the candidate he has long loathed won the Republican nomination. But never mind the pervasive sense of GOP malaise: Entering his 20th year on the national airwaves, Rush Limbaugh is having a dandy 2008 cycle. Regardless of how many votes Limbaugh actually pushed into Hillary Rodham Clinton's column with his mischief-making "Operation Chaos" plan to encourage his listeners to keep the Democratic primary going, the endeavor was a success in another important...

Barack Obama's aides charged Wednesday that their candidate would have done even better Tuesday were it not for meddling by an unlikely booster of Hillary Rodham Clinton: longtime Clinton family nemesis Rush Limbaugh. The impact of the popular conservative radio commentator'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. As he had before 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...

Robert Novak May 10, 2008 -- CLOSE-in supporters of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign are convinced he never will offer the vice-presidential nomination to Sen. Hillary Clinton for one overriding reason: Michelle Obama. Obama's wife didn't comment on other rival candidates, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. Obama sources say those public utterances don't reveal the extent of her hostility.

"MOOREFIELD, W.VA. -- In Hardy County, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2 to 1. But there is little enthusiasm for Barack Obama in this mountainside enclave, a portent of trouble for the Illinois senator in next week's West Virginia primary and the general election beyond."

There is debatable evidence that right-wing radio and TV commentator Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" resulted in Sen. Hillary Clinton's narrow victory in Indiana's Democratic primary on Tuesday.Operation Chaos is Limbaugh's effort to encourage Republican voters to reregister as Democrats or cross over in primaries that permit it, like Indiana's. A vote for Clinton, in Limbaugh's master plan, assures an extended Democratic primary, weakening the eventual nominee.Of course, the egocentric bloviator is taking full credit for Clinton's win by only 14,000 votes in the Hoosier State. Limbaugh has a knack for taking credit for everything he promotes.Imagine if the Democrats were...

Friday, May 9, 2008 By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann OK, so Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is staying in the presidential race despite losing among elected delegates, facing a slimming lead among superdelegates, losing the popular vote and being behind by 2-to-1 in the number of states carried. She slogs on, hoping against hope for a sudden turnaround in the race. Apart from the psychological reasons for her stubbornness, is there a more subtle political calculation going on? Is she continuing her race so as to have a platform from which to continue to bash Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.,...

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Despite a weakening position in the Democratic presidential nomination race, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is very popular among Democrats in West Virginia, the location of next primary, a survey showed on Friday. The poll by TSG consulting showed Clinton lead 63-23 percent over rival Sen. Barrack Obama of Illinois in West Virginia, said the Charleston Gazette, a West Virginia newspaper. The telephone poll of 300 Democratic and independent voters had an error margin of plus or minus 6 percent. TSG president Tom Susman said if that vote held true on May 13,the primary...

National polling firm Rasmussen Reports announced on Friday that it will stop polling people about the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton because her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, will win the Democratic nomination. The company's vice president of finance and operations, Michael Boniello, distributed an e-mail stating that after 19 months of tracking the Democratic race, it is now clear that Clinton will remain a close second. The following is an excerpt from Boniello's e-mail: "The most remarkable feature of the race has been its consistency and stability. Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both running historic campaigns...

On Friday, the Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator shows Democrats leading in states with 200 Electoral Votes. The GOP has the advantage in states with 189. States with 111 Votes are “leaners,” and states with 38 Votes are Toss-Ups When “leaners” are added, the Democrats lead 260 to 240 (see summary of recent state-by-state results). A total of 270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the White House. Leaners are states that narrowly lean to one party or the other at this time but remain competitive. See a summary of recent polls and Rasmussen Market expectations for key states...

Never-before-seen video of "space aliens" - footage that will be revealed to the public in a few weeks - convinced Jeff Peckman that extraterrestrials exist. "These happen to be the little gray ones, about four feet tall," said Peckman, who is proposing the creation of an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver, believed to be the first of its kind. "You could see them blink as they looked in a window and panned a room," Peckman, 54, said. Peckman is sponsoring an initiative that would require the city to create an ET Commission... Among the curious who attended the hearing were...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, with talent on loan from G-d, at the cutting-edge of societal evolution, with half his brain tied behind his back — just to make it fair, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling,...

The mainstream media might try like hell to avoid mentioning the OBVIOUS effect of Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos on prolonging the Democrat primary but the HUffington Post HUffies sure know who to blame. Come to think of it, both John Kerry and the Obama campaign have credited Operation Chaos with giving Hillary her slim win in Indiana. Of course, some people like Pied Piper Pitt think an extended and bloody Democrat primary is a BLESSING but that observation can be chalked up to both grandstanding and an excess of Bukowski's brew. The HUffies themselves are somewhat more rational than...

HILLARY Clinton's campaign overnight predicted a rapid end to the Democratic White House race next month as the press read the last rites to her quest to be the first woman president. With more party elders drifting to Barack Obama's camp and the media declaring the nominating battle all but over, Senator Clinton aides battled back with appeals for voters to be heard and for new donors to come forward. Even as he vowed no surrender from the former first lady, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said party bosses known as "superdelegates" would coalesce behind a candidate once the final...

Even as Barack Obama's campaign celebrated Tuesday's primary results, aides charged yesterday that they would have had an even stronger showing were it not for meddling by an unlikely booster of Hillary Rodham Clinton: the popular 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. As he had before several recent primaries, Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Clinton to "bloody up Obama politically" and...

The question, my fellow election watchers, is not, "Why won't Hillary do the honorable thing and quit?" but "Why won't Democrats do the honorable thing and quit trying to force her to?" Did Democrats make Ted Kennedy quit when he fought Jimmy Carter through the Democratic convention in 1980 in an effort to dislodge pledged delegates though Carter had already secured a majority? That was far worse than anything Hillary is doing. Until one of the candidates secures the magic number of delegates (a majority) -- and that number is a moving target, given the limbo status of Florida and...

As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a last-minute trip to West Virginia and declared her intent to stay in the race, aides to Sen. Barack Obama signaled Wednesday that he would move towards a general election strategy over the next month. The contrasting game plans underscore the fundamental shift in the presidential campaign following Obama’s decisive victory Tuesday in North Carolina and narrow loss in Indiana. Obama has accumulated a lead in pledged delegates that is all but insurmountable – a point that Clinton campaign officials acknowledged Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. That pushes the campaign largely into...

She plods ahead now, only in the race because she won Indiana by the size of a Knicks crowd, and all Hillary Clinton has left is giving people another month of reasons not to vote for the black guy. She thinks she still has that going for her, along with the cockeyed notion that somebody who can loan herself more than $11 million to keep running for President is more of a working-class hero than Norma Rae. "We're pleased with our result in Indiana," one of her flacks says on a conference call Wednesday, even though nobody believes it. There...

He has publicly urged Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to keep the divisive Democratic nomination fight alive, but talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday he really wants Sen. Barack Obama to be the party's nominee. "I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees," Limbaugh, among the most powerful voices in conservative radio, said on his program. "I now urge the Democrat superdelegates to make your mind up and publicly go for Obama." "Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes Democrats need to win -- blue-collar, working-class people," Limbaugh said. "He can...

The tide turned against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Capitol Hill Wednesday, as even some of her supporters said she should consider ending her White House bid. Some uncommitted Democratic superdelegates refused to meet with the beleaguered candidate when her campaign approached them in the hope of wooing them. Reps. Brad Miller (N.C.) and Lincoln Davis (Tenn.) said they were invited to meet Clinton but declined to attend. Nevertheless, Clinton’s campaign pushed back hard against growing sentiment that she cannot win the nomination. The senator scheduled meetings to woo superdelegates and at least forestall them from endorsing Sen. Barack...

WASHINGTON — In a heated phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late last month, Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut off campaign money to congressional Democrats unless Pelosi embraced a new plan by the movie mogul to finance a revote of the Democratic presidential primaries in Florida and Michigan, according to three officials who were briefed on the contents of the conversation. The three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the private phone conversation, said Weinstein, a top supporter of Clinton’s presidential campaign, appeared determined to buy...

The success of radio talkshow host Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Operation Chaos‘ in helping Sen. Hillary Clinton edge out rival Barack Obama in the Indiana primary this week has spurred the former First Lady to move Mr. Limbaugh’s name to the top of the short list of potential running mates, according to sources.

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, with talent on loan from G-d, at the cutting-edge of societal evolution, with half his brain tied behind his back — just to make it fair, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling,...

Hillary Clinton is still raising bucks and wearing out her campaign pedometer in her effort to become the Democratic presidential nominee, but even her own campaign is acknowledging that her days are numbered. A columnist at The Huffington Post reported Thursday that a senior campaign official and Clinton confidante said a Democratic nominee will be chosen by June 15. Barack Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, announced its plan to declare victory on May 20, after he wraps up a majority of the pledged delegates in the Democratic nominating process. Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe on Thursday compared the nomination process to Game...

Obama trolls House, but Altmire remains neutral TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito Rep. Jason Altmire said his baseline for a decision to endorse Sen. Hillary Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama would be if Clinton managed to reach somewhere close to a delegate tie with him when the primaries were over. "She earned her right to continue the campaign when she won in Pennsylvania and won my district," he said. Altmire said even after her loss in North Carolina and slim win in Indiana, she still has that right. "It's a long shot, I understand that, but I still want to give...

At West Virginia rally, Clinton vows to fight on By David Brown TRIBUNE-REVIEW Thursday, May 8, 2008 CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Memo to those writing political obituaries for Hillary Clinton: She ain't done yet. Clinton sought to drive home that message to hundreds of cheering supporters at a rally here today, contending West Virginia will muzzle the pundits by giving her a resounding win on Tuesday over Barack Obama, whose victory Tuesday in North Carolina and strong showing in Indiana moved him closer to clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. "I know that according to the polls, I'm doing well here. But...

Is Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., staying in the race to get the vice presidential slot? George thinks so. Clinton vowed to fight on today, despite a growing chorus that says Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has just about wrapped up the Democratic presidential nominaton. ABC's chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos told Charles Gibson on "World News" that Clinton is staying in the race to negotiate a spot on the Democratic ticket in November. CHARLES GIBSON: George, she puts on a brave face in public. What's going on behind the scenes? GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, I think it's fair to say ... that...

Follow the link, and please explain to me the goal of that museum... Liberals are SO twisted !!!

There should be two URLs for these Op-Eds. One is for Hillary Clinton (above) and this one is for Barack Obama: http://www.elnuevodia.com/diario/columna/402056 Both Op-Eds are in Spanish, but the newspaper provides a link to the English translations.

They see themselves as partisan spoilers who sow confusion behind enemy lines: Republican voters who vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries in order to prolong and take advantage of the energy expending duel with Barack Obama. Supposedly they played a subversive role in Clinton's successes in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In Indiana and North Carolina they were allegedly underhanded with their votes. They are the soldiers of "Operation Chaos." The creator and commanding General is Rush Limbaugh, the most influential talk radio showman of the right in the USA. Three hours as day, five times a week Limbaugh...

Hillary Clinton's loyalists appear to be hardening in their disdain for Barack Obama as he gets closer to the Democratic nomination. Fewer than half of Clinton supporters in both Indiana and North Carolina said they would vote for Obama in November, according to exit polls. Instead, most said they would vote for presumptive Republican John McCain - or just stay home. Even though voters say that Clinton has run the more negative campaign, Obama backers are significantly more supportive of Clinton if she were to be the nominee. Analysts say that polls in the heat of the primary campaign don't...

Ihad been thinking for some time that more attention should be paid to Rush Limbaugh – not to what he says, because it is pretty much the same old rightwing bombast he has been selling for 25 years, but to what he has been urging his legion of 20m similarly inclined radio listeners to do. This is, wherever state laws allows, that they should register in a Democratic party primary and cast a vote for Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama, the front-runner to be the Democratic presidential nominee. He calls it “operation chaos” and he has been revelling in its...

Rush Limbaugh's “Operation Chaos,” the effort to urge conservatives and Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic nomination battle, certainly annoys MSNBC's Chris Matthews who, during primary coverage Tuesday night, denounced the “mischief-making” by “a talk jock.” In the 11:30 PM EDT half hour, Matthews offered a “Keith [Olbermann]-style special comment” about how “anyone who voted to screw up the political system of this country with the purpose of mischief should carry that with them the rest their lives.” He called it “a ridiculous way to use the vote for which people fought and died,”...

<p>LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Democratic leaders have settled on a plan to give presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton 69 delegates and Barack Obama 59 as a way to get the delegates seated at the national convention.</p> <p>Clinton won the Jan. 15 Michigan primary and was to get 73 delegates under state party rules. Obama was to get 55 delegates.</p>

Hoping to shift the gaze from Operation Chaos, McCain's camp sent around a memo from manager Rick Davis this afternoon. It's not just mischief-making Republicans who are crossing over in to the Dem primary with plans to come home in the fall, Davis writes. Real live Democrats are voting Clinton now and plan to back McCain in the fall. Among North Carolina Democratic Primary voters interviewed in exit polls, 18% of the Democrats surveyed said they would vote for John McCain in a race against Senator Obama. This 18% is overwhelmingly driven by Senator Clinton's supporters: 84% are Senator Clinton...

David Plouffe and a series of big gun endorsers are holding a conference call to stress the scale of last night's victory. "He clearly did more than he had to and she did not achieve what she had to," said Senator John Kerry. Both Plouffe and Kerry stressed the importance of the Limbaugh Effect. "Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary," Kerry said "If it was not for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, he would have won," he said of Obama. (I'm not sure that's true. The margin was about 18,500; Clinton only got 54% of the Republican votes, which made...

**DRUDGE EXCLUSIVE 8:59 EM ET**: Senator Clinton has made another multi-million dollar loan to her campaign. She gave $6.4M in the past month and will be giving more... Developing...

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh changed course today and pushed Barack Obama. Obama would be the weakest nominee, declared Limbaugh, who told listeners that Obama "has shown he cannot get the votes Democrats need to win -- blue-collar, working class people. 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." Limbaugh -- who credits his "Operation Chaos" for Republicans crossing over in open primaries such as the one in Indiana on Tuesday to support Clinton -- "released" Democratic superdelegates to...

1. Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President. That was clear before yesterday; absent a complete and unforeseen disaster, it’s a certainty now. Democratic superdelegates will soon begin to break in large numbers for Obama. They have been wanting to do so for some time now; what they needed was a plausible trigger to justify publicly supporting Obama. Last night they got it. Yesterday in the voting booths of North Carolina, the last dog died. The Clintons have done a lot of damage to our politics over the years, something which Obama tapped into with great skill. They...

Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos," the effort to urge conservatives and Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic nomination battle, certainly annoys MSNBC's Chris Matthews who, during primary coverage Tuesday night, denounced the "mischief-making" by "a talk jock." In the 11:30 PM EDT half hour, Matthews offered a "Keith [Olbermann]-style special comment" about how "anyone who voted to screw up the political system of this country with the purpose of mischief should carry that with them the rest their lives." He called it "a ridiculous way to use the vote for which people fought and died,"...

The U.S. media and blogosphere has been ablaze with speculation that conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh may have contributed to Clinton’s narrow victory in Tuesday’s Indiana primary over Barack Obama by urging Republicans to vote for the former first lady. The speculation is that the “Rush for Hillary” is seen as a way to extend the Democratic nomination battle and further damage the eventual winner. Limbaugh has also said in the past that he thought Obama needed to be “bloodied up politically, and it’s obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don’t have the...

The Obama campaign believes in the vast right-wing conspiracy. The Illinois senator's chief political adviser David Axelrod noted to reporters just now that Republican crossovers accounted for about 10 percent of the Indiana primary electorate, and that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had performed well with the group. "There were elements of the Republican Party, including Rush Limbaugh, Sen. Clinton's new ally, who were urging people to cross over and vote for her," said Axelrod, referring to the Limbaugh-led "Operation Chaos," a bid to disrupt Obama's path to the nomination and prolong a divisive primary battle. "She obviously was somewhat a...

Hillary Clinton eked out a narrow victory over Barack Obama in the Indiana Democratic primary, but top Obama aides say Obama would have won if it were not for conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist, told reporters that he attributed Clinton’s lead in Indiana to Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” — his campaign to have Republicans cross over and vote for Clinton to prolong the nomination fight and damage the Democratic nominee. Exit polls appear to back up Axelrod’s claims. Results of the Indiana exit poll found that that 17 percent of primary voters said they would vote...

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...

Obama supporters Sen.John Kerry, D-Mass., and Gov. Janet Napolitano, D-Ariz., argue that the superdelegates now have a responsibility to move the nominating process forward. “Obama has shown he can win across the board and now its time for superdelegates to bring this to a close,” Napolitano said. Obama is expected to meet with undecided superdelegates tomorrow in Washington. Kerry said that it is the responsibility of the superdelegates to ensure that the Democratic Party will be unified at the convention in August, and suggested that Obama could have won the Indiana primary last night if it was not for the...

Clinton says she is in it until a nominee is decided. (also a poll on the page if you wish to freep it).

Rush Limbaugh, between crowing about the success and attention of his "Operation Chaos," switched sides in the Democratic primary this morning. "I now urge the Democratic superdelegates to go publicly make your mind up for Obama," he said. Earlier, he said, "I'm now tempted to tell superdelegates to pick Obama because I now believe he would be the weakest nominee." Limbaugh had been urging his listeners to support Hillary as the only chance for Republican victory in November, and to extend the Democratic primary. Exit polls and anecdotes suggest that many did. Not sure there are really a lot of...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, with talent on loan from G-d, at the cutting-edge of societal evolution, with half his brain tied behind his back — just to make it fair, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling,...

The Obama campaign appears poised to begin running its general election campaign after Tuesday night’s primaries seemed unlikely to change the math or the momentum in the Democratic nomination. David Axelrod, the top Obama strategist, told reporters that Barack Obama would compete for the six remaining Democratic contests, where 217 delegates are at stake. But he said that the campaign would soon focus on the general election because likely Republican nominee John McCain had “basically run free for some time now because we’ve been consumed with this.” He added: “I don’t think we’re going to spend time solely in primary...

Tuesday was a decisive night for Barack Obama. Sure, CBS News called Indiana early for Hillary Clinton (a verdict the network may yet regret, with many precincts still outstanding), and if she does hang on there, she will have won just as many states on the day as Obama did. And she will then soldier on to what should be a landslide win in next week’s West Virginia primary, just as she figures to dominate in Kentucky on May 20. But tonight made clear one thing: None of that will matter. Ever since she fell hopelessly behind Obama in the...