This was my biggest gripe with Limbaugh. The *least* he could have done was take a position during the primaries, and he refused to do so.
Everyone complained about how the primaries were being manipulated, with open primaries where Democrats picked their Republican opponents to closed primaries where Democrats ran stalking horse libertarians to split the Republican vote.
Limbaugh could have used his influence to be a kingmaker in selecting who comes out of the primaries to run in the general election. And not just for President, too. He could have endorsed Senate primary candidates, too.
Instead, he chose to make his stand with "Operation Chaos," advising people to waste their primary vote voting for Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama.
This was Limbaugh's one blind-spot that I will never understand.
-PJ
I can think of one time when Rush got involved in a primary campaign, in a California State Assembly election.
One primary candidate was a woman with long experience in grassroots conservative activism. Prop 13, Prop 187, that sort of thing.
The other candidate was an ex-GI with no history of conservative activism, and in fact he was openly contemptuous of conservative voters.
So which one did Rush endorse? Well his friend, the ex-GI, the open anti-conservative.
That was one incident that helped form my suspicion that Rush was a lightweight who really wasn’t as knowledgeable about conservative politics as he wanted people to believe. It’s why he was such an easy mark for the Bush family and they were able to use him as their waterboy (Rush’s own admission). I don’t think Rush was trying to deceive people, but the Bush crowd certainly was, and they were able to use Rush to get conservatives to support their agenda.