Reply #16: Up to date entry at Wikipedia on Operation Chaos [View All]

[TexasObserver]

In late February 2008, Limbaugh announced "Operation Chaos", a political call to action with the initial plan to have voters of the Republican Party temporarily cross over to vote in the Democratic primary and vote for Hillary Clinton, who at the time was in the midst of losing 11 straight primary contests to Barack Obama. The previous month, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos suggested a similar idea to have Democrats cross over to vote for Mitt Romney in Michigan in order to lengthen the Republican primary, in which Mike Huckabee and eventual presumptive nominee John McCain were seen by Moulitsas as being in the lead.<11> Limbaugh has also cited the open primary process in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, which allowed independent voters to cross over into the Republican primaries to choose John McCain over more conservative candidates (such as Fred Thompson), as an inspiration.

At the point in which Limbaugh announced his gambit, Obama had seemed on the verge of clinching the Democratic nomination.<12> However, Clinton subsequently won the Ohio primary and the Texas primary (while losing the Texas caucus and the overall delegate split) with large pluralities from rural counties; thus reemerging as a competitive opponent in the race.<13> Statistics released by the state of Texas show Hillary Clinton won the primary due to a large number of Republicans crossing over to vote for her. Over 150,000 Republicans voted for her which is more than her margin of victory of Senator Obama. Whether those voters were Operation Chaos Operatives or simply Republicans who like Hillary is impossible to tell.

On March 27, 2008, Limbaugh said "The dream end of this 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 ." Since then much progress has been made as he has stated multiple times on the air. Hillary Clinton now legitimately has a chance to win the nomination. His goal is to also make the two use up money and "mud sling" each other.<14>

On April 29, 2008 Limbaugh declared an "operational pause" in Operation Chaos, saying that Obama's defeat in the 2008 Pennsylvania primary and fallout from statements from Obama ally Reverend Jeremiah Wright could have damaged his campaign to the extent superdelegates would shift to Clinton's side.<15> Determining Obama had weathered that storm, Limbaugh lifted the pause the next day and renewed his call for his listeners to vote for Clinton in the upcoming Indiana and North Carolina primaries.<16> Obama won the North Carolina primary but was narrowly defeated in Indiana, where Clinton won decisively in rural counties that normally vote Republican in presidential elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rush_Limbaugh_Show#Operation_Chaos