The Limbaugh effect in Michigan would have been minimal to non existent for Republicans crossing over to vote for Hillary. The Republican primary was important at this time and a hotly contested one between McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and Ron Paul providing GOP voters with real choices. If the Democratic primary numbers were depressed it was only because of a couple factors: 1. Dems staying home because they didn't think the primary would count for anything and 2. Dems crossing over to vote in the GOP primary to achieve a reverse-Limbaugh effect in order to pick the weaker GOP candidate.
Hillary benefitted by keeping her name on the ballot because she was THE only recognizable candidate in the Dem primary and had both Sen. Stabenow and Gov. Granholm and some other party bigwigs backing her. Yet despite this, she only got 55% of the vote.
Offering Hillary an extra 10 MI delegates for her fake "win" in Michigan was doing her a big favor, yet despite this, she turned it down. That should tell you all you need to understand about this woman's arrogance.
RJ Crane, topplebush.com
Did the Limbaugh Effect Also Flip Michigan?
With Hillary Clinton rejecting the compromise that Michigan Democratic leaders just crafted, the Democratic Rules Committee has a dilemma. Clinton keeps demanding that Michigan's delegates be apportioned according to the January 15 vote, where she was the sole major candidate on the Democratic ballot. But there's another twist that no one has raised -- the impact of a Rush Limbaugh-style crossover on the Michigan vote. Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" quite likely gave Clinton Indiana, provided much of her 4-point Texas margin, buttressed her Ohio win, and decreased Obama's margin in Mississippi. But no one talks about the impact of crossovers on Clinton's self-proclaimed Michigan victory, without which her unopposed candidacy would still have gotten less than 50 percent.
Of course the entire Michigan vote was a charade. Former Michigan Senator Donald Riegle compared it to Soviet elections: "a sham" she, Bill, and her supporters "rigged to give the nation the impression that she's the leading candidate in Michigan." In an October 2007 New Hampshire Public Radio interview that every delegate should hear, Clinton justified her staying on the Michigan ballot by explaining, "this election they're having is not going to count for anything." As Michigan Public Radio commentator Jack Lessenberry pointed out, fewer than 600,000 voted in the state's Democratic primary, compared to 867,000 Republican votes (and 2.5 million votes for John Kerry in 2004). So Michigan and Florida are among just a handful of states where Republican turnout exceeded that of the Democrats in this year's primaries. The vast bulk of Michigan Democrats stayed home, with way fewer voting than in far smaller states.
All this so profoundly taints the Michigan primary result that the only reasonable solution is to split the state's delegates down the middle. But another factor makes the taint still worse -- the 60,000 Democrats who crossed over to vote Republican, based on their 7 percent share of the Republican vote. (In comparison, in South Carolina's contested primary, 11 days later, just 2% of the Republican voters were Democrats. Add in the vote for "uncommitted," and for Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Chris Dodd (who'd already dropped out), plus the 27,000 votes that Lori Hansen Riegle (Senator Riegle's wife), says were discarded because of write-ins, and the non-Clinton total climbs to 353,686, or 25,000 more than Hillary's 328,151.
Michigan Democrats who felt the vote was meaningless were in fact encouraged to cross over. Since everyone (including Clinton) said the results wouldn't count, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsis suggested Michigan Democrats vote for Mitt Romney to prolong the Republican race, keep the Republican candidates at each others' throats, and perhaps help nominate the presumably less-electable Mitt Romney. In other words, pretty much what Rush Limbaugh and his allies ended up doing, except that unlike Indiana and Ohio, Michigan had no laws even theoretically prohibiting such an action. No one thought Clinton would have the chutzpah to retroactively claim a Soviet-style victory. Other progressive bloggers picked up on the idea as well. I also heard it discussed on my local Air America affiliate. These strategic voters, whether inspired by the blogs or self-initiated, combined with other Democrats who simply figured McCain was less fundamentalist than Huckabee and had more substance than Romney's empty-suit puffery, so would still be a better choice for America if the Democratic candidate lost. Had all of them stayed in the Democratic primary and voted against Hillary, it would have tipped her to 48 percent.
Kos and his DailyKos site do valuable work, and I suspect Limbaugh would have launched his campaign without the precedent. But in both cases, Clinton benefited. As soon as McCain had clinched the nomination, Limbaugh and allies like Laura Ingraham began encouraging Republicans to further an increasingly nasty Democratic fight. Obama had been gaining legitimate support from Republicans simply inspired by his message, sick of Bush, and therefore open to changing. A conservative Mormon accounting professor me saying "Paul, you aren't going to believe this. Obama is way too liberal for me, but I'm going to vote for him because I think he has integrity." Post-Limbaugh, those who switched included a substantial number of Republicans trying to disrupt the Democratic primary. As the Boston Globe reported, "In Ohio and Texas on March 4, Republicans comprised 9 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, more than twice the average GOP share of the turnout in the earlier contests where exit polling was conducted. Clinton ran about even with Obama among Republicans in both states, a far more favorable showing among GOP voters than in the early races." A Wall Street Journal story found similar results. Twelve percent of Mississippi's Democratic primary voters were Republicans, breaking three to one for Clinton, but 31% of that group said she wasn't honest and trustworthy, which hardly suggested they'd be voting for her come November. In Indiana, Huffington Post staff reporter Sam Stein points out that seven percent of those who voted for Clinton in the primary say they wouldn't vote for her in November. But without those voters, she wouldn't have had her two-percentage-point victory.
This resonates with my experience. I've gotten emails from people throughout these states who've described coworkers, neighbors, or friends who they witnessed bragging or laughing about being part of Rush's crossover legions. I've read many similar first-person accounts on various blogs. Given the size of Limbaugh's audience and that of his allies in this effort, it seems perfectly conceivable that he shifted 2-3 percent of the vote in each of the states that he targeted. Those jumping on the Daily Kos campaign in Michigan had a far smaller megaphone, but operated under similar strategic assumptions. They were hardly Hillary supporters, or they'd have voted for her, but the numbers suggest their votes made a difference, helping give her the "victory" she now clings to.
Clinton's negligible hopes require both massive superdelegate shifts and seating both Michigan and Florida according to her fantasy projections, where Obama gets zero Michigan delegates because he wasn't on the ballot, and where Obama loses in a Florida vote he never had a chance to contest. The Rules Committee decision-makers would do well to remember the conscious interventions of those who tried to game the primary system. In the case of Michigan, they hardly intended to benefit Hillary, but without their switch, she wouldn't have been able to make even the hollow claims on which she now rests so much of her last-stand campaign.
Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org To receive his articles directly email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles
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The Limbaugh Effect is pure nonsense. Republicans are leaving the party because BUSH has done his best to destroy the Republican party. The reason this keeps popping up is because it's an in-direct smear on Hillary. It's all FICTION.
Both things can be true. I know lots of Republicans like the person I quoted who have left the party becaus of Bush. And lots of independents who will vote for Obama in November.
But it is possible for deliberate crossovers to swing a few percentage points of the vote, and in close races, like the ones I've mentioned, that can shift the victor of a state and (even with proportioante representation), shift the story that gets told about those votes.
Many theories can be true, but the Limbaugh effect is not one of them.
As surprising, as it may seem to Obama fanatics many people crossed over to Hillary without prompting from a radio personality. Since intellectually dishonest and duplicitous discourse from Obama is the norm they found some real good spin to explain (cover up) the fact that Hillary actually does much better with true swing voters than Obama. Contrary to all the initial boasting from Obama.
We now know this is true since Obama has only attracted a material number of these voters necessary to win - Mostly Reagan Democrats and Latinos as opposed to Nader style activists who are less significant and smaller in number - only within a 90 mile radius of Chicago and no where else.
Extrapolating caucus wins in states were only a few thousand Dems voted and matching that against the overall ratio of voters in those states is a desperate attempt to cover up that he lost pure and simple 8 of the 10 largest states to Clinton representing 60% of the entire voter population, repulsing Reagan Democrats and Latinos along the way. The same people that like Clinton best of the three remaining candidates, and McCain next.
The reason why many Michigan Democrats voted for Romney is because he has ties to the state. His father was a popular governor. It wasn't because they hate McCain. Heck, they voted McCain over Bush in 2000.
And Daily Kos promoted it for other reasons.
If you throw the first punch in a fight, you might get hit.
"Forty-one percent of people who voted in the GOP primary said Romney's Michigan ties were important to them, according to exit polls."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/15/michigan.primary/index.html
McCain received the endorsement of the state's major newspaper, the Detroit Free Press, as well as many others. I think it a little presumptuous to assume more people in Michigan would follow the lead of an Internet news organization than one in their own backyard.
Here's a simple solution:
Republican primaries should be for republicans and democratic primaries should be for democrats. No longer should states allow members of the one party to cast their votes for the other party's candidates. There should also be a moratorium period for changing party affiliations after the start of the primary season. As much as I respect the independent voters and how important they are in the general election, they should not be part of the primaries. If you want to be a part of a political process like choosing a nominee on either side of the aisle, you should make a commitment to be an honest part of the process.
Anybody who was part of a conspiracy to negatively affect either party's primary results has cheated the system and the American people. That goes for comedian Rush Limbaugh as well as Markos Moulitsis. These two radical voices do more harm to this country than good, if any.
That's how it's done in Arizona. When you go to the poll you get a ballot with only your party members on it. Independants don't get to vote at all in the primaries.
We recently changed from an open primary here in Washington to one where you have to declare your party affiliation and some people HAD A COW over it. I suspect most of them were folks hoping to work some mischief in a future election.
So let me see if I have this right....
On the one hand, you decry the most partisan and radical members of each party by stating they are bad for the country.
On the other hand, you are perfectly willing to disenfranchise the 20% independent population who has no ties to either party, while allowing the most partisan voters to choose the nominee.
These two ideas seem contradictory to me.
I'd flunk a sociology student who suggested the results of Michigan and/or Florida represented the will of Democrats in the states. Bad stats.
Nevertheless, the elections were certified by the counties and the states.
They are official results.
No. Courts in MI ruled the election "unconstitutional" officially
No one on this site has ever talked about who really started this whole cross over thing . . . the Daily Kos started it in Michigan asking Dems to vote for Romney. Rush then took a bad idea and used his reach and now you cannot whine if you are a Dem because it was your idea that is being used against you.
See, that's the thing about these Limbaugh voters who went for Clinton -- they'll vote for McCain in November, but they're nothing compared to the Dems that will be voting for Obama. Using some of these primaries as a basis for predicting the GE simply doesn't work. The picture is much better for Obama than you might think.
A few months ago, saying the following would have been unthinkable (not to mention "shrill"):
Someone, like maybe Howard Dean and his crew, needs to stay in close contact with all members of the Rules Committee, to see that no one on that committee is being blackmailed, or unduly pressured.
I'd bet the farm and the firstborn that, ongoing, there have been not a few phone calls to these people, from... shall we say, interested parties.
(To say nothing of the superdelegates...)
That the super Delegates are being bought off is alrady well known, Obama has given them around $1 Million already.
Howard Dean is complete moron, how did he become the leader of the DNC?
Howard Dean has made mistakes, but (IMO) he's a great improvement over his predecessor! And I'm fully on board with his 50-state strategy. Dems have been playing the Republicans swing-state game since Reagan. And not doing well. We've needed third party assistant or a terrible opponent to pull off victories.
You mean 48 states, Mich and Flor really don't have a say.
A fifty-fifty split is the only fair way to seat the delegates. HRC should be happy with that, as I believe, she wouldn't get that many delegates in a fair election.
Actually, given how Obama's numbers are in the tank in Florida, he shouldn't get 50%.
Michigan delegates should not have a say in the nominee at all.
All of the hysterical and over-dramatic boo-hooing about the unthinkability of "disenfranchising" voters should've happened BEFORE the Democratic Party leadership AND THE CANDIDATES signed off on the decision to invalidate the Michigan and Florida primaries because they were convened contrary to established party rules and policies.
Once those primaries were designated unofficial "play" primaries, the process was so discombobulated that the results are simply unreliable-- leaving aside all of the ethical reasons why no Democratic candidate should claim "victory", much less base such claim on seemingly high-minded respect for We the People.
When the deal was going down in the back room, all of the players made their moves while We the People were stuffed in the trunks of their limos. And now they're stuck with the hopeless task of selling two wrongs making a right.
Exactly, LittleBrother.
If Hillary Clinton could argue that she should have all the delegates from Michigan according to her votes and Obama should have none, after she broke the rules she had previously agreed to, and even stated that she knew the votes wouldn't count, she has just lost the smallest shred of respect I still had for her. It is beyond ludicrous when her name was the only one on the ballot and I sincerely hope and pray that the committee will have the sense to put a stop to this kind of underhanded politics.
Her name was not the only one on the ballot, neither did the rules require her to take her name off the ballot. Please get your facts straight.
"No, you're all wrong. You see, the Rush crossover voters are white and, as we all know, white voters are the ones that count. And they won't vote for Obama in the general election. So you've got to nominate me."
-- Official Clinton campaign response.
Wasn't one of the benefits of Obama as expressed by his supporters was that he could attract Republican voters? Seems they overstated that fact, and when the Republicans did have a chance to vote for Obama over Hillary, they chose not to.
This idea of "crossover" is nonsense and just another attempt by the Obama camp to preblame Hillary for his (probable) loss in November.
In the earlier primaries, there was a large crossover of Republicans voting for Obama. In later primaries, after Rush the Junkie started telling dittoheads to vote for Hillary, more Republicans voted for her. The limits of exit polling make this hard to prove, but I would be willing to bet that a majority of Republicans voting in the Democratic primary for the candidate they want to win voted for Obama, while a majority of Republicans crossing over for the sole purpose of making mischief voted for Hillary.
I also hope that the Super Dels and the Rules Committee take this into account.
The Daily Kos is off my list of credible blog sites if they suggested this type of behavior. It is un-American and unfair in every sense. Disgusting!
The Kos site still does a lot of good work--I just think that Kos didn't think through the implications on this one... Most of us have made mistakes so I regard it basically as a lesson for the future.
At the time of the election in Michigan, the media and Obama campaign declared that democrats were voting for the republican candidates, because many democratic contenders had taken their names off the ballot. It's just another theory that has no merit.
I find it hard to believe that very many people would waste their vote on the opposition party for evil purposes. Most of the crossover Republicans were most likely sincere in their support of Hillary or Obama. Rush Limbaugh has delusions, possibly induced by his severe emotional and drug problems.
I wish that were true, but as a friend in rural Virginia says (actually writer Joe Bagaent, author of the wonderful book Deerhunting With Jesus) "Rush says it one day. I hear it repeated at the bar or the Kiwanis club the next."
There definitely were sincere crossovers--but there also was a real campaign, with lots of examples (like those on the links I cited) of people bragging about how they'd done this.
It's hard to quantify the precise impact, but it's real enough to have shifted a couple of states.
hammerdown is right. Limpole is totally delusional. very few people actually listen to him other than just for background noise and only a miniscule portion of those who have his show on would go out and do what he says.
The Michigan primary was not exactly a Soviet-style election. It was more like a Kazakhstan-style election. And why might the Clintons feel comfortable counting the result? See the Bill Clinton story below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?bl&ex=1201928400&en=34871ee7da314ab4&ei=5087%0A
Posted May 13, 2008 | 01:04 AM (EST)