Media Still Has Split Personality On Limbaugh's Effectiveness

HARMLESS MENACE

On Power Of Rush, Media Wants It Both Ways





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Is Rush Limbaugh a real threat to American democracy, or mere harmless annoyance? Two decades after he redefined talk radio, our left- wing media friends still can't decide.

Instead, they've chosen to have it both ways, using the angle that best fits their latest attack on talk's titan.

Last year, he was a menace, after supposedly attacking anti- war vets as "phony soldiers". Harry Reid saw fit to denounce him on the Senate floor and even went after his employer, sending a letter that Limbaugh himself subsequently auctioned off for a mega- donation to charity.

When election results in South Carolina's primary didn't appear to go the way Rush had hoped, he was quickly dismissed as ineffective by both liberals and moderates.


Now, that same approach is being used to undermine Rush, with a new CBS News story that wildly downplays his Operation Chaos success rate. The purpose of the movement is to help Hillary Clinton remain viable in the race against Barack Obama. In recent days, El Rushbo himself has been warning listeners about this effort by the antique media:

RUSH: This morning on CNN Live, they have launched a counteroffensive to Operation Chaos, ladies and gentlemen. They are pushing the notion, as I predicted, by the way, that Republicans are switching parties in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, not because of Operation Chaos, oh, no, but because Republicans love Barack Obama. Here is the exchange between the anchor Tony Harris and the correspondent Dan Lothian.

HARRIS: Since January, more than 160,000 voters switched parties to take part in the upcoming Democratic primary, and in longtime Republican suburbs around Philadelphia, like Bucks and Montgomery counties, Democrats now have the advantage in registered voters for the first time in decades.

LOTHIAN: You might remember there was a movement, if you will, among conservative radio, in particular Rush Limbaugh, to get Republicans the vote in Democrat primaries in order to sort of extend the process for the Democrats and disrupt the Democratic Party. It's unclear whether or not that's at play here, but a Republican official tells me that he doesn't believe that that's an issue certainly in the Pennsylvania area and he says that that's something that he would not endorse. Tony?

HARRIS: Yeah, folks are smarter than that.

RUSH: Yeah, folks are smarter than that. Tony, you should be as smart as the operatives in Operation Chaos. Dimwit! The Republican guy has to say this. The Republican Party is not going to act like they endorse all this. The Republican Party is losing registration. They have to play this up a different way, and because they're timid to boot. But make no mistake. There is no reason for all of this massive registration on the Democrat side other than Operation Chaos, and they know it, and they're doing everything they can to ignore it, and now to discredit it. Moving over to The Situation Room on CNN yesterday, Jack Cafferty posed this question to people e-mailing him back their answers.

From the subsequent CBS News analysis:

"Limbaugh Effect" Is Fairly Insignificant


Kathy Frankovic

What happens when primary voters “cross over” to vote in the other party’s primary? Do they wish that party good, or ill, when they choose a candidate?

Before the March 4th primaries in Texas and Ohio, Rush Limbaugh urged Republicans to cross over to keep the Democratic Party full of what he called ”chaos and tumult.” Is there any evidence that Republicans did that?

“Crossover voters” are really two different types of voter. Most consider themselves “independents,” not fully affiliated with either party, even though many of them sometimes behave like party members. In our national polls, more than four in ten registered voters who call themselves independents said they had - or intended to - vote in a party’s primary this year. And many years of surveys indicate that many people who say they are independent have a history of voting for candidates of only one party.

The second kind of crossover voter is rarer: this primary season it is the self-identified Republican who decides to bypass the Republican primary and vote instead in the Democratic contest. [This year very few people who call themselves Democrats are choosing a Republican ballot.] This is easy to do in states that hold “open” primaries where there is no party registration. Voters simply choose a ballot or declare a preference when they arrive at the polls. And in the vast majority of caucus states, pretty much anyone can arrive at a caucus site and fill out the required paperwork to become a Democrat - even if just for that one day.

In the exit polls, voters are asked to identify themselves by party with the following question: “No matter how you voted today, do you usually think of yourself as a Democrat, Republican, independent or something else?” In the Democratic primaries overall, fewer than 5 percent of voters said they were Republicans. And that five percent voted for Barack Obama 53 percent to 39 percent over Hillary Clinton - which is very much like the votes of self-identified independents, who split 55 percent for Obama, 39 percent for Clinton.

In most individual states, the actual number of interviews with Republican- identified voters has been so small that there simply aren’t enough of them to analyze properly. But in states where exit polls CAN identify enough Republican crossover voters, a complex picture emerges. Illinois, Obama’s home state, and Missouri, which borders it, both held open Democratic primaries on February 5, Super Tuesday. Obama led convincingly among Republican voters in both places. Missouri’s 75 percent to 21 percent margin in Obama’s favor was even greater than the 60 percent to 36 percent vote Republicans in Illinois gave him. Republican crossovers in two other states that voted later in February - Virginia and Wisconsin - also gave Obama big margins.

While the piece admits the sample size is rather small, it misses the big question entirely: are temporary party- switchers willing to admit to what they've done? As there's an inherent level of mischief involved with crossover voting, wouldn't that same sentiment carry over when quizzed for exit polls?

We'd like to see the mainstream media once and for all decide whether Rush is a threat to America, or wholly ineffective. It can't be both.


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