Letters to the Editor
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Meanwhile, David Addington got subpoenaed
Remember, Cheney's chief of staff? Congress is hauling his ass before a House committee to answer questions about how the administration decided it was OK to torture people.
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Rush and chaos
I think the vote with a Capital "V" is too important a franchise to encourage its use in this way. RL ought to be ashamed... gaming a consitutional right to stroke his outsized ego.
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exit polls
why -- especially given the fact that even in ideal circumstances exit polls are uneven -- would anyone suppose that people would answer these questions honestly?
First of all, if I were a Republican voting in the Democratic election in order to sow "chaos", I might give wrong answers to have the questions. Wouldn't that be better? If you wanted to undermine Obama's candidacy, wouldn't it be better to say "I'm a Hillary supporting Democrat and I'm going to vote for McCain in Novemeber."? These are, after all, people who are voting maliciously and in bad faith in the first place, no?
Secondly, people often can't be honest with themselves, much less with pollsters. How many people who voted for Obama did so because they just can't stand the thought of a woman as President? Surely some of them. But are they going to tell a pollster that that's the reason? Probably not.
So why are we giving these exit polls any weight when they have no scientific basis even when compared to other polls which are dubious in themselves?
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Rush's backing of Clinton ...
... should worry those progressives who admire Sen. Clinton. Why has she become the darling of the right? Why does she have Pat Buchanan and Richard Mellon Scaife swooning for her lately? Limbaugh, at least, is open about what he's doing: he thinks that every vote for Clinton at this stage helps to sabotage the Democrats, by increasing the bitterness and extending the race. Maybe he's wrong, but he's placing his bet in a big way.
Back when she was emphasizing health care, she was doing us a service; her plan really is better than Obama's. But for the last month, she's been running a Republican-lite campaign, aping Bill Clinton's 1995 strategy for surviving the Gingrich victory: appropriate Republican talking points and Republican themes as a desperate survival measure, and triangulate, demonizing most Democrats as too far left.
If Clinton were challenging Obama in a progressive way, her campaign would be a service to the party. But if every word out of her mouth could have been said by John McCain, what's the point?
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Republicans ARE voting in large numbers for Clinton
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Indiana...large numbers of rural bubbas are taking Rush's advice and voting for Clinton.
The metric you should be looking at is half of the self-identified "Democrats" voting in NC and IN would never vote for Obama or not vote at all. HALF!!!!!
Alex, you need to get your head out of where the sun don't shine, honey. Republicans don't have anything to do but play fun in the Dem primary. You simply cannot call yourself a Democrat and then vote Republican, for a guy like McCain. Good Lord, there is an enormous difference between Clinton and McCain.
But as I've written before, the American people don't read or study, at all. They go with their emotions, or which stupid news source has the salacious detail of the day.
Americans really do deserve the criminal government they have.
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Half the Hillary Democrats
Won't vote for Barack. HALF!!!
They're REPUBLICANS.
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No, Obama indiana is more representative of the country...!
Obama believes that the head of Operation Chaos is responsible for Indiana?
Obama is letting the old days cloud his mind if he thinks that!
Take a look and see who is leading operation Chaos!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W28PbVAbv6U
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81% of the independents in NC voted Democrat
So take your ignorance and stuff it.
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yeah, seriously -- what Buffalonian said except more so
If someone is planning to vote for Clinton as part of some diabolical game-the-system Republican plot, wouldn't they then not just maybe but definitely lie in any exit polls? Wouldn't the whole point be defeated otherwise?
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The Obama camp likes the silly season
Keep telling yourselves that Hillary Clinton's win in Indiana is due to Rush Limbaugh. That is just more sleazy innuendo from Obama Nation. Of course, the Obama campaign has been dependent upon the back door sleaze mongering throughout, so this is nothing new.
The more likely scenario is the Republicans have been looking for a candidate with such a thin slice of the electorate that he could well lose in the general, despite everyone being fed up with the Republicans.
The Republicans think they have found the perfect opponent in Barack Obama, AKA Mr. Revise and Rewrite, I-want-to-change-what-I-said-about-Reverend-Wright, and let-me-tell-you-what-I-really-meant-to-say-about-the bitter-folks-in-small-towns.
Am I the only one who sees the MSM giving Obama just enough positive hype so that he wins the nomination? After that, if he does win, look out because he will be softened up without mercy once the primaries are over.
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@buffalonian and Matthew Miller
I was going to try to find the Plain Dealer coverage for you two from the day after the Ohio primary, but their website is terrible, so I'll summarize:
Precincts that are heavily Republican went dramatically for Hillary--Cleveland's east side as well as pockets of Cincinnati's Hamilton County, including Indian Hill (the reddest zip code in the country outside of Houston, TX, in terms of financial support for GWB). More importantly, and relevant to what you were suggesting--that voters wouldn't admit to following Operation Chaos--several people were quoted directly, including the husband/wife couple who chaired the precinct in Cleveland that was particularly out-of-synch--saying very clearly that they voted for Hillary Clinton with the intention of throwing the Democrats into chaos. Their names were given, and they said most of their friends did the same. They went on with a bunch of Republican talking points about why John McCain should be president, etc., and they were those earnest, religious zealot types who were confident in their certainty that they did the right thing.
In addition, in that same edition of the Plain Dealer, Kevin O'Brien, an assistant executive editor who has a regular column and is as right-wing as you can get--totally and completely religious, thinks the pope should step in and enforce Catholic doctrine on all those "cafeteria catholics," thinks gays shouldn't marry not out of some pragmatic reasoning but b/c they are an abomination, blah, blah, blah, makes his hatred for Democrats clear all year long--wrote a column that day about how inclusive the Democratic party is, so much so that it now includes him. He made it crystal clear that he voted for Hillary.
The big issue here in Ohio is that it slowly emerged--came out in paper the day after that--that there is some obscure law that says it's illegal to vote other than your conscience, or something to that effect. That shut everybody up big time, and not another word came out of smarmy Kevin O'Brien's mouth about his vote. As a personal anecdote, my son came home from school and said that his friend's mom had voted for Clinton to throw the Dems and was worried about the illegality. (The attorney general since came out and said no one would be prosecuted. Interestingly, that attorney general, Marc Dann, is now in his own hot water over an affair, sexual harassment charges, and frat boy antics in the office)
All this is to suggest that, while your point about people lying to polsters should always be considered, there is no doubt that many people brag about their idiocy. Operation Chaos was alive and well here in Ohio, and as far as I'm concerned, it genuinely puts into question Hillary's electability here--I think it's very close and she maybe would have beat Obama anyway, but not by nearly as much.
Sorry so wordy--
PS If your response to this is that of course it's anecdotal and may not add to much, that is always a possibility. But the Republicans who asked for a Democratic ballot and who voted for Hillary numbered in the tens of thousands. That's no small potatoes. At the time, there were two right-wing radio hosts locally that were seriously pushing The Plan. That idiot Bill Cunningham in Cincinnati (the one who introduced McCain by insulting Obama), and Mike Trivisano in Cleveland. Super serious pressure from those two in addition to Rush's own push.
PS Buffalonian, I'm from Buffalo originally myself.