Operation Chaos

I read with interest the prominently displayed article in The Washington Post this morning asserting that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” unfairly led to a narrow victory by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the tight Indiana primary held Tuesday. According to the Post, Limbaugh’s listeners recalled their “illicit pleasure” in voting for Clinton to sully and muddy the waters for Obama.

And this is a news story? How about the robo-calls that Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) campaign allegedly made in several states asking Republicans to vote for him in open primaries? Is it fine for Democrats to ask Republicans to vote for them in open primaries but somehow improper or sinister when the equal but opposite scenario occurs?

Consider the remarks from 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.): “Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary and the GOP has clearly declared that it wants Hillary Clinton as the candidate.” Really? I hardly call it “tampering” when constituents living within states that have open primaries choose to exercise their right to vote for the candidate of their choice. In the next election I suspect many states may limit the participation to voters from one particular party rather than the system in place across the country that allows many folks to pull the lever for candidates in either party. For now, those are the rules and people exercised their legal and proper right to vote as they saw fit.

My advice to Sen. Kerry and others whining about Operation Chaos would be to focus on the issues and stop complaining about a perfectly legitimate ability for citizens to pull the lever for the candidate of their choice regardless of their motivation for doing so.