RUSH: The Drive-Bys are fascinated with possible criminal charges in Ohio related to Operation Chaos. They’re still investigating whether or not Republican voters lied about their pledge to become Democrats when they went in there and voted in the Ohio primary. Hugh Hewitt, renowned member of the Reagan administration, who has his own blog and talk show in the afternoons from California. He is from Cleveland, and said that if I get indicted in this, if I get charged along with any voters, he’s going to defend me; he’ll be happy to defend me. He says especially since I’m a Steelers fan, I’m going to need somebody in my camp in Ohio that has Cleveland Brown season tickets, which he does. So I appreciate that support from Hugh Hewitt, as well, ladies and gentlemen, as from you. If any of you people in Ohio end up getting charged — and I frankly can’t see it, fear not, worry not — Operation Chaos will commence a massive legal defense fund, and we’ll defend you. (laughter) This is just too much.
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So if you want to be among the very first members of the Operation Chaos Street Team, get your order in by Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern, and if you do, all orders received by Wednesday at 3 p.m. will go out in the first shipment on Friday, April the 4th. Now, this also happened with the Club Gitmo stuff. It’s inevitable that the initial demand here is going to swamp our fulfillment company’s servers. If you log into RushLimbaugh.com and go to the EIB Store, and you click on the Operation Chaos merchandise, some of you are going to get failure messages. ‘Sorry, can’t find the page, page not found, server error,’ what have you. You just have to try again. Just wait and try again for the initial burst to subside. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your computer, doesn’t mean anything is wrong with the link. It just means it’s overloaded. If it happened with Club Gitmo, it’s probably going to happen here with Operation Chaos. A lot of initial orders will tie up the servers. So there it is; you asked for it; you have it.
RUSH: Last night Fox News Channel’s Election Headquarters, cohost Megyn Kelly talking with Mark Halperin at TIME Magazine. She says, ‘This all stemmed from a Rush Limbaugh initiative where he pushed people to go and register as Democrats because you can do that in Ohio, and vote Hillary Clinton to keep her in the race so that conservatives and Republicans could run against her.’ Once again, the Drive-Bys misunderstand the full thrust of Operation Chaos, but I’ve explained it enough; if they can’t get it by now it’s not worth continuing to try. Megyn Kelly asks Mark Halperin of TIME, ‘Are the people in Ohio, the elections people really going to go through with this, perhaps charging Republicans who crossed over to vote Democrat with crimes?’
HALPERIN: Well, they’re still investigating. This mischief voting, who knows how much of it was based on Rush and how much of it was people maybe wanting to vote in this primary because they liked one of the candidates. But, you know, there are a lot of things in America that are illegal. The notion you could go to jail for switching parties and voting, that would require the ability to look into the conscience of individual voters. It’s nuts, and you would think they have something better to do. Look, Florida was a laughingstock in 2000. Ohio’s had more problems since then. My secret theory is this is Ohio election officials attempting to take away the mantle from Florida, ‘laughingstock of the nation when it comes to elections.’ This is crazy.
RUSH: Mark Halperin actually says that Ohio is jealous of Florida for being a laughingstock, and they want to become the laughingstock. Megyn Kelly, is this a political stunt?
HALPERIN: I think the Democrats are annoyed that people would come into their primary, they think illegitimately and mess things up and vote — do that mischief voting. If the rules allow you to switch parties, you cannot look into the soul of people who do it and say, ‘These people are robots programmed by Rush Limbaugh.’ You just gotta let ’em do it. Now, there are a few cases anecdotally where people seem to fess up. One person scribbled on a ballot that they were doing it ‘just for the day,’ and I think there’s probably some of that but less than I think these people suspect, and clearly not enough to criminalize party registration.
KELLY: Yeah!
HALPERIN: That just seems silly.
RUSH: These are Democrats, Mark. These are Democrats, and they’re fit to be tied. Look, they feel free to cross over all the time and have fun with our nomination process, as in Senator McCain in Iowa, New Hampshire, and so forth, and other states. They just don’t like the same game being played by us. Finally, Megyn Kelly and Mark Halperin have this exchange.
KELLY: One has to think that Rush Limbaugh will celebrate this as another extreme move.
HALPERIN: He will start a legal defense fund for anyone I think who’s indicted. Look, a long way to go. The election board is split; the county prosecutor who would be the first person to look at this has said, he probably doesn’t see a problem. The attorney general I don’t think will see a problem. So I don’t think this will happen.
RUSH: Extreme move, Megyn? ‘One has to think that Rush Limbaugh will celebrate this as another extreme move’? Oh, well. Moving on. You’ve heard about this, I’m sure. ‘An aide to Senator McCain was suspended from the campaign yesterday for blasting out an inflammatory video that raises questions about Barack Obama’s patriotism.’ What was inflammatory about it? Did you see this video that was put on YouTube? It just had Obama statements and Reverend Wright statements! That’s all it had on it. The guy’s name is Soren Dayton. He works in McCain’s political department, and sent out the YouTube link of ‘Is Obama Wright,’ W-r-i-g-h-t, at 12:31, with a tag ‘Good Video on Obama and Wright.’ It’s been taken down. ‘McCain and his campaign have repeatedly said they would stay away from personal attacks on Obama but the temptation has increased as Wright’s words have dominated the race in recent days.’ So let’s go back to the audio sound bites. This is CNN yesterday, Don Lemon the host, interviewing Joe Klein of TIME Magazine. He says, ‘It’s a suspension, McCain’s campaign suspended this guy. I just want to make it clear it’s a suspension.’
HALPERIN: We’ve had a history of campaign workers over the years, uh, distributing videotapes and getting canned for it. This is pretty much campaign business as usual. It’s really stupid, because, as long as Rush Limbaugh lives and breathes on this planet, then McCain doesn’t have to do any dirty work. People like Limbaugh will do it for him.
RUSH: And the campaign may be counting on that, but still… (interruption) That’s the point. What is dirty about telling the truth? What’s dirty about putting it up? Nothing’s dirty about it; nothing was inflammatory. It’s just that McCain doesn’t want it out there under his name. You know, McCain is traveling around the world. Here’s doing a bunch of things. He’s trying to brand himself right now as strong on national defense, strong on national security, while the Democrats are duking it out here in Operation Chaos, and he doesn’t want to get involved in this. This is the old rule: ‘If your enemy is destroying himself, just get out of the way and let it happen.’ You know, you never get into an argument with a fool because people will not be able to tell the difference. If your enemy is eating himself alive, pass the salt and leave. You know, McCain is simply trying to stay out of it, but he’s also trying to establish this notion that he’s going to run an honorable campaign. On the contrary, the Obama campaign can leak. They can put out the Clinton picture with Reverend Wright, can send it to the New York Times, and, oh, how smart it is! ‘Why, that’s brilliant. Look at the Obama campaign. Why, they’re not taking this sitting down. Why, we love the Obama campaign,’ go the Drive-Bys.
Of course, they can defend Reverend Wright from now until the reverend gets off his cruise, but McCain’s throwing his people overboard. How many people has he fired or suspended here, just in the last month?
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RUSH: We have to add one more thing about the website at RushLimbaugh.com and the EIB Store. The Operation Chaos T-shirt is two sided. The front side has a ballot box with the EIB logo on it and Rush the Vote being stuffed into the box, and on the back are the Operation Chaos mission objectives. There’s supposed to be a text accompaniment to say what is on the back of the shirt because even the enlarged photo doesn’t say. Let me read it to you. I’ll show you people on the Dittocam. ‘Operation Chaos mission objectives: Cross over to vote in Democrat primaries. Prolong the Democrat Uncivil War. Allow the Clintons to bloody up Obama politically, since our side won’t do it.’ How prescient was that? ‘Enjoy liberals tearing each other apart. Drain the DNC of campaign money. Annoy the Drive-By Media,’ and, ‘Win in November.’ The objectives of Operation Chaos. That will be on the back, and all the T-shirts are $19.95. Whatever size you order, it’s the same price.