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.
CAFFERTY: So looks like voter turnout in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary April 22nd could follow those record-breaking trends that we’ve seen set all over the country this year. The complications in Pennsylvania not good for the Republicans, though, 4.2 million Democrats have registered in Pennsylvania so far this year. That’s almost a 14% increase from the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. But Republican registration has remained virtually flat, at 3.2 million voters. What that means is Democrats now outnumber Republicans in some of the counties outside Philadelphia that have long been bastions for the GOP. So here’s the question. Who benefits most from record Democratic voter registration in Pennsylvania?
RUSH: There you have it. So the counteroffensive, the counterstrike against Operation Chaos mounted now by CNN. So Cafferty then got some e-mail responses from his CNN audience. The question was, ‘Who benefits most from record Democrat voter registration in Pennsylvania?’
CAFFERTY: Scott writes, ‘Barack Obama will. He’s been able to excite and energize the electorate far more than Clinton has. Hillary will only benefit if a large portion of the new voters are crossover Republicans who listen to Rush Limbaugh and want to keep her in the race.’ Mark in North Carolina says, ‘Is this yet another setup question to push Obama? Are we to assume that most or all new voters will vote for him? We won’t really know ’til April 22nd, will we? Perhaps many of these new voters are simply sick and tired of having the networks tell them who to nominate.’
RUSH: Well, the upshot of this bite is that in the first two bites that we played here with CNN, an obvious effort to discredit Operation Chaos, saying people are too smart for that, not going to fall for that, and then when Cafferty starts reading e-mails from the CNN viewers, CNN viewers readily acknowledge Operation Chaos. So CNN’s effort at their counteroffensive has failed because they made the mistake of putting their viewers on the air, the real people. Now last night on MSNBC on Hardball, Chris Matthews and Chatsworth Osborne, Jr., [Tucker Carlson] have this exchange about the Democrat primary and Operation Chaos.
MATTHEWS: This is the first time in our lives where kids have said to their parents, ‘Why don’t you get out and vote for Barack.’ I mean, there is a generational flip here.
CARLSON: I think that’s right. You’ve see like over 135,000 Republicans in the state of Pennsylvania become Democrats over the last 12 months. That’s older people, almost by definition people have had a party identification have changed it —
MATTHEWS: That’s not like changing toothpaste.
MATTHEWS: Oh, come on, his ego is big enough.
CARLSON: Listen. There are some people who are causing mischief.
MATTHEWS: Do you believe that Rush Limbaugh actually gets people to vote strategically?
CARLSON: I think that there are some, but I think that’s far different from going to the office and saying, ‘I’m changing my party ID.’
MATTHEWS: The ID is the key word. I think it’s a huge deal. It’s almost like changing your religion.
CARLSON: Exactly.
MATTHEWS: One day you’re a Republican, and the next day your friends say, ‘What are you politically?’ and you say, ‘I’m a Democrat.’
RUSH: Let’s just see, ladies and gentlemen, what happens to Republican voter registration when we get to the general election. Let’s see if some of these Republicans who have crossed over to the Democrat Party to vote for Hillary in Operation Chaos in the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary, then jump back to the Republican side before the general. I will predict to you that they will, in significant numbers, close to the numbers that have now registered Democrat, but it won’t be reported. It will not be reported. It will not be a story. There will be no curiosity about it at the Drive-By Media. Here’s the thing. The proof in this sound bite, ladies and gentlemen, what I’ve been telling you all week, that these people have their budget meetings in the morning to decide what is going to be news and what isn’t going to be news and one thing that they’re faced with each and every day is, ‘How do we report this Operation Chaos business? How do we report all these Republicans registering as Democrats? We know it’s Limbaugh. We know it’s Operation Chaos. We can’t give him credit so we’re going to credit these Republicans for being fed up with Republican Party and loving Obama.’ That’s the template. That’s the action line. But then Matthews, after hearing Chatsworth Osborne, Jr., credit Operation Chaos, ‘Come on, come on, he’s got a big enough ego already, stop it, don’t build him up.’ Proving the point of what’s going on in all of the newsrooms around America regarding Operation Chaos.
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RUSH: By the way, for all these Drive-By Media people who are trying to recast and discredit and impugn the integrity of the brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed Operation Chaos, they’re going nuts over the new voter registration. When you hear, as you just heard in the sound bites, all the Democrats in the media just having an orgasm over, ‘Wow! Why, this is the first time that Democrats have had more voter registration in Pennsylvania in years. It’s great. It’s because of Obama!’ Well, then if voter registration is the key indicator, why even bother to have elections? You realize what they’re saying is the election’s over? They think it’s all over because all these Republicans are changing. When did this start, by the way? Before Operation Chaos was announced in Ohio and Texas, was there any reporting?
Did anybody notice large numbers of Republicans switching over to register Democrat and vote in the Democrat primary? No. It wasn’t a story if it was happening and nobody was keeping big track of it. Only when Operation Chaos was launched, publicly, on this program, did the Drive-Bys start paying attention to this stuff. Don’t let them discourage you, ladies and gentlemen. They’re trying to make you think you’re irrelevant and inconsequential but of course that is not the case
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Barbara in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, you have the dubious honor of being our first caller today. Great to have you here.
CALLER: I do. Hi, Rush, how are you?
RUSH: Fine, thank you.
CALLER: I was just telling your commentator, talking about your Operation Chaos, I work at the polls in Pennsylvania, and I personally had three friends call and tell me that they have now reregistered to be Democrats in the Operation Chaos plan. But my point to him was, these people are going to use this as their indicator that the Democratic Party is building, once the primary is over and if they stick to that, I don’t know if a lot of these people will run back and reregister back to Republican, because in the general, they’ll just vote for whoever they want to. And I know in Operation Chaos, they have absolutely no intentions of voting for any Democratic candidate in the general election.
RUSH: Okay, let me see if I understand. You’re worried about that some non-Operation Chaos operatives who have crossed the aisle and registered Democrat won’t bother to go back and reregister Republican, they’ll just vote the way they want.
CALLER: Yes. They won’t change it right away.
RUSH: Right and they’ll still give the Democrats the registration advantage.
CALLER: Right. Well, if you’re using that as their indicator, saying we have all this massive registration —
RUSH: Right. Let’s just wait for the general. That’s why I say, if they want to count election results based on voter registration, let’s pump that up.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: You know, let’s get ’em thinking that they’ve already got this in bag.
CALLER: Yeah. I’ve always had Republicans say to me, ‘I’m very worried about the election because of this amount of surge in the registration in the Democratic Party.’
RUSH: That’s not why people are worried about the election.
CALLER: Well, I’ve had some people say that to me, and I said, ‘I know people that have reregistered.’
RUSH: Yeah, I know that’s anecdotal, but that’s not why Republicans are worried about the election.