March 5, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Limbaugh applauds Republicans voting for Bernie to slow down Biden in Dem primaries ahead of Mich., Wash. and Mo. on March 10
Conservative
radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is applauding Republican voters who are
participating in the Democratic primaries for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as a means
of slowing down former Vice President Joe Biden — and it could potentially have
an impact in Michigan, Washington and Missouri on March 10 where there are no
party registration barriers to voting. On March 3, Limbaugh highlighted efforts
by Republican voters who are participating in what he called “Operation Chaos,”
pulling the lever remarkably for Sanders, a self-described democratic
socialist. Limbaugh said, “For whom are these Republican Operation Chaos voters
voting, do you think? Can there be any doubt? They’re voting for Bernie
Sanders.” The common view is that Bernie will be easier for President Donald
Trump to beat, apparently shared by Democrats. Biden's greatest appeal at the
moment appears to be that he is facing Sanders. Now, with all the momentum,
Biden’s a bigger target, perhaps making Republican voters more willing to
participate in Limbaugh’s maneuver in order to slow Biden down — all to the
benefit of President Donald Trump, who hopes to exploit Democratic divisions
this year in his reelection bid.
Video: Biden, Bloomberg and Bernie, virus in our nation and Brady speculation!
Joe Biden’s big win
on Super Tuesday paints a big target on his campaign.
Video: Two-man race between Biden and Bernie helps Trump in 2020 the longer it goes on
The longer the
Democratic presidential primary goes on, and the more attacks Bernie Sanders
and Joe Biden make on each other and divide Democrats, the more likely
President Donald Trump is to be reelected in November.
Kyle Smith: Democrats should be very, very nervous with Biden
“Voting on
perceived electability has left the Dems in a strange place, though. Joe Biden?
Really? We know Joe Biden. He was in the Senate for 36 years. He ran for
president in 1988, and again in 2008, before serving two terms as Barack
Obama’s vice president. There is no precedent for a career politician’s
reaching the top after such an extended period in the national spotlight. He
doesn’t inspire the kind of passion that Obama did and Bernie Sanders does… Biden
looks moderate only in the context of the insanity that is gripping the
Democratic Party, only by comparison to wackadoodles such as Warren and
Sanders. He has so far escaped scrutiny for the implications of his policy
proposals, such as a ‘public option’ for health insurance that would inevitably
destroy the private insurance market. He was specifically asked whether this
could happen by the New York Times and replied, ‘Bingo. . . . Sure they would.’
He blithely said that when employer-based private health insurance dies out,
people could simply go on ‘the Biden plan.’ His health-care policy is just a
slo-mo version of Sanders’s and Warren’s policy. He has called for massive tax
hikes, offered public health care for illegal immigrants, said such immigrants
should not be deported if they’re convicted of drunk driving, and endorsed the
$93 trillion boondoggle known as the Green New Deal.”
Limbaugh applauds Republicans voting for Bernie to slow down Biden in Dem primaries ahead of Mich., Wash. and Mo. on March 10
By Robert Romano
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Donald Trump, is applauding Republican voters who are participating in the Democratic primaries and voting for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as a means of slowing down former Vice President Joe Biden — and it could potentially have an impact in Michigan, Washington and Missouri on March 10 where there are no party registration barriers to voting.
On March 3, Limbaugh highlighted efforts by Republican voters who are participating in what he called “Operation Chaos,” pulling the lever remarkably for Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist. Limbaugh said, “For whom are these Republican Operation Chaos voters voting, do you think? Can there be any doubt? They’re voting for Bernie Sanders.”
The common view is that Bernie will be easier for President Donald Trump to beat, apparently shared by Democrats. Biden's greatest appeal at the moment appears to be that he is facing Sanders.
Limbaugh outlined his own rationale for Operation Chaos, which he came up with in 2008: “Operation Chaos was created by me in 2008 to get Republicans in primary states where their votes no longer matter because McCain had become the nominee, to switch over and vote for Hillary to keep the Democrat race going… [T]here’s no reason for Republicans to stay home and vote in their own primaries because Trump’s the nominee. He’s unopposed.”
Limbaugh added, “So Republicans are taking the occasion of the Operation Chaos we started back in 2008 are now doing it again. On their own without any urging from me, they are joining the Democrat primary.” And they’re voting for Bernie.
But so far, Operation Chaos voters do not appear to have had too much of an impact — their efforts were highlighted in Texas, South Carolina and Virginia, all states that Biden won easily — but that might change going forward after Super Tuesday has propelled Biden to Democratic frontrunner status with the most delegates.
Now, with all the momentum, Biden’s a bigger target, perhaps making Republican voters more willing to participate in Limbaugh’s maneuver in order to slow Biden down — all to the benefit of President Donald Trump, who hopes to exploit Democratic divisions this year in his reelection bid.
Sanders has a tough slog ahead, with Biden leading Michigan and Missouri in the latest polls. Sanders narrowly beat Hillary Clinton in Michigan and lost to Clinton barely in Missouri in 2016.
To remain competitive, Sanders needs to repeat his success in these two states and do better than he did in 2016 there, not worse, or he may fade very quickly with the party establishment quickly coalescing around Biden.
Once again, the Sanders campaign is highlighting divisions within the Democratic Party, with younger voters favoring the more radical socialist candidate, Sanders, and older voters opting for Biden. Sanders’ path the nomination, if he still has one, is a narrow and difficult one, requiring him to build out his coalition beyond his core base.
It’s up to Sanders to show that his socialist platform has broad appeal in the Democratic Party. So far, that has not happened, even as his campaign has energized younger voters. It’s just not enough, at least not right now.
Give it a generation, with Baby Boomers dying off and Millennials and Generation Xers becoming the prime voters, and the Democratic Party could look a lot different and one day lead to a socialist nominee. Sanders could just be ahead of his time.
As it is, in 2020, Sanders’ only hope appears to be to slow down Biden enough to force a convention showdown where neither candidate has enough delegates to win on the first ballot in Milwaukee.
Meaning, Operation Chaos or no, Sanders needs to perform well in open primaries like Missouri and Washington — Michigan is technically “closed” but still lacks a party registration requirement, and so Republicans can still show up and request a Democratic ballot if they sign for it — on March 10 where crossover voters can show he has independent appeal. Otherwise, Biden may make very short work of Sanders.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Video: Biden, Bloomberg and Bernie, virus in our nation and Brady speculation!
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-qqK08IhI
Video: Two-man race between Biden and Bernie helps Trump in 2020 the longer it goes on
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DnyvtI89R4
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from National Review, Kyle Smith notes the flaws of former Vice President Joe Biden as a candidate:
Democrats should be very, very nervous with Biden
By Kyle Smith
If doddering Joe Biden is your party’s best hope, your party might be in deep trouble.
So, let me get this straight.
After a year of campaigning, discussion, and debate among the Democrats, as of early February the party had decided Joe Biden was the favorite for its presidential nomination: He led in 19 of the 21 national polls taken before the Iowa caucuses. Then people started to vote, and it turned out they didn’t like Biden at all. He finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire, and a distant second in Nevada. As of last week, the Democrats had decided to be an openly socialist party: Bernie Sanders led 20 consecutive national polls after Iowa, half of them by double digits. And then, this week, Democrats decided not to be socialist after all: They just gave Biden, the doddering avatar of the party establishment, a resounding Super Tuesday victory.
Maybe the Democrats really have no actual policy except beating Donald Trump. Biden and Sanders haven’t been saying anything new this year. (Though it’s possible voters were unaware that Sanders was so extreme he would — in 2020! —go as far as publicly defending Fidel Castro’s Cuba in both a 60 Minutes segment and the South Carolina debate). The thing that has changed twice is voting momentum and its attendant publicity. Sanders rocketed up in the polls when he looked like a winner, and Biden surpassed him after building momentum from a blowout win in South Carolina. Mike Bloomberg looked like a loser from the moment Elizabeth Warren tenderized him in the Las Vegas debate, and today dropped out after spending $500 million to win American Samoa.
Voting on perceived electability has left the Dems in a strange place, though. Joe Biden? Really? We know Joe Biden. He was in the Senate for 36 years. He ran for president in 1988, and again in 2008, before serving two terms as Barack Obama’s vice president. There is no precedent for a career politician’s reaching the top after such an extended period in the national spotlight. He doesn’t inspire the kind of passion that Obama did and Bernie Sanders does. His appeal seems to rest almost completely on name recognition and his association with Obama. Despite heroic efforts by the media to absolve Biden of any wrongdoing when the Ukraine scandal revealed he’d allowed family members to use his name to rake in huge amounts of money from foreign entities, recent polls put his unfavorable ratings at between 44 and 52 percent.
Yes, Biden beats Trump regularly in head-to-head polls, but you can ask Hillary Clinton about how much beating Trump in early polls is worth. In just the past ten days, he has claimed half the population of the country died of gunshot wounds, forgotten what office he is running for, asked voters to support him on “Super Thursday,” and offered this précis of our nation’s founding principle: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by — you know, you know, the thing.”
Even at his best, Biden was notorious for being loopy, digressive, and sloppy, and he’s long past his best. Clarence Thomas noted of Biden’s line of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings, “You have to sit there and look attentively at people [who] you know have no idea what they are talking about.” His bizarre 2012 debate with Paul Ryan consisted of bursts of strangely out-of-context laughter and boorish interruptions. His own aides panic every time he goes off-script, to such a degree that David Axelrod once quipped that Biden was being kept in a “candidate-protection program.” When he starts riffing, he is given to making false claims such as that he was arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison. His answer to all questions in debate is a subject, a verb, and Obama.
Moreover, Biden looks moderate only in the context of the insanity that is gripping the Democratic Party, only by comparison to wackadoodles such as Warren and Sanders. He has so far escaped scrutiny for the implications of his policy proposals, such as a “public option” for health insurance that would inevitably destroy the private insurance market. He was specifically asked whether this could happen by the New York Times and replied, “Bingo. . . . Sure they would.” He blithely said that when employer-based private health insurance dies out, people could simply go on “the Biden plan.” His health-care policy is just a slo-mo version of Sanders’s and Warren’s policy. He has called for massive tax hikes, offered public health care for illegal immigrants, said such immigrants should not be deported if they’re convicted of drunk driving, and endorsed the $93 trillion boondoggle known as the Green New Deal.
On top of all of this, Biden would be the oldest president ever — he’s older than the oldest boomer, and would be older on his first day in office than Ronald Reagan was on his last day. No one knows how mentally agile he’ll be tomorrow, much less in November. If a man who could come completely unglued on live television at any moment is your party’s best hope, your party should be very, very nervous.
