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Thursday, May 8, 2008
Rush and the GOP crossovers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On the day after the two Democratic presidential candidates split victories, Barack Obama supporters — and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh — were quick to attribute her Indiana victory to crossover Republicans.
“If it hadn’t been for Republicans taking Democratic ballots,” said former Demo nominee John Kerry, an Obama supporter, “they likely would have won in Indiana too. There really is no masquerade now — Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary and the GOP has clearly declared that they want Senator Clinton as a candidate.”
Obama strategist David Axelrod attributed the margin to Limbaugh and to cross-over Republicans. And, indeed, there was some indications that Republicans were making sport of the Democratic division in an effort to prolong the fight. Obama does seem inevitable, largely because the Democratic Party can’t risk denying him the nomination and thus offending one of the party’s most loyal constituencies. About 90 percent of blacks vote Democratic, slightly higher for women than men, and in the primaries about 90 percent of black Democrats voted for Obama. If Obama’s denied the nomination and they sit home in November, Hillary’s toast. Oh, the mess of it all.
Pollsters and pundits have lined up to draw attention to the racial divide in voting — it’s quite obvious and certainly relevant to November — asking repeatedly how voters who consider race an important factor intend to vote in the general election.
In Indiana, according to media reports of exit polls, 13 percent of white voters said race was important in their vote — a group that presumably includes those who consider it either a positive or a negative factor in their decision. Of those, 49 percent said they would support Obama against McCain.
The more shocking number, however, is that of the large marjority of whites who said race was not an important factor, a third in Indiana and about 36 percent in North Carolina will vote for McCain or sit it out if Obama is the nominee. In Indiana, Republicans and independents could vote in Tuesday’s Democratic primary so some of the one-third of whites who intend to vote McCain in November could be Republican cross-overs. In North Carolina, though, registered Republicans couldn’t vote in the Democratic primary Tuesday.
Without doubt I’d prefer Hillary to Obama as President, assuming that John McCain blows it. She’s more seasoned. She won’t venture too far, in policy terms, from the polls. As the last few months have established, she’s tough and she can take a punch. She bounces back when she’s down. She won’t foolishly surrender our gains in Iraq because she’s wrapped up in slogans and buzzwords — change moving forward — unmindful of the consequences.
Obama, on the other hand, took three weeks to get to the right place on Jeremiah Wright. And I keep repeating this: He sat an listened to 20 years of anti-American hate preach before his perspective broadened enough for him to hear. He will surrender Iraq and I have no confidence that his judgment is sound on national security matters.
The point, really, though is that Republicans and those intend to vote for McCain in November should resist the temptation to play games in the Hillary-Obama race. Recent primaries and Hillary’s resiliance — her ability to take a punch — convince me she’d be the stronger nominee against McCain. Republican should’t help Democrats out of the mess they’re in.
But more importantly, either McCain or the Democratic nominee will be President next January. And if I can’t have the candiate that I think would be best for America, I’d at least like to have the second-best.
