How Rush Limbaugh outsmarted himself

Now that the specter of a Barack Obama presidency seems like a fleeting nightmare, it's time to reconsider the wisdom of Republican crossover voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Texas.

As you may recall, Clinton was on the ropes at the time. She needed a big win in Texas just to stay in the race.

She got it – with a little help from her enemies.

I am absolutely persuaded the size of her victories in Texas and Ohio were swelled by national conservative talk-radio hosts who urged listeners to cast ballots for Hillary.

The idea was to keep Clinton's hopes alive so that the Democratic Party might self-destruct in a heated convention floor fight between Obama supporters and Hillary supporters.

I think it's safe to say this strategy may have backfired.

First, Barack Obama's candidacy is toast. His 20-year ties to an extremist, racist lunatic by the name of Jeremiah Wright did him in. There is no recovering from the damage done by Wright's hate speech, on full display for the nation in media coverage over the last week.

Second, Hillary's campaign has new life. She will win Pennsylvania and every other primary leading up to the convention and the nomination will be hers.

Whom should she thank? Rush Limbaugh.

I hate to say it. Rush is a friend. I love listening to him. He is one of the most entertaining people on the planet. But it was this crossover voting inspired by him and a few other talk-show hosts that kept Hillary's candidacy alive – positioning her for the collapse of the Obama campaign.

They outsmarted themselves.

I had a bad feeling about it at the time.

I recalled my own thoughts along the same lines years ago, when I lived in California. There were a number of Democrats running to be the nominee for governor at the time. There was only one Republican, Dan Lungren, vying for that party's nomination. So I decided to vote as a Democrat and to pick the least likely candidate to be able to win.

I picked a dull bureaucrat with no charisma, no accomplishments and no natural constituency. His name was Gray Davis.

Needless to say, he won the nomination and beat Lungren in the general election – inducing my family's hurried exodus from the Golden State, not to mention power failures, an economic crisis and an eventual recall election.

I outsmarted myself, too.

That's why I was suspicious of this effort to save Hillary's political career.

Just think where we would be had Obama won Texas.

Hillary would probably have quit the race. Everyone knew she had to win that state. Had she been defeated then, Obama would be the only Democratic candidate standing when Jeremiah Wright's sociopathic ramblings were played for the entire nation. Essentially, the Democrats would be up the creek with no paddle – and wouldn't that be just too bad?

But that is not the case now.

Hillary is still hanging around. She just got the big break she needed – even if it did come from an unlikely ally. She is now nearly guaranteed to be the Democratic presidential nominee.

How do I feel about that?

I'm really kind of angry.

We could have been done with Hillary. We could have buried her.

Had she not been able to secure the nomination, her career in national politics was probably over. She has been given new life by people who should have known better.

Now we will get Hillary in 2008 and Obama will have four years to remake his image – outside the shadow of Jeremiah Wright.

I think we would have been better off allowing Democrats to mess things up by themselves. They were well on the way to choosing a candidate who could never have won the general election.

Now they just may have someone who is battle tested.

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