Former President Trump complained IN ALL CAPS!!!! on the night of the New Hampshire primary that Democrats and independents were able to cross over and vote in the Republican primary.
Yes, he did very well. Soon after the polls closed in New Hampshire, Trump was declared the winner in the New Hampshire primary — but instead of getting an overwhelming win, he left with only slightly more than 50% of the Republican vote.
Nikki Haley doubled Trump’s spending. She was bankrolled by Democrats and her Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts were operated by Democrats. And her voters? One estimate suggested that as many as 70% of Nikki Haley’s votes were from people other than Republicans.
CNN’s exit polls show that 70% of Nikki Haley voters are NOT registered Republicans. pic.twitter.com/TCq5TH2CAL
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 24, 2024
And what you have to do is give Haley’s team and her Democrat supporters a head nod understood to mean “well played.”
But it’s not as if Republicans haven’t tried the same thing. In fact, as I lay in bed the other night I thought, “Huh, why does this sound familiar?” And then I remembered.
In 2008, I was credited with starting what I called on my KPAM radio show in Portland, Oreg., the “Democrat for a Day” plan. The idea was to make the late Oregon primary count for something by going against the grain and voting for Hillary Clinton and not St. Barack Obama in the primary. I confess, I was a little afraid to suggest it on my show because I was all alone out there. But we got the ball rolling.
Not that you can find these stories anymore on that thing we call the interwebs, but the the Oregonian’s Daide Reinhard wrote a piece about my efforts, the Boston Globe did a story about Democrat for a Day, and then Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham picked up the idea. How could you not?
Related: Who Would Write the Dirty Check to Kill Kari Lake’s Senate Race? The Deadly Parlor Game Begins.
Limbaugh, who bristled that some C-lister was credited with starting the program, rebranded the program and made it famous. He called it Operation Chaos.
And we were off to the races.
Gawd, that hair. That photo.
NBC News reported at the time:
Talk radio hostess Victoria Taft, a familiar Republican voice in the Democratic-leaning Pacific Northwest, said that even in her wildest dreams, she never imagined urging her listeners to vote for Clinton.But these days, Taft is firmly on the New York senator’s bandwagon, along with national conservative talk radio heavyweights like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham.
“I want to vet (Illinois Senator) Barack Obama more than Hillary,” said Taft, whose daily program during prime evening drive-time reaches about 30,000 people. “We know what she is all about, but we don’t know a stinking thing about him.”
Her urging has resonated with listeners like Deborah Whisler, a Tigard-area retiree, who changed her registration from nonaffiliated to Democratic after hearing Taft on the radio.
“I almost can’t say this without choking, but I’m going to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Whisler said. “Just on the basis of finding out more about each candidate.”
My buddies over at Oregon Catalyst ballyhooed the idea, “Can such a plan work? Should it work? A brilliant idea or an abuse of the system? Oh Victoria what have you done? : )”
On my own website I called it “Dummocrat” for a day, but alas, because of a switch of blog formats. my stories on the efforts may be lost for all time.
This wasn’t my first foray into sticking it to the left in Oregon. In 2004, many listeners and I joined leftist Ralph Nader supporters to get the old warhorse on the presidential ballot to split the Democrat vote. MTV, the ROCK THE VOTE!!! people, was totally ticked off about the effort. Nader wanted to pack a school auditorium with 1000 people to qualify him for the ballot under a quirky Oregon law. I was there. But the Democrats ultimately defeated the effort. The Democrat Party cognoscenti’s abacus declared we were 300 people short.
Coincidentally, the attorneys who tried to get Nader on the ballot back then are the same ones who are trying to take Trump off the ballot in Oregon this election season under the 14th Amendment gambit.
Oregon Democrats are a surly bunch. I’m pretty sure they fixed that loophole. Even Democrat New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff’s efforts to run for Oregon governor were absolutely crushed by the local Democrats, though they slavishly adored that snobby elitist.
Nikki Haley didn’t create this game. Apparently I did, or at least the latest iteration of it. So go easy. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
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