No matter what El Rushbo may say publicly, it would’ve been better for the GOP had Hillary in won North Carolina. A LOT better. Or, at the very least, won Indiana by a more commanding margin than she did. Which wasn’t very commanding at all.

The numbers:

Clinton: 641,734 51%
Obama: 623,294 49%

Clinton won Indiana by only 18,440 votes. And yet John McCain only won 77% of the Indiana vote. Which means there were 33%, or 92,127 Republicans who were actually voting for people OTHER than John McCain.

McCain: 318,374 77%
Huckabee: 41,063 10%
Paul: 31,557 8%
Romney: 19,507 5%

Look. No matter what you think of John McCain (and I’m certainly not his biggest fan) he IS the Republican nominee. So it makes absolutely NO sense to vote for Huckabee, Romney, Paul or even Keys at this point. “Sending a message” is all fine and dandy if the Democrat nominee was in the bag as well, but when you have an opportunity to muck up the the opposing party without affecting your own party, there’s never a good reason NOT to do it.

And yes, Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos, which owes nods to the styles of strategic election politics in many parts of Europe, was a brilliant idea. Yes, I said it. Simply because the Republican party benefits the longer the Democratic primary process drags on. And that is a fact. It is not arguable. And the only way to do that is to keep Hillary in it. But barely.

And when you have Republicans not only voting for McCain, the guy who’s ALREADY won the nod, but voting for people who are no longer even in the race… you are wasting your vote, and hurting your party.

Let’s look at North Carolina: Obama won by 232,726 votes

Obama: 890,723 56%
Clinton: 657,997 42%
No Preference: 22,722 1%

And here’s where the Republicans really shot themselves in the foot:

McCain: 381,146 73%
Huckabee: 62,888 12%
Paul: 40,277 8%
No Preference: 20,306 4%
Keyes: 13,591 3%

Not only is that 73% of the Republican party wasting their vote on someone who’s already won, that’s a whopping 26%, or 137,062 votes that easily could’ve gone for Hillary. And for chaos. And for a Red State victory in November. Something that, based on the last 8 years, really should not happen.

At the very least, those 137,062 votes would’ve made Hillary look a lot better, and more likely to stay in the race a lot longer.

Sure. Hillary could still decide to stay in this race until the convention, which would be the best possible scenario for the Reps. But even if she decides to drop out in the next week, the damage caused to this point by Operation Chaos will be better than no damage at all.

Oh well Rush. It was better than nothing. Which is what McCain was doing.