I am copying this open letter posted as aTownhall.Com blog to you as one of several influential conservative talk radio hosts, at least, some of whom, I believe are on the verge of making a colossal mistake during this 2008 presidential campaign. I hope you will seriously consider what I have to say. I am not talking about the vociferous criticism of Senator McCain that seems to be quite in vogue on conservative talk radio these days. That's just a relatively small mistake that may become a very big mistake if it continues and/or escalates. The bigger mistake, if it occurs, will be a disastrous misstep on the right' s dealing with the Democrat candidates.

The mistake I am calling “colossal” will occur if you or people thinking as you do, encourage Republican and Independent crossover voters in places like Ohio and Texas to vote for Hillary rather than for Obama. Sean Hannity, for example, has recently announced a cessation of his "Stop Hillary Express" for fear that Obama may defeat her. Some Express! Even more recently he said to a guest or a caller to his program that he preferred Hillary to win the Democratic nomination. Within a few minutes of making that statement he said on the same program that he considered Hillary and the Clintons to be the most corrupt dangerous and destructive politicians in America or the world. With peculiar thinking like that one begins to understand why the express has been derailed. 

The mistaken rationale for all of this by these folks seems to be that Obama will be more difficult for McCain to beat than she will be. For what it's worth, I strongly disagree and think, in spite of the current polls, it is a very mistaken notion, and that he would be far easier to beat than she would.  But, even if it were true that he would be more difficult for McCain to defeat, it is still the wrong strategy to help Hillary against him. And it is wrong big time. Remember, odds are good—probably greater than 55 to 45—one of them will be the next President. It can only be right to help her if people think that Obama would make a worse president than Hillary. Neither of them can be attractive to those of us on the right: but surely few on the right can think that Hillary would be preferable to Obama. Think about it for just a minute. I know he is considered marginally more liberal than her – but consider, without minimizing it, all her corruption; divisiveness; viciousness and other baggage; not to mention restoring her husband to incredible power. How could you ever be part of that?   Even by neglect? If Obama is preferable, as I believe he clearly is, it behooves us to support Obama now and help him defeat her now -- while she is staggering. Knocking her out now once and for all is likely to be the best, even the only chance we will ever get to do so. She is weak at the moment. But she will never be out until she is out. And we have a chance to help Obama put her out. McCain is very unlikely to be able to do that, but as argued below, he might beat Obama.

Look at it this way. Suppose you entered a contest and know you have definitely won a house for your very own. But let's also suppose that you don't yet know which house you have won. You do, however, know it will come down to a coin flip between just two of them. Now suppose further there are only three possible houses remaining out of an original dozen or so that you might have won. You are told that house M will definitely be in the coin flip and that you can choose which of the other two houses, house H or house O, will also be part of the final coin flip. You are grateful that you have this important choice in eliminating the least desirable house so you can avoid being stuck with it in the end if you lose the coin flip. 

Based on your earlier inspection of all the houses you know that house M, though far from your ideal, is a pretty decent and solid old house built on a strong foundation. It is a little weather worn but it has withstood storms and severe hurricanes extremely well and overall it has a pretty good reputation for long-standing integrity throughout the neighborhood. 

House O is the newest house in the neighborhood. It is three-stories high, but a bit narrow. It’s painted in earth-tones with some nice decorative touches, and it gives off incredibly positive vibes to most passers-by. Little is known about the inside though, since it hasn't been opened to the public yet, but it looks really good from the outside. Pleasant music can be heard emanating from its Windows and lots of people like to go there and have happy times near it: sometimes a lot of people gather to admire and chat about the house or join together to picnic and listen to the nice music. One can but wonder if they would find it as pleasant and inspirational on the inside as it seems to be -- indeed is -- on the outside.  You doubt it is right for you, because what limited parts you can see of the staircase, room shapes, kitchen, and wallpaper when you look in the windows gives you great pause. It’s definitely not your style. But it’s bright and shiny, modern, and filled with nice music. It is not a large house, though it is tall: nor does it appear as solid or sturdy as is the much larger house M. And house O has not been tested in a real hurricane. It seems unlikely it would very well withstand one of any real force, however, since one can see it swaying a bit with any high wind. Since it is so much lighter and smaller than house M, house M will probably serve you and meet your needs much better than house O. House M will certainly withstand severe storms better, at least, in the short term, and you prefer its sturdy integrity in spite of what it lacks in style. 

House H is the kind of house that you either love or hate. If you love it, it's got to be because you're somehow enthralled or, perhaps, under some witch's spell. There is little rational basis for doing so. Though it has very little going for it, it will somehow seem to fit you perfectly and meet your needs. You will like it and be charmed by it. Others who dislike it will think it is kind of a spooky chimera house with lots of ghosts, and mystery, and believe it is filled with skeletons in the closets and possible traps around every corner. And, while there is a stink of rot and corruption in many of its rooms, a stink usually acknowledged even by those charmed ones who love it, it's kind of like a soap opera house with many rumors of affairs, schemes, temper tantrums and tears: and there are stories of love and hate, passion and sex, intrigue, theft, sleight-of-hand, bribery, and even drugs and murder. But many, nevertheless – or, perhaps, because of the intrigue and mystery -- love house H above all others; they find inspiration and hope and beauty there: some of these and many others write glowingly of it. Those who view house H favorably seem quite immune to any of its odiferous idiosyncrasies or shortcomings. They disbelieve the scary stories. And they find those who spread them and who dislike the house to be offensive and with serious shortcomings—even spiritual flaws. They want little or nothing to do with them preferring to only seek out others who also like the house and feel an affinity with it. Some may even find a sort of affiliation or identification with its glamorous bad/house image and long for a return to the neighborhood of its former inhabitants: the shape-changers who sold curious elixirs and delightful snake-oils—other people in the hood be damned. And in their writings and talks they often give house H a patina of respectability and victimhood that covers over its rot and instability and makes it far more attractive, or far less unattractive, than is justified. But love it or hate it, it is certainly a uniquely curious house with powerful appeal to many.

But you're not one of those. House H is likely to be the least desirable house you can imagine; not just for the above reasons and stinky smells that emanate from it. Not just because you may find it somewhat scary. But also because upon a very simple inspection you have found, incredibly, that it is without a foundation. So it's an easy call for you to eliminate it as a prize you would ever, under any circumstances, want to win. You want a choice between house M and house O with no chance, whatsoever, to win house H -- if possible. So you will do what you can to eliminate, not increase, that chance. Your choice is that you want house O in the final coin-flip with house M. So you enthusiastically eliminate house H.

Now let's name the three houses: McCain, Obama, and Hillary. And let’s apply the analogies to the presidential sweepstakes. Who do we want as our final two choices?

You know for sure that one of the three houses (McCain)will be in the final coin flip, but you don't know which one of the other two (Hillary or Obama) will be in the final coin flip. You only know that one of those two (Hillary or Obama) will be in the coin flip and you will win either that house or the one that you already know is in (McCain). Let's further suppose that you don't find any of the three houses (Presidential Candidates) particularly to your liking, but house M (McCain) is bigger and sounder than both the others and you’ve seen and know what he’s like inside. This is also true of Hillary, we know what she is like inside, but it is less true of Obama. You clearly prefer to win house M (McCain).

But he is only about 45% to win. That means the others are close to 55%. Let’s grant for argument’s sake that polls and those who think McCain’s chances increase if the other choice is the baggage laden Hillary and Bill Clinton team. Polls, as I write, show the difference gain around 3 or 4 percent. That still leaves McCain less than 50% likely to win and Hillary over 50% likely to win. Most conservatives, and I’m sure that includes you, see a Hillary/Bill Clinton co-presidency as disastrous—if not catastrophic. It makes no sense to take a greater than 50% chance she will become the president if we don’t have to. And we don’t. If we support Obama with cross-overs the chances of him beating her are much greater than 50 %. With a real campaign subtly encouraged by influential talk radio conservatives such as you—something like what was done for Lieberman in Connecticut, but less overt—the chances of defeating Hillary are likely as much as 65%, 70% or even 75%. It’s by far our best shot.

But it’s even better than all of that because McCain’s chances of beating Obama are much better than his chances of beating Hillary. I won’t go into all the reasons, but here are a few of them.

McCain’s main strength is going to be experience and machismo. He loses both of these areas against Hillary and gains both of them against Obama. The age factor will become an advantage rather than a disadvantage in a McCain Obama matchup. The contrast is so striking it will be unavoidably conspicuous. It won’t even require mentioning. But Obama’s youthfulness will act only as a counter-weight to McCain’s age, making it a wash. McCain loses that against Clinton where he is easily depicted as too old while she is not easily depicted as too young. And he gains much more for experience against Obama that he does against Clinton.

Mano a mano, McCain wins again. It’s the soldier war-hero, old grizzled warrior, against the college-boy, gentleman from Harvard. It’s no contest and plays into McCain’s strength and major campaign theme difference on national security, foreign affairs, and fighting Al Qaeda. He not only loses all of this to Hillary, but he gets clobbered by feminist sexism and squeamishness in face of brutality far more than would be the case with Obama. It becomes peace-loving first woman President against war-mongering old white man again. Women voters outnumber men and the gender gaps will be to her advantage. And if the polls aren’t favorable, she can always create an occasion to shed a tear or two: play the victim and have the image reinforced in the media onto sympathy-dupes.

The press will be for whichever Democrat wins, and in that sense it’s a wash. But it will feel a need to over-compensate if Hillary is the Democrat nominee because it went against her in the fight with Obama. There will be guilt, dissonance, and high levels of over-compensation, with an incredibly unashamed bias activated for her. It will be much more than will be the case if Obama is the nominee, where they may actually feel they went a little over board for him against Hillary. This is a huge unseen factor. Furthermore the Clinton machine will kick in with all its incredible skill and strong synergies for camp-cooperation when it comes to using and manipulating a compliant or supporting media. Obama has none, or very little, of this capacity, in-place talent pool, or psychologically advantageous reservoir to call on. The Clintons can exercise direct influence on a supporting media while Obama is dependent on the whims of a supporting media. Again Obama is much weaker.

Finally, analysis of the cost-benefit ratios is nearly all on the side of helping Obama not Clinton. The worst-case scenario for helping Obama is that if McCain then loses to Obama where Hillary somehow would not also have won -- a very low probability scenario -- then we are stuck with Obama. Not good, but not nearly as big a disaster as being stuck with Hillary. At least, we would be done with the Clintons. And with his lack of experience and being devoid of the formidable Clinton machine Obama would likely be less of a political challenge for the right. Additionally, and not to be sneezed at, an Obama presidency would certainly be salutary with respect to race-relations in America: at the very least, it would serve to significantly undermine, once and for all, the false notion that America is a racist country.

On the other hand, the worst-case scenario for helping Clinton is that if McCain then loses to Clinton where Obama somehow would not also have won -- a much higher probability scenario than above -- then we are stuck with the Clintons. Not good is an understatement. Catastrophic is accurate. No more needs to be said, except to ask how could anyone on the right want to in any way contribute to that.

Finally, if Obama loses to Hillary, there is a very high likelihood that McCain will have to run against him anyway as her Vice Presidential candidate. And in that role he is likely to be at least as formidable a campaign opponent as he would be as a Presidential candidate because he will be less inhibited and more inclined to take off the gloves. There is essentially no chance she will be his VP choice.

What is at stake?

Karl Rove speaks of the 2000 elections as an election that Al Gore and the Democrats should have won easily. For all his prowess and political skill, he has it exactly wrong. The 2000 election was an election that George Bush and the Republicans should have won easily. Gore was correct in distancing himself from the toxic Clintons during the campaign. But he should have done it earlier. He ran a very good campaign. Rove seems to think Gore (as an extension of the Clinton administration) should have embraced the Clinton record and ran on it. But Gore was insufficiently adept to run on the Clinton record as separate from the Clinton corruption. And he surely understood this better than most. 

His mistake came earlier when after long avoidance he reluctantly climbed down off the fence regarding the issues surrounding Clinton's impeachment; he finally supported and defended Clinton rather than criticizing and reproaching him.  But he needed to stand against Clinton, or at least chide him. He didn't. And that was his enormous -- but little recognized -- mistake. That's when the dye was cast and there was no recovering, although Gore gave it a good effort and almost succeeded.

In my book I talk about the results of the brutally close 2000 election as primarily a reflection of an effort by the American people to purge themselves and the body politic of the residual toxins of the Clinton presidency. They just barely succeeded by the narrowest imaginable margin. The 2004 election was going to be a critical test of their ability to consolidate the fragile success of that frail purge and keep the fevers at bay. Their success was quite impressive as margins of Bush's victory increased substantially over 2000. 

Just as George W. Bush might well have lost in 2004 without the independent citizens, Veterans of Swift Boats,  group who were hugely instrumental in beating Kerry (a decisive role generally underappreciated by the right—but not the left), so he definitely would have lost in 2000 had it not been for enormous turnout for Bush by the religious right. Rove has been given a lot of credit for that turnout effort and that may well be deserved. But I suspect it was the utter rot of the Clintons that drove them to the polls far more than any organizational effort by Mr. Rove. The Republican Party itself has been largely AWOL in all of this purging effort. George W. Bush’s betrayal through his Justice Department’s inept or non-existent follow-through on investigations of Clinton corruption in office is a White House example. And it blew an enormous, once—maybe twice—in a century, political opportunity under Dennis Hastert’s pathetic leadership. Thus it has proved largely ineffective as an antidote to the toxins, as was demonstrated by the shuddered reaction of the body politic in its 2006 rejection of the Republican Party. These are the reasons both the President and the Congress have such incredibly high -- really, if you step back, "difficult to imagine" low approval ratings. It is why Mitt Romney and others are correct when they say that "Washington is broken." In a time of great crises America is essentially leaderless.

So the consolidation of the purge of Clinton toxins is still not complete -- far from it. Hillary Clinton's candidacy represents a powerful resurgence of the toxin’s strength, as fevers are rising again. McCain and Republicans are unsure long-shot antidotes to effect it. Obama looks like a much more promising antidote that's new on the scene. Untested but promising. Priority number one is to consolidate the purge of Clinton toxins. Let's give Obama support during the primaries: purge the toxins; then deal with the side-effects later. 

Obama represents a desperate reach by a desperate people. Whatever the outcome of that reach might be, the mere possibility of its existence is yet another remarkable tribute to the unique genius of the Founders in embedding and protecting such potentials for resiliency within the democratic principles of the American constitution. Its fruit may yet save us from our elites and even ourselves.

It has not primarily been the Republican Party that has carried the fight against a corrupt Democratic Party. It almost blew an easy one in 2000; it was saved by the veterans of Swift boats in 2004; and it was rejected in failure in 2006. And even now the fight is still too often largely left to new media surrogates who are increasingly defining themselves as independents and libertarians.

The 2004 election was a test of whether or not that purge could be consolidated, and it was. Now, the 2008 presidential election with Hillary Clinton as a powerful leading candidate who has been head of all candidates in polls for most of the early parts of the cycle represents a final test of whether or not that purge can/will be consolidated. The stakes could not be higher.

Every effort must be made to consolidate the purge. Hillary and Bill are down but far from out. They are come-back phenoms. Hannity should restart the stop Hillary express. Others should join him. If we let Hillary escape this time in Texas without trying everything we can to stop her it will, at least, be very stupid: but it may be much worse, even an indication of a right that is masochistic or suicidal.

We must not forget, overlook, or underestimate the aforementioned Clinton political machine. If it survives the amazing Obama challenge—a challenge that can surely succeed with our help—it is very likely nothing will then be able to stop the Clintons in the current environment.

Republican and cross-over voters should not be encouraged to crossover vote for Hillary. That’s insane. You wouldn’t make that choice with a house. Why would you make it in a President? Who wants to risk the corruption personified in the Clintons in the Presidential coin flip? Permitting it loses sight of the, priority-one, ball—purging the Clinton toxins from our body politic. You should encourage just the opposite tactic for crossover voting: since McCain has it wrapped up on the Republican side, there should be encouragement for independents and Republicans to vote for Obama wherever possible -- especially Texas. 

Since, for people such as yourself to do so in the form of your directly personal encouragement or endorsement might be the kiss of death for Obama (it would surely he used against him by the thoroughly corrupt Clinton political machine that, for that very reason, you must not aid in any way) you probably should do it in a more subtle manner. I'm sure you can figure out how to do that better than I. However one suggestion is to simply read parts of this letter or something with the same effect to your listeners. Explain to them that it's an alternative point of view to what you may have been presenting and you want them to consider it as a pretty good argument, and that they should make up their own mind if they have an opportunity for crossover voting. But be sure that the case I have made is fully presented to them, however. Otherwise it is a farce and a disservice to your listeners.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh the other day and a woman called in this connection. The lady who was a Republican from Texas and planned to vote for Obama in the primary mentioned that Rush had a slogan that she disagreed with and she had a slogan of her own. His slogan was, “Keep Her In It So We Can Win It.” He let the caller state her slogan and it ended up that he liked her slogan so much he sent her a bunch of products to share with her large family. I also liked her slogan very much. It pithily expresses exactly the sentiments I am expressing here. It was: "Take Her Out And End All Doubt." This woman really gets it. It remains to be seen if Rush does by also adopting her slogan in place of his own. I certainly hope so, because for the flawless one to blow this the way he has up till now will destroy his many years’ record of perfection in a single fell swoop. It will be a mistake from which he may never fully recover. The same goes, of course, for other right-wing talk radio hosts who are hoping and/or working for Hillary to beat Obama.

Postscripts:

1.       Since I wrote the above Michelle Obama made her silly statement about for the first time being proud of America. This simply underscores the truth of the above argument that Obama will be easier for McCain to defeat than Hillary. Besides the reasons given above, the Obama campaign is much more likely to make a crippling or fatal blunder such as this one may indeed prove to be even in the battle with Clinton—a battle that before it was made was all but won by her husband, and can be yet—especially, with cross-over help from the right.  

2.       I have had little opportunity to listen to talk radio since most of this was written, so it is possible the situation is now different than it seemed earlier. I certainly hope so. Blowing this has far more potential for the long-term fracturing of the Republican Party/Political Right than John McCain’s nomination. If Hillary becomes President because people like Limbaugh or Hannity help her beat Obama and/or because short-sightedly they fail to whole-heartedly support McCain through the easily avoidable error of making the perfect the enemy of the good, I suspect I will be far from the only one who may permanently bail. Elections are always about making the best choice from two imperfect choices. It’s quite simple. My much admired Ann Coulter doesn’t require simplicity. So she and others must be over-thinking it.