The Hammond Report

Shane at Montana Netroots gleefully declares Operation Chaos a failure. He even put in some very clever and funny pictures to go with his glee.

You will recall that Andy had it set in his mind that he would be able to reak havoc and chaos in the Democratic primaries by voting for Hillary Clinton. He claimed that like minded ditto-heads were responsible for her victory in Pennsylvania and predicted they could do the same thing in Montana:

I am officially opening up the Montana Division of Operation Chaos. It's the creation of Rush Limbaugh to create chaos in the Democratic primaries.
[snip]
My goal is to continue Operation Chaos in the Montana Democrat Primary. It's an open primary on June 3 so it will be very easy to just go and vote. It is the last state primary, along with South Dakota, before the National Convention and I am pretty sure Hillary will still be battling so I plan on voting for her. I have also recruited, to date, eight other conservatives to vote for her and plan on recruiting many more.

Well, I am not thinking that his plan worked so well. In fact, judging from the voter counts, I am thinking that a lot of formerly Republican voters crossed over and voted because they liked Obama. We'll see in a few months.

Sure I'm disappointed Hillary didn't do better in Montana. I'm only a small time blogger who got a little exposure in the Montana MSM and only average 130 visits and 360 page views a day. I understand that my call for Chaos was also a call to Obama supporters to rally as they are much more tuned in to the «netroots». This is fine with me and as I've said several times before, I really don't care who wins the nomination. See my post on Obama Fatigue, another benefit of Operation Chaos.

The goal of Operation Chaos was to create chaos in the Democrat primary and keep Hillary in the race for as long as possible. (**anecdote alert!!**)In fact, I know several and received several emails from Conservatives telling me they are going to vote for Obama because they see him as much easier to beat in the general due to his serious character flaws and his anti-American associations. I damn near voted for Obama while I was in the voting booth!

Then in the same post, Shane implies that Operation Chaos may have been responsible for Bob Kelleher winning the Republican nomination for Senate running against Baccus. Who cares!? The Republicans didn't put up a serious candidate against Baccus and for that matter, the Democrats didn't put up a serious candidate against Rehberg. That's why we got Kelleher and Driscoll.

In the meantime, while Andy Professor Chaos and his friends minions were busy trying to «to create chaos in the Democratic primaries», something sort of funny happened. After years and years of running for every position in the land as a member of every party ever conceived, the Republican Party has nominated Bob Kelleher. The Republican party of Montana just nominated the green party candidate from the 2002 Senate race to represent their party in the 2008 Senate race.

I don't really know anything about Bob, other than he has ran for Governor four times, congress once and president once. All of these as a Democrat. In 2002 he ran for US Senate under the banner of the Green Party. His big issue? Convert America to a unicameral parliamentary system. Now he is the official nominee of the Republican party of the state of Montana for the position of US Senate.

Good work Andy Professor Chaos. The debates are going to be a BLAST!

So which is it? A failure or a success? Was it a failure because Obama won? (which is a gross misunderstanding of what Operation Chaos is really about) Was it a success because Republicans were voting for Hillary and ended up allowing a kook to to be nominated to run against Baccus?

I call it a success. It kept Hillary in the race to the end. It created angst and uncertainty within the Democrat party. It split the party where I'm not so sure those difference can be completely repaired. Finally, it created Obama Fatigue.

Now we move into the next stages of Operation Chaos. More to come...