Rushbo says he couldn't care less who wins the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He just wants the two surviving candidates to beat up on each other as long as possible, hopefully...

Not because he suddenly likes her after all these years of anti-Clinton rants. Nor, judging by what he's said on the air, because he's a huge fan of the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain , who isn't conservative enough for the broadcaster.

Usually as shy and retiring as, say, P.T. Barnum , the influ ential conservative radio talk-show host is in his bombastic element these past couple of months, ordering many of his 12 million-plus obedient daily listeners to switch their voting registration presumably from the Republican party and go cast a ballot wherever they are for Sen. Hillary Clinton .

Rush Limbaugh, the self-appointed Commander-in-Chief of Operation Chaos, is puffing on his immense cigar and gloating at this very moment in his Florida bunker. And preparing to celebrate two more grand and glorious political victories over Democrats today, no matter who wins the primaries in Indiana and Florida.

into their national convention in Denver in late August.

In fact, the maverick maestro admitted during a Fox News interview Monday that he thinks Sen. Barack Obama will ultimately win the Democratic nomination. But the freshman Illinois senator will be a lot more bruised than he would have been had he floated to easy victories all winter and into the spring as Clinton fell behind in votes, delegates and money.

Nobody really knows, of course, how influential Limbaugh has actually been, although the promotional publicity for him and his program has been absolutely priceless. Anecdotal evidence suggests many thousands of Republicans did, in fact, cross over to vote for Clinton, which, frankly, is fine with her. She'll take anybody's vote these days.

All Rush is saying is that he urged Texas Republicans, without a real contest of their own, to cross over and vote for Clinton and she won the state's popular vote. And he urged Ohio Republicans to cross over. And she also won there big-time, raising disturbing doubts about Obama's ability to win the populous heartland industrial states that Democrats need for a November victory.

And then Rush urged Republicans to cross over in Pennsylvania. Which they did. And Clinton won again by nearly 10 points.

So Rush is just saying.

He's also just saying that Obama hasn't won a primary since Feb. 22, that Clinton has slowed his momentum and landed numerous blows, and Obama and his wife Michelle have stumbled a little on their own with the Rev. Wright business and being proud to be American for the first time and all.

It's all helped to bring the freshman senator down to earth and turn him into a mortal politician instead of the unstoppable evangelical force he was early on in the nominee selection process coming out of Iowa.

"Our definition of success," Rush says, "is that there be chaos. Our original purpose was to bloody up the messianic Obama. We don't care which one gets it as long as neither one gets it in the primaries. We want the fight to proceed into the convention."

On Sunday during her appearance on ABC's "This Week," when Clinton praised a Republican audience member who'd decided to vote Democratic, the host, George Stephanopoulos, noted that Limbaugh was urging the same thing.

"Oh," Clinton said with a wave of her hand, "he's always had a crush on me."

Hardly. Asked about that, Limbaugh told a story instead about ex-President Clinton allegedly "hitting on" Rush's date last year in a New York restaurant.

Rush admits he's worried though about Indiana today. One of his well-informed sources told him that Clinton's internal polls had her losing the Hoosier State, which would be a stiff blow for the New York senator, especially since she's also been trailing in North Carolina polls.

"That's why," Limbaugh explains using the royal we, "we've issued orders to our operatives in Indiana today to get out and vote for Hillary Clinton."

We'll see tonight if enough followed their commander's orders to prolong the Democratic chaos.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Photo Credit: RushLimbaugh.com