BALTIMORE (Map, News) - With Hillary Clinton’s 40-point win in West Virginia on Tuesday, it looks as if the former first lady’s campaign will endure at least another week.

And with it will continue the protracted, pointless infighting between Sen. Barack Obama’s and Clinton’s camps, sending lots of Democratic money down the primary money pit with the general election less than six months away.

In other words, it’s the Democrats’ worst nightmare, outside of military success in Iraq.

Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos may be a small part of Clinton’s electoral success. And it’s a small, yet sweet, consolation for Republicans and conservatives less than enthusiastic about Sen. John McCain.

For those with normal lives who are therefore not addicted to talk radio and major-media coverage of the presidential race, let me explain what Limbaugh is doing and why he’s doing it.

Before the March 5 primaries in Texas and Ohio, radio host Limbaugh suggested that voters in both states cross the partisan aisle if need be to vote for Clinton. At the time, Obama appeared poised to finish Clinton off, and Limbaugh concluded Obama needed to be “bloodied up politically.”

Clinton won those two ultra-important states, prolonging the campaign enough for voters all across the country to get to know Obama a little more. And that hasn’t exactly been a good thing for Obama, as Clinton’s victories illustrate.

Whether Limbaugh’s operation has in fact been the cause of any of this isn’t known, though there is polling data from various state contests suggesting Republican crossovers into Democratic primaries were a little more likely to vote for Clinton.

When confronted by callers over the propriety of helping — or hindering — the Democrats choose their candidate, Limbaugh often responds thus: We’re trying to pick their candidate because they picked ours.

By “they” he means Democrats and the mainstream media. And he has a point.

Many Democrats and independents in New Hampshire, especially, crossed over to vote for McCain in 2000 and in 2008. Whether they’ll stay with the GOP in November is still very much in question.

Many in the media pulled hard for the “maverick” McCain against President Bush in the 2000 campaign, and that support continued through some cash-strapped periods on his way to the 2008 GOP nomination.

Republicans wouldn’t mind support from these quarters if it was being attracted by McCain’s conservative stances.

But it’s been his splits with conservatism that garner him good press, on immigration, campaign finance reform, the Gang of 14 on the confirmation of federal judges and, most recently, the environment.

“John McCain broke with the Bush administration and Republican Party orthodoxy Monday as he not only declared global warming real but reached out to Democrats and independents with a free-market solution that includes capping carbon-fuel emissions,” The Associated Press reported after McCain’s big environmental speech Monday.

If it seems odd that a Republican would need a “free-market solution” to appeal to Democrats and independents, it’s because his solution isn’t a free-market one at all.

It would allow businesses who come in under federally mandated carbon emission levels to sell the unused portion of their allotment to other businesses that may have trouble with the limits. But it will be government bureaucrats monitoring everyone’s behavior and approving each sale of credits, then handing out fines and other penalties to those who don’t measure up. A kind of market maybe, but not exactly free.

This kind of thing just reminds conservatives that they haven’t had an unrepentant conservative presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.

Who can blame them from taking pleasure in a little chaos?

aaronkeithharris@gmail.com.