You’re not the first to be surprised. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Brigham Young once said that truth can be found even in hell. Greenwald often has very good points, despite his background and beliefs.

I don’t understand the nature of the Huckabee surge in the polls, but I do agree w/ Greenwald that instead of looking at issues and addressing valid concerns, they talk about subliminal crosses in commercials, Edwards’ haircut, and other irrelevant garbage.

And we can both agree on your last point.

Riiiight… Because the guy who won’t take a Congressional pension, returns a portion of his budget every year, and hasn’t taken a single junket is in it for the money.

Uh huh.

Your comment,

Is it just that Internet users are a bunch of hip kids, and old farts are the only ones responding to the MSM and its polls?

Is actually pretty spot on. this country is very old, with the majority of Americans over 50. Even RP has admitted his message has resonated much more with the younger set. That isn’t to say it is exclusively younger Internet users, but the numbers show it is much more unbalanced than other candidates.

I think it’s equally myopic to claim that the two audiences are so exclusive.

This isn’t so geographically based as your bad example tries to illustrate. These are two media channels that both cover a lot of the same geography. How can extreme support on one channel show up as marginal support in the other, and do so constantly?

Is it just that Internet users are a bunch of hip kids, and old farts are the only ones responding to the MSM and its polls?

We might have myopia, but they have some sort of corneal blockage.

How can a candidate, who has record-breaking grassroots support (which is the most important type of support at poll-time) be constantly portrayed as the outside loser in the race?

I’m not saying it should be 1:1, but it seems to be that the disconnect between user-created content and MSM spoon-fed content is a lot more different than it should really be.

I was not judging you, since I have no idea how you judge others (in this case Paul). I’m simply commenting on something I’ve seen many, many times now.

You asked for any explanation, so I responded. Perhaps I misworded myself and conveyed (erroneously) that I was applying it all to you, which I was not. I apologize if that came across. But again, I do feel that the words stand: RP should not be judged by those who support him. If that doesn’t apply to you, then I commend you for studying the issues.

However, the point you make at the end of comment #16 shows why I felt to respond as I did. You opine that the current actions of RP supporters will result in his political demise. The argument behind this statement is exactly what I was responding to: the simple fact that people do often judge a cause by those who support it.

Judging a candidate by the perceived character of his/her supporters is, in my opinion, the same folly as an investigator judging the doctrines of the LDS church by the personal lives, faults, and eccentricities of individual members.

To be sure, we are all representatives of the cause we champion, but one’s support of or allegiance to a cause should not be based in any amount on the behaviors of his colleagues.

Just as “the RP mobs” can learn a few lessons for their leader, so too we all can learn a few lessons from the our Leader and be better examples.

He who is without sin… :)

1. Candidate gets $6 in grassroots contributions. 50K+ supporters willing to pony up. It’s a record.

2. No main stories, WaPo buries it.

3. Poll “standings” cite RP in the single digits.

How can it possibly be true that he’s doing poorly in the polls when he obviously has real support from a large number of individuals?

Ok, this is what I was talking about when people don’t think things through logically. Lets break it down. RP got his contributions online. Who wins online polls? Who dominates Digg more than any other candidate? Is Digg “biased” against the other candidates? No, you would say that the audience wants news on Ron Paul, they like his policies the best.

Now you say that WaPo buries it and that the offline polls show RP in single digits. Ok, here is where you apply the logic. The vast majority of people in this country do not get their news online, nor do they have near the same attitudes of the Digg/online web 2.0 crowd. Here is the disconnect. The small percentage of people who browse blogs and Digg or whatever think that since one audience agrees with a certain candidate then that must apply to the entire population. This is just incredibly myopic. The online Digg world is an entirely different culture by itself, it is relatively small, but rabid. The people that read WaPo are not the same as those that read Digg, and they don’t happen to agree with RP. How hard is that to understand? I mean, since farmers in Arkansas don’t like rap, that means that kids in Detroit won’t like rap also? Am I right?

I am very impressed with RP in a few areas. He is very honest, and he seems to be very calm in all his decision making. In fact, that calm is probably something he has over any other candidate. And here is where I want an explanation. His supporters seem to be most often the exact opposite. On message boards, blogs, Digg, whatever, RP supporters make rash judgements, attack the media at the drop of a hat, trumpet any success like they won the election. Yet when you read about the record haul this is what RP said, “It’s nice to know that we are comfortable and can pay the bills,” I think the RP mobs need to take a few notes how their candidate acts.

Explain this to me, then.

1. Candidate gets $6 in grassroots contributions. 50K+ supporters willing to pony up. It’s a record.

2. No main stories, WaPo buries it.

3. Poll “standings” cite RP in the single digits.

How can it possibly be true that he’s doing poorly in the polls when he obviously has real support from a large number of individuals?

Why is it that it takes the media *two* *days* before this story is covered?

I think this is a perfect example of problems in the system.

CNN != the media at large.

I can name several candidates that haven’t seen front page, main story.

Have those candidates broken fundraising records?

Really though, stop this conspiracy talk all the time.

An observation of an organization’s bias equates to “conspiracy talk”? Umm, okay.

His question received (as of now) 918 (!) responses.

One worth highlighting:

Polls are a scientific tool to reach an unscientific result. The deception begins when you assume (mistakenly) that the expectation of people to actually take the trouble and go on a winter day to vote for their favorite candidate is equal among all campaigns. With this assumption it make sense that surveying people’s opinions would give an indicator as to the expected result of the actual vote. But the fact is, supporters are not equally enthusiastic about their candidates. Many supporters poll for a candidate cause he is the one they see everyday on TV, not because they are truly enthusiast about his message. Come voting day, you probably wouldn’t take the trouble to wake up and head for the booth unless you really believe in someone’s message, no matter how many times you see him on TV. You want a more scientific way to count the votes a priori? find a way to measure not only the size of the support, but the depth of it!!

After such an enormous response, it’s nice to see that today, RP has made it to the front page of CNN.

I suggest that Paul, the ONLY anti-war candidate, can garner some of the votes of those who elect to “send a message to Washington.” If they are against the wars, (and the majority of Americans are), they should vote Paul to say they want to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq NOW!

And who cares about the probability of him winning or not. If you agree with his views, vote for him. People seem so wrapped up in how winnable a candidate is.

Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t we support them to make them winnable?