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	<title>Comments on: About Those &#8220;Rigged New Hampshire Polls&#8221; Stories</title>
	<atom:link href="http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/</link>
	<description>Big Teeth. Huge Ass. Surprisingly Reasonable.</description>
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		<title>By: Tony Lambiris</title>
		<link>http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/comment-page-1/#comment-388430</link>
		<dc:creator>Tony Lambiris</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:51:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/#comment-388430</guid>
		<description>Done and done? Those are some cold words. Obviously there is something going on when both Paul and Kucinich are both crying foul, considering MSM basically said the discrepancies were due to people at exit polls lying. Lying? What do people have to gain to lie at the exit polls? This is exactly what happened to Dean in NH. This is not done and done.

Please donate to Dennis at http://dennis4president.com and make a memo in the donation field that it&#039;s to be used towards the recount.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Done and done? Those are some cold words. Obviously there is something going on when both Paul and Kucinich are both crying foul, considering MSM basically said the discrepancies were due to people at exit polls lying. Lying? What do people have to gain to lie at the exit polls? This is exactly what happened to Dean in NH. This is not done and done.</p>
<p>Please donate to Dennis at <a href="http://dennis4president.com" rel="nofollow">http://dennis4president.com</a> and make a memo in the donation field that it&#8217;s to be used towards the recount.</p>
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		<title>By: formerbeltwaywonk</title>
		<link>http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/comment-page-1/#comment-388361</link>
		<dc:creator>formerbeltwaywonk</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:18:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/#comment-388361</guid>
		<description>How can one not think of conspiracy theories having just observed an improbably simultaneous media attack on Ron Paul the day of the New Hampshire campaign? A remarkably successful attack that made him plunge from 14% in the polls to an 8% actual vote? After weeks where we heard little about Paul from the mass media and beltway &quot;libertarian&quot; bloggers? TNR from the left, Fox News and talk radio from the right, and piling on from beltway &quot;libertarians&quot; who made a point of loudly repeating the TNR smears and dumping Ron Paul on the day of the primary. Your eyes and ears did not deceive you, all this happened. It is not the result of a criminal conspiracy, but if one uses &quot;conspiracy&quot; as a metaphor for social networks of vast complexity, there is a strong sense in which conspiracy theories accurately, if metaphorically, explain what happened.

The reality behind the conspiratorial metaphor is the social networking between denizens of the Beltway, who sport a wide variety of political labels but are, relative to the rest of the country, a monoculture.  I lived there.  I went to these parties.   These denizens range from the journalists who report the mass media news to various think tank and university scholars at the Cato Institute, George Mason University, and so on.    They study Ayn Rand, then marry Andrea Mitchell and testify against tax cuts. Vast amounts of federal money, that stuff that is taken out of your paycheck with such automatic ease, flow into the Beltway area. Directly and indirectly, almost every person who lives in or near the Beltway depends on the very income tax that Ron Paul declared he would abolish -- with no replacement!

Many of these paycheck vampires call themselves &quot;libertarians&quot; and inspire us with their libertarian rhetoric to support them with our attention, our blog hits, and our tuition money as well as the tax money that already funds them or their friends. But at the first sign of political incorrectness, all these below-the-Beltway &quot;libertarians&quot; have dumped Ron Paul like yesterday&#039;s garbage. Now they can rest easy that they will still be invited to the parties thrown by their lobbyist and government employee and contractor friends, who for a second or two got worried by all those Google searches that Ron Paul might have some influence, resulting in some of them losing their jobs (end the income tax with no replacement?! The guy is obvioiusly a kook, and we don&#039;t invite the supporters of kooks to our parties!). Now everybody around the Beltway can go back to partying at the taxpayer&#039;s expense. All the money will keep flowing in, hooray!

The lesson millions of young libertarians have now learned from our  mass media, including our beltway &quot;libertarians&quot;? Libertarian electioneering is futile. Voting is futile. Democracy is futile. Anybody who actually wants liberty is a kook, as can be proven by their association with kooks. Beltway wonks posing as &quot;libertarians&quot; are happy to write things to inflame your hopes for liberty that they don&#039;t really mean. Then they make sure that we elect the politicians their friends want -- the ones that will enslave your future to pay for full social security for Baby Boomers. The ones that will send you off to foreign lands to kill and die. Our Beltway &quot;libertarians&quot; are happy to sell a whole new generation of libertarians down the tubes in order to keep their Beltway friends happy.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>How can one not think of conspiracy theories having just observed an improbably simultaneous media attack on Ron Paul the day of the New Hampshire campaign? A remarkably successful attack that made him plunge from 14% in the polls to an 8% actual vote? After weeks where we heard little about Paul from the mass media and beltway &#8220;libertarian&#8221; bloggers? TNR from the left, Fox News and talk radio from the right, and piling on from beltway &#8220;libertarians&#8221; who made a point of loudly repeating the TNR smears and dumping Ron Paul on the day of the primary. Your eyes and ears did not deceive you, all this happened. It is not the result of a criminal conspiracy, but if one uses &#8220;conspiracy&#8221; as a metaphor for social networks of vast complexity, there is a strong sense in which conspiracy theories accurately, if metaphorically, explain what happened.</p>
<p>The reality behind the conspiratorial metaphor is the social networking between denizens of the Beltway, who sport a wide variety of political labels but are, relative to the rest of the country, a monoculture.  I lived there.  I went to these parties.   These denizens range from the journalists who report the mass media news to various think tank and university scholars at the Cato Institute, George Mason University, and so on.    They study Ayn Rand, then marry Andrea Mitchell and testify against tax cuts. Vast amounts of federal money, that stuff that is taken out of your paycheck with such automatic ease, flow into the Beltway area. Directly and indirectly, almost every person who lives in or near the Beltway depends on the very income tax that Ron Paul declared he would abolish &#8212; with no replacement!</p>
<p>Many of these paycheck vampires call themselves &#8220;libertarians&#8221; and inspire us with their libertarian rhetoric to support them with our attention, our blog hits, and our tuition money as well as the tax money that already funds them or their friends. But at the first sign of political incorrectness, all these below-the-Beltway &#8220;libertarians&#8221; have dumped Ron Paul like yesterday&#8217;s garbage. Now they can rest easy that they will still be invited to the parties thrown by their lobbyist and government employee and contractor friends, who for a second or two got worried by all those Google searches that Ron Paul might have some influence, resulting in some of them losing their jobs (end the income tax with no replacement?! The guy is obvioiusly a kook, and we don&#8217;t invite the supporters of kooks to our parties!). Now everybody around the Beltway can go back to partying at the taxpayer&#8217;s expense. All the money will keep flowing in, hooray!</p>
<p>The lesson millions of young libertarians have now learned from our  mass media, including our beltway &#8220;libertarians&#8221;? Libertarian electioneering is futile. Voting is futile. Democracy is futile. Anybody who actually wants liberty is a kook, as can be proven by their association with kooks. Beltway wonks posing as &#8220;libertarians&#8221; are happy to write things to inflame your hopes for liberty that they don&#8217;t really mean. Then they make sure that we elect the politicians their friends want &#8212; the ones that will enslave your future to pay for full social security for Baby Boomers. The ones that will send you off to foreign lands to kill and die. Our Beltway &#8220;libertarians&#8221; are happy to sell a whole new generation of libertarians down the tubes in order to keep their Beltway friends happy.</p>
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		<title>By: Elyas</title>
		<link>http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/comment-page-1/#comment-388352</link>
		<dc:creator>Elyas</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:48:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/#comment-388352</guid>
		<description>Mark Blumenthal has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pollster.com/blogs/new_hampshire_so_what_happened.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a very good roundup&lt;/a&gt; of the possible explanations for the disparity in the polls and the actual results. I think The Cry helped her out more than people realize. But if anything other than a shift in voter sentiments affected the outcome, it was Clinton&#039;s favorable placement on the ballot (NH moved from ballots with rotating candidate names to fixed ballots this year). Studies show that can account for a 3% boost, at most.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Mark Blumenthal has <a href="http://www.pollster.com/blogs/new_hampshire_so_what_happened.php" rel="nofollow">a very good roundup</a> of the possible explanations for the disparity in the polls and the actual results. I think The Cry helped her out more than people realize. But if anything other than a shift in voter sentiments affected the outcome, it was Clinton&#8217;s favorable placement on the ballot (NH moved from ballots with rotating candidate names to fixed ballots this year). Studies show that can account for a 3% boost, at most.</p>
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		<title>By: The Moderate Voice &#187; Domestic and international news analysis, irreverent comments, original reporting, and popular culture features from across the political spectrum.</title>
		<link>http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/comment-page-1/#comment-388349</link>
		<dc:creator>The Moderate Voice &#187; Domestic and international news analysis, irreverent comments, original reporting, and popular culture features from across the political spectrum.</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:14:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/#comment-388349</guid>
		<description>[...] primaries what Florida was to the 2000 general election. But on that front, I have to agree to with Justin Gardner&#8217;s conclusion: Get over yourselves, &#8220;not everything is a [...]</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[...] primaries what Florida was to the 2000 general election. But on that front, I have to agree to with Justin Gardner&#8217;s conclusion: Get over yourselves, &#8220;not everything is a [...]</p>
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		<title>By: Carrie</title>
		<link>http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/comment-page-1/#comment-388347</link>
		<dc:creator>Carrie</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:53:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/#comment-388347</guid>
		<description>People need to remember that polls are just a prediction.  Just because the polls got it wrong doesn&#039;t mean there was foul play.  If you wanna check out a new interesting poll thats happening go to www.fittobepres.com... anyone can participate too.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>People need to remember that polls are just a prediction.  Just because the polls got it wrong doesn&#8217;t mean there was foul play.  If you wanna check out a new interesting poll thats happening go to <a href="http://www.fittobepres.com.." rel="nofollow">http://www.fittobepres.com..</a>. anyone can participate too.</p>
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		<title>By: Andy</title>
		<link>http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/comment-page-1/#comment-388346</link>
		<dc:creator>Andy</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:23:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://donklephant.com/2008/01/10/about-those-rigged-new-hampshire-polls-stories/#comment-388346</guid>
		<description>The exit polling basically predicted 39-39, so the final results weren&#039;t far off from what people were saying coming out of the voting locations.  I don&#039;t really see election fraud here.  The polls simply couldn&#039;t keep up with the shifting situation and there were signs that were missed.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The exit polling basically predicted 39-39, so the final results weren&#8217;t far off from what people were saying coming out of the voting locations.  I don&#8217;t really see election fraud here.  The polls simply couldn&#8217;t keep up with the shifting situation and there were signs that were missed.</p>
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