Ron Paul (the ass-clown) ommitted from this month's GOP straw poll

Here is a statement by Matt Margolis on his decision to exclude ass-clown Ron Paul from this month's GOP straw poll:

UPDATE: Some of you may be wondering about the absence of Ron Paul from this months straw poll. Let me explain. After my decision to include Ron Paul in the previous poll, I monitored (to the best of my ability) the efforts by Paul's online supporters. With the help of other bloggers, we discovered a sophisticated coordinated effort to spam the poll, obfuscate their actions, and even cheat the poll.

Shortly after the launch of the previous poll, I received an email from Jesse Benton, the communications director for Ron Paul's campaign. He was interested in getting information about what safeguards are used in the straw poll in order to protect it from spammers/cheaters. I made it clear that I was not about to share the details of what protections are place. His response was a bit less than amicable.

I found it very curious that someone from Ron Paul's campaign would have such an active interest in the GOP Straw Poll and specifically request such guarded details about it. This high suspect request, combined with the efforts of Paul's online supporters to spam/cheat the poll. Ron Paul has been removed from this months poll in order to provide usable data on the acceptability/unacceptability of the candidates in the race. As you may have noticed in the previous poll, people who voted for Ron Paul as their number one choice also only put Ron Paul as the only acceptable candidate -- a voting behavior not mimicked by supporters of other candidates. This made the data severely flawed and useless as a barometer -- even for an unscientific one.

So, that's all there is to say about it now.

The fact that the Paul campaign was asking directly about the security measures indicates that the gaming of online polls is not just the work of overzealous supporters with lots of time on their hands (because the part-time jobs at McDonald's aren't very demanding). The attempt to create a distorted image of Paul's true level of support is apparently a deliberate strategy of the Paul campaign.

So much for Libertarians being "principled".

Since the average Ron Paul pod-person has an emotional age of about five this will not bother them in the least. After all they have been the ones sitting home all day with a jumbo bag of Doritos and a six pack of Mountain Dew obsessively voting over and over in online polls to make it appear that Ron Paul (ass-clown) actually has a detectable level of support. To them this is just an opportunity to get one over on the grown-ups.

What I am curious about are Paul's reasons for this. He knows, he absolutely knows, that he has zero chance of getting the Republican nomination. He knew going in that he had no chance whatsoever. Until now I've been thinking that his purpose was to gain a forum in the debates to advocate his ideas. This is, after all, the only reason the Libertarian Party even bothers to mount a presidential campaign every four years.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't just some kind of money making scheme. I know that money raised in a campaign must be spent on campaign related matters, but you can use it to retire debt from previous campaigns and bank it for future campaigns as well. Paul may well be in this to retire debts from his previous runs for the House and to build a war chest for his future election expenses.

Again, so much for being "principled".

Whatever the Ass-Clown's motives for orchestrating this online hoax he has demonstrated himself to be as immature, no childish, as his pod-people followers.


PS: Notice that without the distorting effect of pod-people voting multiple times Thompson is far and away the leader.