Why lock?

[DVaut1]

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which is little more than an arm of the Ron Paul campaign at this point

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Yes, moderated by an Obama supporter.

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Looking over the front page of the forum shows numerous Ron Paul threads, and some of those without "Ron Paul" in the title likely contain various amounts of Ron Paul schilling. It looks 4 of the top 20 threads are various forms of Ron Paul propaganda (3 ways to help Ron Paul, Ron Paul videos, 'Watch Out For Ron Paul', Ron Paul Live Rally).

That iron (an Obama supporter) moderates the forum doesn't refute the notion that it's heavily populated by a substantial number of Ron Paul supporters and/or outright campaign workers and volunteers (Boro) who have set themselves towards converting the unbelievers.

Maybe I am overstating it, but I don't see what iron has to do with it. It's clear his political leanings aren't shared by a most of the forum, despite the fact he moderates it.

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If the other candidates did anything remotely interesting they might be getting some support on here too.

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I wouldn't use "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" as a metric for whether or not a candidate is doing something interesting.

[Misfire]

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I wouldn't use "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" as a metric for whether or not a candidate is doing something interesting.

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That wasn't the claim. That they wouldn't get support if they werem't interesting doesn't mean that if they were interesting they would get support--only that they could.

By the way, is any other candidate actually doing something interesting?

[elwoodblues]

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I wouldn't use "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" as a metric for whether or not a candidate is doing something interesting.

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That wasn't the claim. That they wouldn't get support if they werem't interesting doesn't mean that if they were interesting they would get support--only that they could.

By the way, is any other candidate actually doing something interesting?

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All of them are campaigning and issuing statements on a daily basis. The content of those speaches are interesting. I suspect you think Ron Paul's statements are "interesting" because you agree with them.

[DVaut1]

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I wouldn't use "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" as a metric for whether or not a candidate is doing something interesting.

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That wasn't the claim. That they wouldn't get support if they werem't interesting doesn't mean that if they were interesting they would get support--only that they could.

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I don't think you understand; whether or not candidates "could" get support on the 2p2 Politics forum is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a candidate is objectively doing something 'interesting': first and foremost, because the standard of 'interesting' is inherently subjective, but also, because even if 'interesting' was something we could measure objectively, "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" almost surely wouldn't be the standard we would use.

[TVMH]

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I wouldn't use "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" as a metric for whether or not a candidate is doing something interesting.

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That wasn't the claim. That they wouldn't get support if they werem't interesting doesn't mean that if they were interesting they would get support--only that they could.

By the way, is any other candidate actually doing something interesting?

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All of them are campaigning and issuing statements on a daily basis. The content of those speaches are interesting. I suspect you think Ron Paul's statements are "interesting" because you agree with them.

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I'll chime in here.

I agree that I find Dr. Paul's statements interesting because I agree with them.

What's wrong with that? Isn't the expression of ideas the whole reason for having a forum in the first place? (unless, of course, you're talking about NWP where turd-shots are the order of the day)

[DVaut1]

Also, while I know of no polling that queries respondents on how 'interesting' they feeling the candidates are, we do have this tools to track favorable/unfavorable ratings; and while this doesn't exactly speak to whether or not Paul is 'interesting', more people view him unfavorably than favorably, with a negative difference that puts him close to the bottom of the candidate pool:

http://www.reliablepolitics.com/2007...rasmussen.html

Name/Fav/Unfav/% Dif

John Edwards: 51%/41% (NET 10%)
Barack Obama: 51%/43% (NET 8%)
Hillary Clinton: 52%/46% (NET 6%)
Fred Thompson: 43%/37% (NET 6%)
Rudy Giuliani: 49%/45% (NET 4%)
Mike Huckabee: 30%/28% (NET 2%)
Bill Richardson: 32%/32% (NET 0%)
John McCain: 40%/43% (NET -3%)
Mitt Romney: 40%/44% (NET -4%)
Duncan Hunter: 18%/24% (NET -6%)
Joe Biden: 31%/40% (NET -9%)
Chris Dodd: 26%/35% (NET -9%)
Dennis Kucinich: 27%/37% (NET -10%)
Ron Paul: 23%/34% (NET -11%)
Sam Brownback: 21%/36% (NET -15%)
Tom Tancredo: 16%/33% (NET -17%)
Mike Gravel: 13%/30% (NET -17%)


So yeah, like I said, the 2p2 Politics forum's ability to effectively gauge and predict popular opinion is in serious doubt. Then again, that would assume 'popular opinion' is even relevant to the question of whether or not a candidate is objectively 'interesting', which it likely isn't. This just gets us back to square one, namely that the entire exercise of propping up one candidate as especially "interesting" is nothing more than stating a personal preference, not some kind of empirical or objective quality.

[Misfire]

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I wouldn't use "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" as a metric for whether or not a candidate is doing something interesting.

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That wasn't the claim.

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even if 'interesting' was something we could measure objectively, "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" almost surely wouldn't be the standard we would use.

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That wasn't the claim.

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[elwoodblues]

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I'll chime in here.

I agree that I find Dr. Paul's statements interesting because I agree with them.

What's wrong with that?

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Nothing. But that has nothing to do with the assertion (albeit an implicit one) that the reason Ron Paul dominates this site is because he is "interesting" and the other candidates are not.

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Isn't the expression of ideas the whole reason for having a forum in the first place?

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No. The reason for the existence of 2+2 is to make money. The existence of the politics forum in particular is to not piss off the politically averse in the other non-poker forums.

[DVaut1]

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I'll chime in here.

I agree that I find Dr. Paul's statements interesting because I agree with them.

What's wrong with that? Isn't the expression of ideas the whole reason for having a forum in the first place?

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I won't speak to why the forum exists, but I *think* what TomCollins was attempting to do is correlate "Ron Paul's extreme interesting-ness" to the level of support he receives on this forum; that might even be true - his support on this forum may be attributable to his ability to interest the people who post here. But it really says little about whether or not Ron Paul is objectively 'interesting'. So as I said -- and I think some of what I cited in my last post indicates -- the 2p2 Politics forum isn't exactly an effective bellwether for this kind of thing.

[Misfire]

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I wouldn't use "support on the 2p2 Politics forum" as a metric for whether or not a candidate is doing something interesting.

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That wasn't the claim. That they wouldn't get support if they werem't interesting doesn't mean that if they were interesting they would get support--only that they could.

By the way, is any other candidate actually doing something interesting?

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All of them are campaigning and issuing statements on a daily basis. The content of those speaches are interesting.

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Specifically?

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I suspect you think Ron Paul's statements are "interesting" because you agree with them.

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I'll grant you at least a partial point there, but I also find Kusinich (sp?) interesting, yet don't agree with him much at all. If every other candidate was saying the same thing, Paul (and DK) would cease to stand out as interesting. The other candidates, however, are rather homogenic. The republicans all want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent... a couple support the FairTax, which is interesting... secure the borders...support the troops...wave the flag. The democrats want "better" healthcare and they didn't really support the war...

snore.