Sunday, January 13, 2008

Ron Paul's supporters irrational

Some of Ron Paul's supporters are willing to go nuts over 31 votes. We mentioned the town clerk in Sutton, Jennifer Call, who accidentally left off 31 votes (out of 920 total votes cast) for Ron Paul. Ron Paul supporters, more prone to conspiracy theories than other candidates' supporters, see some sort of plot by... whom?
Call wants the nationwide army of boisterous Ron Paul supporters, believers in more conspiracy theories than Oliver Stone, to know that she's committed no crime.

Not treason, as the dozens of phone callers screamed. Not fraud, as the dozens of e-mails charged. Nothing.

Human error, by someone unknown, caused Call's office to claim Paul received zero votes from the town during Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary.

Paul actually got a whopping 31 votes.

Out of 920 cast.

Launch an investigation. Alert the media.

The mistake was corrected early the next morning, but that hardly mattered. The Paul machine, upon reading the number in print, quickly went into counteroffensive mode.

This is luck at its worst. Screw up Rudy Giuliani's vote total. Or John McCain's. Or John Edwards's. Or Bill Richardson's.

But never, ever get anything wrong when it comes to Paul and his voting tally. If you do, fans who shouted from the rooftops through the primary season will track you down and chew you out.

"Most of the these people are not rational," Call said.
I'd say these people need to get a grip, but if they had a grip on reality they wouldn't be Ron Paul suppporters, would they?

Update! Ron Paul encourages such paranoia:
This does not mean we will have an easy time of it -- just the opposite, of course. After all, we are seeking to reverse more than a century of big government, of the warfare-welfare state, of Federal Reserve's dollar manipulation, of a fat and happy military-industrial complex, of the subversion of our Constitution. So all the media and other "second-hand dealers in ideas," as F.A. Hayek called them, who have a vested interest in the current order, will do everything possible to smear me. They will do and say anything to try to block our movement. Even vote fraud is not beyond these people.