Ron Paul Supporters Confront GOP Pollster Frank Luntz

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 11:47 AM on January 7, 2008.

It's always great when Fox News calls for civility. After excluding Ron Paul (who is, per some polls, in a statistical tie for third in the GOP New Hampshire primary) from the debate last night, Fox's official pollster Frank Luntz's feathers were ruffled because a Paul supporter got into his focus group and taped the proceedings.

The man claims that Luntz was slamming Paul to focus group members, and according to Melissa Bailey of the New Haven Independent, threatened to publish the video on his web site:

Luntz charged the man with breaking the rules by recording the proceedings.

"I'm not part of the media. I have a Web site," said the Paul supporter, who slipped away before the Independent could ask his name.

"You have a Web site," echoed Luntz.

"Yeah, that's not the media!" said the man. Others chimed in -- "The Internet doesn't count."

Luntz charged the participant with subverting the poll. "Don't you think you have a responsibility" to answer honestly to the questions? Luntz asked - or tried to, before he got cut off by raging Paulites.

Last night's Fox event wasn't a debate, it was a public fluffing of John McCain (who taunted Paul the night before on his exclusion). Chris Wallace launched an open, bare knuckles attack on Huckabee, and the chiron ran a quote from Romney praising McCain's immigration plan when McCain was speaking. The GOP doesn't want Ron Paul messing up their private party with an anti-war message that is connecting with its few remaining members so they fixed the show and excluded him. How quaint that Luntz should start lecturing people on what's fair.

Why don't they just stick a crown on McCain and be done with it?

Tagged as: republicans, fox news, mccain, neopopulist, paul, new hampshire, luntz

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.