The lie of momentum politics and the false narrative of the horse race in this GOP primary

[Chomsky]

http://milwaukeestory.com/index.php/2012/03/07/the-lie-of-momentum-politics-and-the-false-horse-race-narrative-378/

"Conventional wisdom states that momentum plays a key role in the primary contests. But that wisdom is nothing more than self-fulfilling rhetoric by the mainstream media."

"What is lost in the horse race narrative is the similarity between Romney, Santorum and Gingrich. Ron Paul's disagreements with the other three on foreign policy and civil liberties are portrayed as decisions that weigh him down in the polls and make him a less formidable contestant in the race. Instead the disagreements are the aspects of the campaigns that should be explored in the most depth and given the majority of broadcast air time."

http://milwaukeestory.com/index.php/2012/03/07/the-lie-of-momentum-politics-and-the-false-horse-race-narrative-378/

[Chomsky]

"Instead the horse race narrative focuses on personality, debate performance and political organization. Debates, which have the hope of being a refuge for actual substance, have become opportunities to successfully spin away unwanted portions of a candidates record through skilled political performance."

[Article V]

"Conventional wisdom states that momentum plays a key role in the primary contests. But that wisdom is nothing more than self-fulfilling rhetoric by the mainstream media."This just isn't true. Momentum DOES play a key role in the primary contests. It's a regular phenomenon in any sort of group decision process where individuals are asked to make decisions in subsequent order rather than all at once. Subsequent decision makers are always influenced by the decisions of those who decide before them, because the subsequent deciders are aggregating that new information into their own decision.

I swear, I hate that people don't understand how groups operate. It causes us to get into all sorts of trouble.