Andrew notices a new Gallup survey of public perceptions of presidential candidates’ ideology:

So most Americans seem to disagree with the Beltway that Ron Paul is somehow an impermissible candidate for president.

According to the survey, many respondents view Paul as either “very liberal/liberal” (15%) or “moderate” (20%), which ends up giving him an average score that is very close to the overall mean. Only 41% correctly perceive him as very conservative or conservative, and another 25% have no opinion. What is odd about this is that Paul’s score on Gallup’s 1-5 scale (1 being very liberal, 5 being very conservative) is the same regardless of party affiliation: his score is always 3.5, which should put him slightly to the right of center. As almost everyone with even passing familiarity with Paul’s views understands, this perception is wildly wrong. The funny thing is that this wrong perception is partly the product of the constant drumbeat from Republican pundits that Paul is some sort of crazed left-winger. It is also partly because most of Paul’s dissents from the official GOP line are anti-statist when it comes to national security, foreign policy, and drug prohibition, and movement conservatives have used these dissents to prove that Paul is not “one of them,” which is true enough. Because many ostensibly “conservative” people loathe him, he acquires a reputation as a moderate or liberal, and because he breaks with his party on matters of war and civil liberties the “conservatism” of his critics becomes even more closely identified with militarism and the security/surveillance state.