A longtime reader makes some good points:

Jonah,
I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe that so many people are giving Kos credit – even calling him laudible – in this situation. According to Nate Silver, Kos has known for most of the year that”>that there were serious questions about his pollsters, yet he let that too-good-to-be-true (from his point of view) anti-Republican data sit out there unquestioned for months.
The only reason Kos acted when and how he did was because he was over a barrel – the independent report was going to come out one way or another, so he had to act quickly to retain a veneer of respectability for himself. If he was really a selfless man committed to the truth, shouldn’t he ask OEN to take down the R2K-based op ed he wrote trumpeting the awfulness of all things and persons Republican ? Shouldn’t he submit a new op ed in order to reach the wider audience who has seen his bad polling but has not seen the polling retraction?
The fact of the matter is, Kos has been – and continues to be – content to let the negative assumptions based on his published data remain in the air for as long as possible. He knew almost as soon as he first published it that this R2K anit-GOP numbers would come into question. He could have retracted it at any time, but he chose to let that bad data sit out there for months, causing as much damage as possible until he had absolutely no choice but to act.
I think this entire deal makes him look even more odious than he ever has.