From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg:
I have, basically, detested Daily Kos for some time now, primarily because of the vicious personal attacks of their writers upon effective conservatives. But I have to give Kos high marks for one thing – the very public way he has aired and corrected his ‘dirty linen.’
One of the most tasty of several delicious ironies connected with this story is the way the bogus polls seem to damaged closely-contested leftist political campaigns. The nutroots wasted a couple of million dollars, by my count, on races that were probably not winnable. Ho, ho, ho but a word to caution to Sean H. and others about counting November’s GOP chickens before they hatch.
Creative mild pessimism and hyper-vigilance should be our watchwords!

I think the reader is right. It does sound like Kos has done the right thing on this score. My guess is he could have spotted the shabbiness of the polling a lot earlier if R2000 wasn’t selling him exactly what he wanted to hear, but when he was persuaded that it was bogus he admitted it.

A few notes from other readers on that Republican wingnut poll and other topics:

G,
Did you look at the cross tabs on that thing? Many of the questions are laugh out loud funny in a tin foil hat sort of way. I loved this one: Should women work outside the home? That’s kooky even by Kos standards. That’s just the thing. The Kos guys dreamed up these question thinking these are the sorts of things right-wing crazies discuss in their secret lair. Can you imagine getting asked this stuff by a pollster? 90% of Americans would hang up after three questions like this.
The R2000 guys may be crooks, but Kos was asking for it. He was willing to pay for “polling data’ that confirmed his only little brand of moonbattery. Now he’s pissed that the polling company was unable to supply it without resorting to deceit.
In their coming court case, we will be reminded of Kissinger’s line about the Iran-Iraq War.

And:

Jonah,
The “Republicans are crazy” poll is most certainly crap. Just take a look at the Men-Women crosstabs that Kos links to. In all but TWO cases throughout the entire poll, the even-odd anomaly holds there. It’s the same problem as in all the other polls. Kos should SPECIFICALLY disavow that poll, if he wants to be intellectually honest. And he should halt the presses on his book, too.

And:

Sir,
In a poll I just conducted, 100% of respondents admit that schadenfreude is unseemly but delicious nonetheless. I cannot claim that my findings are statistically valid, but that doesn’t matter. They confirm my existing bias so they must be right. I won’t charge you for my efforts.