Among the candidates, the campaign staff and the hard core Republican voters Tuesday at the first ever West Virginia GOP Convention was a group of students from West Virginia Wesleyan.  The college class joined Dr. Rob Rupp, a political observer who I've known for years, for the historic event and an experiment.  The students handed out surveys to convention-goers and heard back from a third of them.

Several of the questions involved demographic information, but the one I was interested in pertained to the current commander in chief, George W. Bush.  Rupp's class asked those in attendance what effect the Bush presidency has had on the Republican party.  They gave voters a choice from 1 to 5, 1 being negative and 5 being positive.  The students got an interesting response.  54 percent considered the Bush presidency to have a moderate or negative impact on the Republican Party.  The way I read that is moderate meant 3...so more than half scored a 3 or below for the current administration.  43% said the president has had a positive impact on the Republican party -- less than half.

Here's a funny sidenote to this survey.  One of the other questions asked Republicans to rate their political ideology on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being liberal and 5 being conservative.  1% said they were liberal.  By my calculator, that means 4 of the folks who responded claimed to be liberal.  Liberal?  At a Republican convention? 

Now I've heard for years that many Republican-minded politicians have registered as Democrats just to get elected.  After all, Democrats hold a 2 to 1 majority in registered voters. 

But what kind of disadvantage are you giving yourself if you're a liberal in a mostly Democratic state who registered as a Republican?  That's like spotting Tom Brady a couple touchdowns before you start the Super Bowl.  (That analogy had much more oomph to it up until last week of course.)