According to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich would both be delivering concession speeches at the end of the night, if matched in head-to-head contests with comedian Stephen Colbert.

My first reaction: Woop-tee-freakin-dooh. This is a professional satirist, we’re talking about, people. Yes, Colbert is funny, but he has the governance credentials of a termite.

My second reaction: Wait a minute. Maybe this poll does tell us something worthwhile. Consider …

Kucinich is about as far left as you can go on many fronts. Paul, on the other hand, though he’s not your typical right-winger, certainly goes off the scale when it comes to his desire to strip the federal government down to a bare minimum (and possibly lower) level of functionality. Net, they’re both the embodiment of an extreme, and they’re viewed by many as a distorted caricature of the American body politic. Accordingly, faced with the prospect of voting for a caricature vs. a comedian, why not vote for the comedian?

So perhaps the American people are smarter than they’re given credit for being, after all. Perhaps, in this Rasmussen poll, they’re sending a clear message: That they do, in fact, reject extremes; that if you make them choose between someone whom they know is a legitimate joker and someone whom they suspect is an unintentional joker … well then, at the very least, give them credit for choosing the more authentic soul of the two.