The Scarecrow loses again, poor scarecrow

I've got to admit I often construct what's called a straw man arguement. I pick the most ridiculous representative of the opposing side of an arguement (one I usually recruit from Wikipedia), and then construct a very sound arguement against him. Now the point isn't that I can win the arguement, sure I can, but the fact is that winning an arguement against a person who's position is very insane is worth very little. So I must strive to correct this fault. I feel it has infected must of our current political discourse on tv, newspapers and radio as well, and it would be a good idea for other pundits to try to correct this fault as well.