It’s official, Bob Barr is now the Libertarian Party nominee. From what I understand, that means Barr will be on the ballot in at least 48 states. I don’t know how well he will do but he is going to be running on repealing the Patriot Act and the Defense of Marriage Act (which he co-sponsored), ending the war in Iraq, and ending the war on drugs. As these are things that appeal to Democrats more than to Republicans, it’s not absolutely clear that Barr will pull more votes from McCain than from Obama. I think we’ll actually have to look at things on a region by region basis. The libertarian strain of Republicanism is strongest in New England and the Western half of the country. I expect that Barr will hurt McCain among disaffected Republicans in those regions. However, his brand of non-militaristic leave-me-alone Repulicanism is unlikely to sell well in the South. He might actually provide an alternative to Obama for some white anti-war Southerners.
The big question is whether he will be able to inherit Ron Paul’s coalition and whether they will be able to raise enough money to run ads and get Barr’s name recognition up to a point where he might rise in the polls. Can Barr get into the debates? Right now that seems very unlikely. But it’s not completely out of the question. Time will tell.
I hope he does get into the debates. For two reasons:
— All the named stances are perfect in my book. I want to see them discussed in an open public way. Debates are the only way to get around the media stranglehold on what can be talked about. And Dem pols will always be too chicken to come out with simple declarative statements on these points.
— If Barr can keep his public campaign limited to these 4 points, he could indeed take votes from the Dem side. I’d be tempted myself. If he’s in debates, however, he’d be forced to either discuss the rest of the Lib agenda like abolishing taxes and Social Security/Medicare and the rest of the safety net, ending environmental and safety regulation, removing all restrictions on weapons ownership, and ending all efforts to redress racial discrimination, for starters. If he were pressed and failed to follow the LP line he’d lose his base. If he did follow the LP line he’d turn off any potential liberal/left converts.
And a good time would be had by all who are sick of platitudes passing for policy and pandering passing for ideas.
Another CIA employee running for President. What is it about the CIA that makes someone so stately.
And he’ll be the only Presidential candidate who appeared in “Borat.” Not counting Alan Keyes.
Looking for VPs:
Barr will need a Veep.
McCain’s camp is in disarray but searching for a VP over BBQ.
Louisiana’s Gov. Jindal is getting the once over and is said to be very, very far right – Rush’s fav. Also at the grill is Mitt Romney and Florida Gov. Crist.
The Obama camp is keeping their short list top secret – speculation abounds that in the running are:
Senator Jim Webb, Master of the Senate;
Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D) is reported by Robert Novak to have told associates he’s under consideration.
others are promoting Chuck Hagel. (R)
Thanks for the link. From kgrant1054 in the comments there:
That hadn’t occurred to me – not that we needed one more good reason for Hill not to be veep, but… wow.
Hillary has too much bagage
I bet the bellboy at the Bellagio was complaining. I wonder if they stiffed that bill too.
Wakka wakka.
Barr is very very credible. His very disgusting performance in the Clinton impeachment was long ago. Now, he is a very strong constitutionalist. It gives liberatarians who hate McCain somewhere to go, and I think Barr will do well. This is the single best thing for the Democrats.
He’s got some credibility issues.
He supported DOMA before he was against it.
He was anti-pot before he was pro-pot.
He was a movement conservative before he got turned off to the War on Terror.
He was a impeachment manager which is about the furthest thing away from being a friend of either the Democrats or the libertarian spirit.
So, his problems are manifold.
The biggest one, though, is that he’s a Libertarian. People just don’t seem to take third party candidates seriously.
This is also why I don’t think he’ll be in the debates. In general they don’t put you into consideration unless they think you can get a certain percentage of the vote. Perot was the last guy to make the threshhold, IIRC. I don’t see Barr breaking that threshold.
You can flip positions as a matter of conscious, you simply have to repudiate your previous positions as being wrong (q.v. Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Gore, & Kucinich on abortion) and assure voters that you will never flip again on that issue. Barr can make that case wholesale, saying that he believed in the GOP revolution when they came into power in 1994 but he saw how that power utterly corrupted them, much like the pigs of Animal Farm, and that he has come to oppose may of his former colleagues on matters of foreign and domestic policy and on the scope of governmental operation. He could then pivot into laying out his agenda in direct opposition to that of the Bush administration. It could make for a very interesting change narrative.
Anti-abortion, except in alleys and Switzerland.
I keep thinking some game show host is running for President every time I see his name. LOL
I think people who would never vote for Obama but hate McCain will be the main Barr types. So on balance I think he hurts McCain more, but until HRC gets out we don’t fucking know.
Possibly, but I don’t think so. Barr’s biggest pull will be among southern conservatives who don’t want McCain. I also wouldn’t be surprised to find Barr shifting his message to focus on issues that will damage McCain with conservatives. He’s polling close to 10% in the South, and thus far he seems to be damaging McCain more, based on the poll I saw out of Georgia. What he offers us is a shot at nailing down states like North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, where he’ll sell better in the Obama-unfriendly Highlands, taking votes from McCain.
I don’t think he’ll inherit much of Ron Paul’s coalition, honestly. Much of it will go to Obama because of foreign policy, where Obama and Paul are much more closely aligned, as Paul himself has stated. Paul’s making noises to suggest to his people — short of an endorsement, of course, but that’s expected — that Obama is preferable, and the stuff I hear from his folks matches my suspicion. They don’t like Obama, because he’s a liberal who’ll raise taxes, but they like very much the fact that he opposed the war from the start.
I think the Paul/small-“l” libertarian faction within the GOP is the reason you’re seeing Obama taking 15-20% of Republicans in these polls, despite McCain having had months to consolidate the GOP base. That’s why Obama has held his lead over McCain despite taking only about 70-75% of Dems.
It’s good to remember that libertarianism really runs across all the regularly defined political groups, not just drawing from republicans. That might be where the current libertarian party draws its strength, but many of the ideals appeal across the board. In the academic world, I even know of several people that even define themselves as socialist-libertarian.
It actually would not be a bad idea for democrats to take a good look at libertarianism and learn something from the reasoning behind it. By developing an understanding of libertarians, and being willing to work with them, instead of just ignoring them as a fringe group, the democrats could easily become the party of rural areas, as well as urban centers.
The reality is that many of the libertarian platforms are more in line with liberals than conservatives. For some reason they are considered to be more conservative than republicans, but that’s only because they really do believe in small government. Just think about it from a Supreme Court nominee angle, from a democrat’s perspective, a libertarian appointment would be very preferable to another republican appointment.
I’m not going to vote for Barr this cycle, right now my goal is to get republicans out of power. But once that happens, I will probably go back to trying to get more third party candidates into office.
I watch the convention coverage, and plenty of "real" Libertarians are pretty upset about Barr winning, considering him to be just using the party (like Nader did the Greens, though Nader never actually joined GP and I think Barr has officially joined the LP).
They don’t trust him, find his background appalling, and I suspect there will be a sizable portion of LP members who will not vote for him.