Bob Barr, The Meh-churian Candidate.

[Shahram]

I was hoping Penn Jillette would have run.

I like Bob Barr. I really do. He's been critical of the Bush Administration, he's a libertarian, he's pro gun ownership, he hates the IRS, he's a proponent of privacy rights, etc.

But his past bothers me. His whole War on Drugs thing, especially. The guy was the anti-personal responsibility guy for all these years, then in the last five years changes his mind (but just on marijuana). He supported and authored pointless "Defense of Marriage Act" bullshit, further marginalizing real issues, and propagating this "tabloid government" crap that enrages me no end.

Now, he's the Libertarian candidate for President. And while I understand that he has about a 0.5% chance of winning, I'm still not comfortable with him. I'll probably still vote for him, because he's about the closest candidate to my own views, but Jesus, if I'm gonna waste my vote, can't it at least be on someone epic?

[Brian in Oregon]

So write in someone you believe in.

[78-FJ40]

Originally Posted by Shahram

I was hoping Penn Jillette would have run.

I like Bob Barr. I really do. He's been critical of the Bush Administration, he's a libertarian, he's pro gun ownership, he hates the IRS, he's a proponent of privacy rights, etc.

But his past bothers me. His whole War on Drugs thing, especially. The guy was the anti-personal responsibility guy for all these years, then in the last five years changes his mind (but just on marijuana). He supported and authored pointless "Defense of Marriage Act" bullshit, further marginalizing real issues, and propagating this "tabloid government" crap that enrages me no end.

Now, he's the Libertarian candidate for President. And while I understand that he has about a 0.5% chance of winning, I'm still not comfortable with him. I'll probably still vote for him, because he's about the closest candidate to my own views, but Jesus, if I'm gonna waste my vote, can't it at least be on someone epic?

Pro gun ownership, hates the IRS (taxes) and a proponent of privacy rights.

Hmmm. He, and you, sound like Republicans.

[Jman]

Originally Posted by 78-FJ40

Pro gun ownership, hates the IRS (taxes) and a proponent of privacy rights.

Hmmm. He, and you, sound like Republicans.

Privacy rights? Republicans? Are you kidding? Where have you been? The only folks who get to exercise their privacy rights these days are in the veep's office.

[78-FJ40]

Originally Posted by Jman

Privacy rights? Republicans? Are you kidding? Where have you been? The only folks who get to exercise their privacy rights these days are in the veep's office.

That was the most vague of the three and can be interpreted a number of ways. Let's disallow it then. So two of the three beliefs that Shahram likes are Republican beliefs. Still sounds Republican to me.

[White Shark]

I'm telling you guys, NorCalDoug is the perfect candidate.


His platform?


"I solve problems."


Really, it can't get any better than that.



Vote Doug in 2008.
..

[D'Animal]

Shahram is a republican?

[89GASHOG]

Originally Posted by Shahram

And while I understand that he has about a 0.5% chance of winning..

Wanna bet?

[Shahram]

Are you saying he has less than a 0.5% chance of winning?

'Cause I'd bet on that.

[re_guderian]

I wasted my vote on Perot in '92 . If you're gonna go third party, you might as well save yourself the trouble of standing in line, and go to Applebee's for 2-for-1 appetizers on voting day instead.

[OZCAL]

Originally Posted by re_guderian

I wasted my vote on Perot in '92 . If you're gonna go third party, you might as well save yourself the trouble of standing in line, and go to Applebee's for 2-for-1 appetizers on voting day instead.

? Perot wanted to dismantle the highway system.














(At the border )

[koop]

There is nothing more useless than an anti drug libertarian.

Isn't the entire point of the party to get baked and dress up like Uncle Sam and hang out at the post office every April 15th?

[Atticus]

Originally Posted by 78-FJ40

Pro gun ownership, hates the IRS (taxes) and a proponent of privacy rights.

Hmmm. He, and you, sound like Republicans.

Not any post-Reagan Republican I know of, except maybe Ron Paul (to the extent that he is not really a libertarian).

[cary]

Great article in this weeks Economist about Bob Barr. I'm a libertarian, but not fond of him. I will end up voting for McCain in order to assure Obama doesn't get in.

Lexington | Raising the Barr | Economist.com

ON MAY 25th a dysfunctional minor party picked a grumpy ex-Republican as its presidential candidate. This may be just another quirk in the quirky history of the Libertarian Party. But it just might be something more than this: a further sign that the Republican coalition is splintering under John McCain's feet.

The new Libertarian champion, Bob Barr, a former four-term Georgia congressman, is most famous for his poor judgment and sour temper. He led the fight to defang anti-terrorism legislation after the Oklahoma City bombing (among his achievements: preventing the government from designating foreign groups as terrorists and denying their members visas to enter the country). He championed social-conservative causes such as the Defence of Marriage Act, which he drafted, and the impeachment of Bill Clinton. His moralistic fervour faltered only when it came to his own conduct: twice divorced, he was once photographed licking whipped cream off the breasts of a particularly buxom woman. He says he was raising money for leukaemia research. (Well, he would, wouldn't he?)

The Libertarian Party is one of the perennial jokes of American politics. Barry Goldwater, a party hero, once argued that “extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice”. Many Libertarians have interpreted that as meaning that extremism in defence of liberty is a positive virtue: one of the liveliest debates in the party is whether all drugs should be legalised, and all federal taxes abolished, next Monday or next Tuesday. The party's best presidential performance was back in 1980 when Edward Clark won 921,128 votes, or 1.1% of the electorate. Most Libertarian candidates have hovered around just 400,000 votes. The party is also badly divided between what might be called its Ruby Ridge wing and its Reefer Madness wing. The Ruby Ridge wing, which has still not recovered from the terrible day when the FBI shot several survivalists at Ruby Ridge in Idaho, believes that freedom comes from the barrel of a gun. The Reefer Madness wing is more interested in keeping the government's hands off its spliffs.

Mr Barr's candidacy is not likely to heal this division. The Georgian has a solid record on guns—he once accidentally discharged an antique pistol at a gun show—but he is much dodgier on other Libertarian shibboleths. He joined the party in 2006 only after being redistricted out of his congressional nest. He once supported both the Patriot Act and the “war on drugs”, though he is now repentant. He won the party's nomination only after six ballots and five hours of voting.

Yet the Republicans would be unwise to write him off as irrelevant: instead, they would do well to consider the reasons for the enduring success of Ron Paul, a Republican who shares many of the Libertarians' views. His presidential campaign has been one of the wonders of this election cycle, powered by hyper-motivated supporters and an endless supply of small donations. Mr Paul won 24% of the Republican vote in the recent Idaho primary, despite the fact that Mr McCain has the nomination locked up. His book, “The Revolution: A Manifesto”, leapt to the top of the New York Times's bestseller list.

The libertarian pool also contains more fish than you might think. Polls suggest that 10-20% of the electorate are willing to define themselves as “libertarians” in the sense that, like this newspaper, they are “conservative” on economics and “liberal” on social issues. These soft libertarians have been strikingly willing to break party ranks, whether to support John Anderson in 1980 or Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996.

Libertarian-leaning Republicans are also hog-wrestling mad about what has become of their party under George Bush. Mr Bush has presided over the fastest growth in federal spending since the Great Society in the 1960s. He put the Republican seal of approval on the biggest intrusion of federal power into the classroom in history (No Child Left Behind), the most expensive public-works programme ever (the 2005 highway bill) and the largest new entitlement programme since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid (the prescription-drug benefit). He launched an open-ended “war on terror”. He rode roughshod over states' rights on issues such as assisted suicide. And he has expanded the government's power to eavesdrop on its citizens.
Spot the difference

Mr McCain is not Mr Bush. He has an honourable record as a fiscal conservative (he opposed the prescription-drug benefit, for example). He is Washington's leading campaigner against pork. He is a principled federalist on issues like gay marriage. But there is plenty in his record to upset small-government conservatives. He likes to think of himself as a latter-day Teddy Roosevelt blowing the trumpet of “national greatness conservatism”. He broke the conservative covenant by supporting campaign-finance reform. His defence of the Iraq war may also cost him votes from small-government conservatives.

Mr Barr and the Libertarian Party, as well as Mr Paul, are both imperfect vehicles for all this pent-up anger. But they are vehicles nonetheless. Libertarians claim that they will put their candidate on the ballot in 48 states, as they did in 2004. They have already managed 28. Mr Barr claims that (admittedly sparse) polls give him 6-8% of the electorate. He could do particularly well in his native Georgia and the libertarian-leaning West. That could hurt Mr McCain badly in states like Colorado and Nevada, which he needs to hold on to.

The fact that Mr Barr's running mate, Wayne Allyn Root, is the author of a self-help book entitled “The Joy of Failure!” takes some of the air out of this speculation. But it would be wrong to underestimate how angry many small-government Republicans are with Mr Bush. Ronald Reagan once remarked that he did not leave the Democratic Party: the Democratic Party left him. That is what many libertarian sorts now feel about the Republicans.

[Cube Dweller]

Originally Posted by cary

Great article in this weeks Economist about Bob Barr. I'm a libertarian, but not fond of him. I will end up voting for McCain in order to assure Obama doesn't get in.

snip.

Wow, they really nailed it. I subscribe but didn't get to that article yet.

[Jman]

Originally Posted by cary

Libertarian-leaning Republicans are also hog-wrestling mad about what has become of their party under George Bush. Mr Bush has presided over the fastest growth in federal spending since the Great Society in the 1960s. He put the Republican seal of approval on the biggest intrusion of federal power into the classroom in history (No Child Left Behind), the most expensive public-works programme ever (the 2005 highway bill) and the largest new entitlement programme since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid (the prescription-drug benefit). He launched an open-ended “war on terror”. He rode roughshod over states' rights on issues such as assisted suicide. And he has expanded the government's power to eavesdrop on its citizens.

Can I frame this?

[JJS]

Originally Posted by Jman

Can I frame this?

Unfortunately, it's too big to fit in a sig line.

[DaveyBoy]

Originally Posted by Shahram

Now, he's the Libertarian candidate for President. And while I understand that he has about a 0.5% chance of winning, I'm still not comfortable with him. I'll probably still vote for him, because he's about the closest candidate to my own views, but Jesus, if I'm gonna waste my vote, can't it at least be on someone epic?

He's gotta get past Mike Gravel first, as he's trying to become the Libertarian nominee as well.
Neither one of them are really Libertarians though.

[koop]

Originally Posted by DaveyBoy

He's gotta get past Mike Gravel first, as he's trying to become the Libertarian nominee as well.
Neither one of them are really Libertarians though.

Libs already held their convention, not that anyone noticed.

[DaveyBoy]

Originally Posted by koop

Libs already held their convention, not that anyone noticed.

That's great
Here I was thinking it was NEXT week....oh well.

Um..I guess Mike lost huh?

[Atticus]

Originally Posted by DaveyBoy

Um..I guess Mike lost huh?

No, he won. Now he doesn't have to be publicly humiliated for barely showing up to the election.

[89GASHOG]

Originally Posted by Shahram

Are you saying he has less than a 0.5% chance of winning?

'Cause I'd bet on that.

So, I'd put up $2,000 to win $100? Sounds good to me.
Edit: Oops, that would be $10. Well, it still doesn't sound like a bad bet.

[whodat]

A vote for Bob Barr is a vote for Obama...

[Brian in Oregon]

Originally Posted by 78-FJ40

Pro gun ownership, hates the IRS (taxes) and a proponent of privacy rights.

Hmmm. He, and you, sound like Republicans.

Unfortunately, many Republican politicians are NOT pro-gun. They're just not as hard core on banning guns as many Democrats. In fact, there has not been a single piece of anti-gun legislation that would have passed were it not for "pro-gun" Republicans crossing the aisle to join their anti-gun Democrat colleagues.

Taxes. Well, even if we overlook the amount going into the war, the tax cuts the Republicans have been pushing mean very little to most working class people.

Privacy rights. Yeah, that's why we have the Patriot Act, Patriot II and other crap.

[Brian in Oregon]

Originally Posted by cary

.....Libertarian-leaning Republicans are also hog-wrestling mad about what has become of their party under George Bush. Mr Bush has presided over the fastest growth in federal spending since the Great Society in the 1960s. He put the Republican seal of approval on the biggest intrusion of federal power into the classroom in history (No Child Left Behind), the most expensive public-works programme ever (the 2005 highway bill) and the largest new entitlement programme since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid (the prescription-drug benefit). He launched an open-ended “war on terror”. He rode roughshod over states' rights on issues such as assisted suicide. And he has expanded the government's power to eavesdrop on its citizens.....