Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Tracking Bob Barr

Almost forgot. Did a piece for this past Sunday's Register Commentary section on Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr's prospects for at least doing better than most previous LP presidential candidates this November. His candidacy has not been the triumphant building on Ron Paul's early (relative) successes in the GOP primaries that many had hoped; in fact it precipitated something of a split in the LP and a break with Ron Paul himself. However, despite disappointing fundraising and a less-than-stellar ballot access campaign, I think he has a chance to beat the high-water mark of 1.1% that Ed Clark got in 1980, and perhaps even to help build the freedom movement a bit.

I talked to Dave Nolan today, which I hadn't done in a couple of years, and he was more mellow toward Barr than I expected. He agrees with me that Barr has sincerely become a soft-core libertarian; his turnaround on the drug war is notable and remarkable. He thinks Barr's real goal may be a constant slot as a talking head on the cable news channels, which wouldn't be an entirely unpleasant outcome.

2 comments:

smartblackboy said...

I have a best friend who recently announced that she was voting for Bob Barr. I wasn't too familiar with him and actually read word for word his statements on the issues on his website. Unfortunately my conclusion was that this guy is a joke. http://womenartmoney.blogspot.com/2008/10/10-reasons-why-bob-barr-is-joke.html

Butler T. Reynolds said...

Smart,

That's cute, but don't be so gullible. Do you think that politicians are telling the truth when they call something "deregulation"?

If you were to take the time to look under the covers of cases of "deregulation", what you'd find are politicians that are scrambling b/c their previous regulations are going badly; so, they re-regulate and call it "deregulation".

After a while their misnamed "deregulation" regulations screw up, so then it's time to "regulate" things again.

In both cases, it's still regulation. They just name it based on whatever word is more popular at the moment.

It shows the public that politicians are "doing something" and it buys them some time.

It seems that most people take the bait every time.