There were countless conservatives seriously considering voting for Libertarian nominee Bob Barr instead of John McCain until McCain chose Palin as his running mate. I’ve read several instances where someone was very lukewarm on voting for McCain and were considering Barr, then McCain chose Palin and suddenly Barr became an afterthought.
One could go back and listen to talk and radio show host Glenn Beck speak highly of Barr and come close to saying he would vote for him. That is, until McCain chose Palin. Now Beck said the other day to a McCain advisor, “Tell McCain he won my vote by picking Palin”.
Further evidence came today in an AP article discussing McCain’s tax cut proposals.
Elizabeth Kish, an administrative assistant from Gainesville, Fla., said she was put off by McCain’s record on immigration and was considering voting for Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr until Palin’s selection.
“Once he chose Palin that was it for me,” said Kish, who was wearing a “Pro-Life Pro-Palin” button and another button featuring pictures of Chief Justice John Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito under the slogan, “The Kind of Change I Believe In.”
So if you consider the Palin pick along with Bob Barr’s actions to annoy the majority of Ron Paul’s supporters it isn’t looking good for Barr. Given these two circumstances I’m starting to buy the story from the purist Libertarians who have been saying all along that Barr would not break the historic highest vote total for a Libertarian Presidential candidate.
I have lamented Ron Paul’s missed opportunity in recent articles. Now I must admit that Bob Barr seems to have missed a great opportunity of his own.
Here is Ron’s short but effective appearance on Glenn Beck yesterday. As always good stuff from him. I’d also like to thank Beck for continuing to cover Ron Paul and have him on his show. Even though Beck now says he’s voting for McCain/Palin he has been quite fair to Ron Paul, at least on economic issues.
Although Ron flounders a little at the end there, he pretty much sums it up in a way that I think a lot of us have never fully considered: 16% of the country votes for one candidate, and the rest of us, the true majority, are all left feeling like “the minority”. Footage below, including what we can and need to do about it:
This interview with Bob Barr was taped during the Republican National Convention. The tone of the interview is a bit like a couple of friends sitting down for a conversation with attempts at humor, neither quite successful. Barr does certainly seemed very focused on getting in to the debates, which is music to my ears. There was little in the way of issues discussed in the interview, but Barr defends against the spoiler role yet again. He’s getting good at it.
Yeah, it’s just a number, but why not celebrate with Ron Paul and Aimee Allen, the Muse of Revolution? A musing why we should continue to grow over the next year, the principle of Same-Same.
It’s official! The total size of the army of the free world has hit 6 figures. The Revolution is 100,000 strong and growing, not bad for the first summer! As I wrote here, it’s a struggle of attrition, but as McBama prances about bragging about the goodness that next wars will bring our nation, hope is building at www.CampaignForLiberty.com, not the least of which is the mysterious announcement Ron Paul will make concerning the presidential campaign on September 10th. Well, according to both the Neocons and the Barackcuda, Russia is next in line to get beat down after Pakistan and Iran, and hopefully more and more wars will mean more and more Americans will leave the mainstream lemmings and join our Revolution. Some of our patriots (apparently a new species of lawyer with principles and backbone) are even renewing their efforts to arrest Bush and Cheney this last weekend.
Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine sums up my own thoughts on Sarah Palin and her rather impressive speech last night perfectly.
As an instance of political theater, I think just about anybody would agree that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech was pretty impressive. As Nina Easton of Fortune put it (somewhat regretfully) on Fox News Channel, “It was a home run in the first inning.” It was a well-delivered, red-meat speech, chock full o’ attacks on Barack Obama and Democrats in general.
For me, the lacuna at the heart of it all, a gigantic prolapsed valve big enough to punch your fist through, was the inability of the GOP to spell out exactly what John McCain’s great legislative accomplishments were/are. Palin kept intoning that McCain was a great American, apart form the torture he endured during the Vietnam War. But she wouldn’t quite spell out what his massive successes were. McCain-Feingold? Eh, not exactly. Earmark reform? Mebbe (except for the fact that Alaska pulls in much more dough than it sends to D.C.). He was against the Medicare prescription drug benefit—a totally awful and unnecessary expansion of the welfare state. But she didn’t call that out (which makes sense, given that a Republican president pushed the bejeezus out of it all and it seemed like the average age in the RNC hall was about 70 years old).
Liberty Maven
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