Bob Barr, Anyone?

[Ralph]

Ex-congressman becomes Libertarian '08 candidate


(CNN) -- Former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr was officially nominated Sunday as the Libertarian candidate for president.

"We have only 163 days to win this election -- do not waste one single day," Barr told supporters at the Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

Barr is best known for playing a prominent role in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

His candidacy has attracted more attention to the Libertarian Party, with some GOP observers watching to see whether Barr will draw votes away from the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, in the general election.

"We're not in this race to make a point, though a very important point will be made," Barr said.

On the sixth ballot at the convention, Barr won the nomination over research scientist Mary Ruwart. After going out on the fifth ballot, fellow candidate Wayne Allyn Root urged his supporters to back Barr and made his case to be Barr's vice presidential running mate.

Barr, 59, left the Republican Party in 2006, and announced in April that he would form a presidential exploratory committee. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1994 and represented a conservative district in the Atlanta suburbs for four terms.

After the House impeached Clinton over his attempt to cover up his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Barr served as one of the "managers" who prosecuted the case in the Senate. Senators ultimately acquitted Clinton in 1999.

Clinton's wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, faces Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

In his last term, Barr became an increasingly vocal critic of President Bush, particularly criticizing the administration's support of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act.

Like former Libertarian standard-bearer Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who sought the GOP presidential nomination this year, Barr supports a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Barr has said the 5-year-old war has resulted in "tremendous cost and only the most speculative of benefit."

He worked as an occasional contributor and analyst for CNN after leaving office.

The last two Libertarian candidates, Michael Badnarik in 2004 and Harry Browne in 2000, drew fewer than 400,000 votes each.

[jbuck919]

To give you a flavor of poor self-discipline on the part of the press in this campaign (of which the airy-fairy but will-not-die notion of an Obama/Clinton ticket is only the most obvious example), the first I heard about Barr was in some news broadcast or other that said he really was not all that different from McCain and then in virtually the next sentence said he planned on starting an immediate pullout from Iraq.

To the extent a candidate like Barr can be taken seriously at all, he does rather have the fatal flaw of thinking that being President means you can rule by decree.

[Corlyss_D]

No.

[Corlyss_D]

To the extent a candidate like Barr can be taken seriously at all,

You should read that Reason article someone posted here a while back, documenting who is responsible for the alleged "imperial" president. I especially liked the part where in one breath the moonbats whined about Bush's abuse of power, corruption of civil rights, and institutional lying, and in the next they whined about his failure to act fast enough in Katrina. The dialog with the that honorary moonbat, Chris Shays, was priceless: Brown outlined why the military couldn't be used under current doctrine, and Shays basically retorted "quit making excuses; why didn't you use the army?"

But of course the point isn't taking Barr seriously; it's understanding that every Senator possesses a mirror which, when he looks into it, shows him a president and plays Ruffles and Flourishes and Hail to the Chief. Even when they leave Washington, they take the mirror with them.

[greymouse]

This was the guy who got duped into that dumb investigation of the 2001 Clinton-Bush transition. Where they were spending millions of dollars investigating missing "w" keys on keyboards and stuff and came up short. You can tell what the GOP thinks of the guy giving him all the crappy assignments.

Libertarians might be more interesting if they weren't a purely theoretical party who don't really seem to care about winning or accomplishing anything. They push their concepts way too far - people aren't going to put up with dismantling the IRS and dozens of other major departments to fulfill the abstract laissez faire ideas of people who don't specialize in economics. If some third party could develop an appealing and realistic platform that didn't sound academic ... that would be great.

He's been helpful in keeping the Patriot Act in check though. Credit for that. Most of Congress was asleep at the wheel on this for years, but it's getting much better.

[Corlyss_D]

Steve found the Cult article I was thinking of when I wrote my post above. Here's the link to it:

http://classicalmusicguide.com/viewtopi ... presidency

So here are the questions I pose to the assembled ears:

Economist John Lott analyized the birth of the modern nanny state, going back as far as the 19th century. His conclusion was that within a matter of a few short years after every Western nation gave women the vote, the demand for support services exploded, and with it the size of the state to provide those services. So how likely is it that the trend will be reversed? Can a modern state, whose purpose it is to guarantee its citizens the good life from cradle to grave, exist without a strong executive to administer the distribution of the services on which the good life depends? Can we pick and choose, reasonably, when we want a strong executive and then bottle him up the rest of the time?

[Corlyss_D]

Libertarians might be more interesting if they weren't a purely theoretical party who don't really seem to care about winning or accomplishing anything.

Until Newt arrived in Washington in 1979, that was a perfect description of the Republican party, except that it omits the reliable and cuddly "lap dog" status that 40 years in the minority conferred on them. When the Republicans took the Congress in 1994, you could observe in group press conferences the visible discomfort of the "lap dog" wing of the party, i.e., those who had been in Congress many years already and were accustomed to their role as "Democrats-lite," backbenchers, and factotutms for the Democrats. Bob Dole and Pete Dominici were perfect examples of that kind of Republican: timid, fearful, and out of their depth, they dragged on the dynamism of the newly-empowered movement conservatives. Fortunately, Kasich was paired with Dominici and brought him along very steadily. Unfortuantely, nothing could be done with Dole, who, especially when he decided he wanted to run for president in 96, was a nightmare of conciliation and statemanship, giving Democrats hope they could retain influence when they had been stript of their authority, repeatedly conceding matters over which the Republicans had battled hard to win policy authority.

They push their concepts way too far - people aren't going to put up with dismantling the IRS and dozens of other major departments to fulfill the abstract laissez faire ideas of people who don't specialize in economics.

Well, the IRS is the very definition of a bloated obsolete bureaucracy and ought to be dismantled. It won't happen in my lifetime, but it will happen eventually because collection of taxes is not so complex as to warrant the retention of 60,000 low-level key punch operators when the technology exists to eliminate those jobs and the personnel costs associated with them. HHS, probably not because as near as I can tell, they interact with the public in a much more service-oriented way than IRS does.

Most of Congress was asleep at the wheel on this for years, but it's getting much better.

Define "better."

[Werner]

Corlyss, I see a hint to a better future in your previous post: it all started with giving the women the vote. So why not start with taking it away from the ladies - if they'll let you! - and by taking the Nanny out of the Nanny State, we'll go back to the primordial conflicts of the sexes, the classes, the rich, the poor, the whatevver, and everybody will be happy? As long as they each have guns, that is!

[Donald Isler]

Fortunately, the Republican "Revolution" of 1994 has since been overturned, so it is possible that that party may yet again stand for something most Americans can respect.

[Corlyss_D]

Fortunately, the Republican "Revolution" of 1994 has since been overturned, so it is possible that that party may yet again stand for something most Americans can respect.

Dream on, Don. The public wasn't voting for Democrats; it was voting against Republicans. This is essentially a conservative nation and it will stay that way for a very, very, very long time.

[Donald Isler]

It's a moderate country that may lean a little to the right, not a VERY conservative country. But if the Republicans keep misunderstanding that they'll keep losing, which is fine with me!

[jbuck919]

It's a moderate country that may lean a little to the right, not a VERY conservative country. But if the Republicans keep misunderstanding that they'll keep losing, which is fine with me!

Perhaps it's fairer to say that this is a country in which conservatives are wont to feel smugly self-satisfied because they award themselves dibs on the spin on everything, while at the same time not ffeling an inheritance of responsibility for what those of their ilk would be supporting as "conservative" causes in earlier generations (e.g., no Keynesian approach to the Great Depression, segregated schools, dare I venture slavery?).