By Meg
This one’s for you, Jeff and Adrian.
It’s official: Former Congressman Bob Barr is running for president — as a Libertarian! Curious what the two of you think about this. I personally don’t know much about the guy except that he hates former President Clinton and loves marijuana.
Sounds like every philosophy professor I had in college ...
Comments (1)
Well, he's never going to be President, so really whoever is the Libertarian nominee only matters in two ways. First, which party will the nominee take the most number of votes from. Will the nominee be able to convey the general message effectively and reach the widest audience.
If Barr (a former Republican) is the nominee (here's write-up on all the possible options: http://www.reason.com/news/show/126201.html), it will obviously take more votes from the Republicans than say Mike Gravel (a former Democrat) would. Beyond that, If Obama can successfully position himself as "out of Iraq", "anti-torture", "anti-spying on US citizens", then the Libertarian protest votes on the social left will be mitigated (compared to where they would be if Hillary won the Democratic nomination since she voted for the Iraq War Resolution and the Patriot Act).
Therefore, most of the Libertarian protest votes will be based on economics. Since the Republicans have seemingly decided against actually being economic Conservativess anymore when it comes to anything but "cutting taxes", I think they stand to lose a lot of votes to the Libertarian candidate - shades of Nader in 2000.
All I really care about is who can get the message out most effectively to the most broad audience. Ron Paul had his failings, as to most hardline Libertarians (who advocate eliminating the FDA, fire departments, etc), but he has been great at getting out the core message of personal freedom and limited government, which has been pushed to the shadows recently (specifically post 9/11)
Each election has a different core issue, but the impact is always the same. How can we increase the scope of the government? Both Republican and Democrat will find common ground on how they can bribe you for your vote by throwing money at some new government pet project; this election cycle appears to be health care. Of course, no candidate will be foolish enough to advocate cutting spending in any other area to pay for these new expenditures..
And nobody has the gall to speak up against our foolish drug and prostitution laws based on archaic, puritan religious mythology.
Unfortunately, it's up to the Libertarians to be one of few voices for these topics. The better-known and well-spoken their candidate, the happier I am, since it's more likely they can move the needle in the right direction and get the major candidates to be less authoritarian in their positions.