OK, I know I will never get many of you on the John McCain bandwagon, (I have been quietly supporting him for a while without telling you), and you all seem to think Ron Paul is the answer to the prayers of all of Libertaria.
Here is a guy for you who will do far more for the libertarian movement than any of the other LP candidates and Paul combined, with the exception of Wayne Root, who although he is the best of them will probably now find the going tough.
The LP now finds itself in the unusual position of having two candidates with actual federal government experience, Bob Barr as a former congressman, and former Democrat Senator Mike Gravel.
Barr is rated as a libertarian by the Republican Liberty Caucus with a lifetime score of 76.4% which is on the lower end, however he started with a rating of ‘enterpriser’ and improved as he went on. His personal liberty rating of 68 is lower than I would like to see in a libertarian, but is not too bad and the articles I have read from him indicate that he is a lot better since then. He is quite strong in the area now.
Today I received an Email from his organization saying that he has formed an exploratory committee for a bid for the Presidential nomination for the LP.
Dear Fellow Conservative,
I’m writing you today with the most important news I could ever share with you.
After years of frustration watching the Republican Party rack up a $10 Trillion national debt while doing nothing to cut spending it is obvious that the Republican Party is simply no longer serious about representing the conservative-libertarian economic philosophy of my former boss, President Ronald Reagan.
I am deeply disappointed to see President Bush put forward a $3.1 Trillion budget, while vetoing hardly any spending bills during nearly eight years in office.
For those of us who had hoped for a true conservative to win the GOP nomination, I’m afraid that hasn’t happened either; as Senator John McCain has locked up that Party’s nomination.
As a consequence, many dedicated conservatives and advocates of limited, constitutional government have lost all remaining hope in restoring true conservatism to the Republican Party.
That’s why after many weeks of careful consideration, intense thought and prayer, I have formed an official exploratory committee for President of the United States under the banner of the Libertarian Party.
My fellow conservative, before you put this letter down and say that you cannot support a battle-tested, down-the-line conservative like me who is trying to send a message to the Party Bosses in Washington, D.C., please read the following quote from my former mentor, and boss, President Ronald Reagan…
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
– Reason Magazine, July 1975 Interview with Ronald Reagan
And, from the same interview…
“…[T]he basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
A truly great communicator, President Reagan went on to win a majority of the voting electorate by standing on the bedrock principle of limited government and maximum individual liberty.
In fact, as President Reagan succinctly pointed out, conservative-libertarians like us do not believe that we need government to protect us from ourselves!
Sadly, in 2008 where the Democratic Party brazenly advocates a philosophy of government practiced in Europe known as socialism, the Republican Party has become nothing short of a “Democrat-lite” version of the other side.
Just look at the policies advocated by Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain.
— Do any of them talk about abolishing the Department of Education and other excessive federal government programs, as President Reagan did? NO.
— Do they support abolishing the federal government’s socialistic farm subsidies? NO.
— Do they support protecting civil liberties for Americans by preventing the military, the NSA, and the FBI from spying on Americans without probable cause and without court-ordered warrants? NO.
— Do they have any real intention of securing our border to stem the flow of millions of illegal aliens into this nation? NO.
— Have any one of these presidential candidates sponsored legislation to flat-out abolish the failed and costly policies of the federal nanny state? NO.
When President Reagan appointed me as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, it was an honor and responsibility I will never forget.
The rule of law was a term that applied to the government as well as to its citizenry.
Today, after generations of Supreme Court decisions the proper role and function of government has been completely distorted from the original intent of the Founding Fathers.
With roughly 50% of Americans’ hard-earned wages going to some form of government entity (federal, state and local) is there really any reason to believe that a John McCain presidency would be substantially different from that of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Not really.
My friend, for the last five years I’ve worked virtually around the clock to raise money for true conservatives running for office.
I’ve been personally involved in raising millions of dollars to help elect proven conservative leaders to both the House and Senate.
Today, I’m writing you because it’s time for conservatives and conservative-libertarians like us to send a message to the GOP.
If you believe that John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama will actually restore America to its constitutional and limited federal government role, then I understand why you may not be supportive of my exploratory committee.
But if you believe as I do, and as the Washington Times newspaper has recently published, that a viable third party sends a powerful message to the two main parties, then I’m asking you to lend me a hand. ………………………..
I’ve always been economically conservative, pro-Second Amendment, and pro-states’ rights as a Member of Congress.
And I proudly remain so today.
Believe me, the Party Bosses of both major parties don’t want a true, credible conservative like me on the ballot in November, and your gift will give conservatives and libertarians a choice they deserve in November.
I hope you’ll support my exploratory committee today as I work to maximize your freedom and start shrinking the size and cost of the federal government.
Sincerely,
Hon. Bob Barr
Member of Congress (1995-2003)
P.S. I have worked tirelessly for conservative values and economic libertarian policies like Ronald Reagan proudly advocated.
My friend, I’m honest enough to tell you how frustrated I am with the GOP. And I’m begging you to do something about it by standing with me — and sending a powerful message to the Party Bosses and Washington insiders who are to blame for this spending fiasco and $9.2 Trillion national debt!
While I still feel that John McCain is the best man to lead America, a strong showing by Bob would make a difference. I previously said this about Ron Paul however he was too eccentric to be taken seriously. Bob Barr is a mainstream libertarian and should be able to make a good showing.
Australian Libertarian Society (old site) 
McCain simply isn’t electable.. the media and the Democrats haven’t begun to tap into all of the skeletons in his closet, and his past record of flip flopping on major issues draws ANYTHING coming out of his mouth into question. Go watch some of the videos here http://www.nojohn.com/ to get a taste of what we’ll be seeing this Fall… that site and the videos were created by a Republican who is fed up with the neocons taking over the GOP. He’s taking donations to run those ads.
Yes, Bob Barr & Mike Gravel have political experience — as aparachiks in the Republicrat Big Government, Stomp On Your Rights, aristocracy. Now both are libertarians, proving anyone can see the truth and value of the libertarian philosophy. But the baggage that Mr. Barr and Mr. Gravel still carry needs to be put down, and they need to fully renunciate their former statist positions. Neither has done that — yet. The political experience is a liability, not an asset.
In the meantime, there’s a candidate for the Libertarian presidential nomination who has never equivocated on her libertarian views. Dr. Mary Ruwart has made it a life-long mission to reach out to liberals, conservatives, people of faith, people of no faith … anyone … with practical examples of how a libertarianism is totally compatible to what they hold dear.
Brian Irving
RUWART for President campaign
Healing America
http://www.VoteMARY2008.com
He’d do more for the libertarian party than Ron Paul? Highly doubtful.
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Bob Barr may have found the shining light of liberty but he has a ways to go before I would consider him as the figure head of liberty. The presidential candidate for the LP should be the MOST libertarian person possible with a long history in the Libertarian movement. Their job is not so much get elected but to educate and set the example to others. By running candidates with seriously compromised backgrounds like Barr or Gravel as our top seat we are instantly compromising principles.
Mary Ruwart or Christine Smith so far shine as amazing candidates to me. While I am happy that Bob Barr and Mike Gravel see the LP as a viable means to political ends and that they are adopting libertarian principles I don’t think the new guys should be considered for the most powerful electable position in the entire world.
Good post, I’m pulling for Bob and hoping he can make a statement in november on behalf of all Libertarians and anyone else who’s pissed off with the current system
I go over a number of reasons why he should be the nominee on my blog at http://dj28.wordpress.com/
I get the feeling Bob Barr has no interest in ending the drug war, let alone legalising drugs. He has expressed mild support for medicinal marijuana but that is about all. This combined with his “secure the boarders” position means I have no interest in supporting Barr. Sure he would be a million times better than Clinton, Obama or McCain but since the LP is only out there to educate and inject differing views into the debates, I would rather have someone who is a consistent libertarian than someone who might get 0.6% of the vote instead of 0.4%.
I would rather have someone who is a consistent libertarian than someone who might get 0.6% of the vote instead of 0.4%.
—
Nah, in politics it is nigh impossible to be that consistent. You have to compromise. If you want to go for ideological purity then forget about politics or become a Marxist.
“OK, I know I will never get many of you on the John McCain bandwagon, (I have been quietly supporting him for a while without telling you”
“While I still feel that John McCain is the best man to lead America”
Are you kidding? Please tell me your are kidding! Didnt you know that “Austrian Libertarian McCain supporter” is an oxymoron? The only reason a fiscal conservatives would ever support McCain is because they supported the war. A McCain presidency will do more harm to our economy than Bush, Clinton, Greenspan combined.
I want to use vulgarity but promised myself that I would stop. You sir are a flipp’n taco cheese sandwich!!!!!!!! Dog Gamn daughter of a donkey!!!!!!
I think if I was an American, I’d consider exercising my right not to vote in the upcoming election.
To #9.
Ironically a lot if not most Americans probably won’t vote in the next election. When you factor in nonvoters we have not had a president elected by a majority of the eligible voter population in decades.
Riley; It is not important that the president is elected by an outright majority of the eligible voters, especially as the public there have the right not to vote. Those who do not vote are either prepared to accept the decision of the others or want to whine about it later.
There are only three candidates in the election who can win it from here and none of them is a card carrying libertarian. It is my aim to try to help prevent either of the socialist ones getting there.
Over here I would generally support the Liberty and Democracy party in elections, the only exception being if the party were to nominate an out of touch ideological drop kick, while one of the other parties presented a candidate with fiscally responsible attitudes and a reasonable respect for personal freedom.
Mary Ruwart is a person who I hold in high respect, her writing in the Liberator Online is always to the point and valid, however I do not consider her capable of drawing the sort of support that Bob can. Libertarians can benefit from the fact that he can draw many disenchanted voters from outside pure libertarian circles. These people tend to support our ideas but tend to shy away from being associated with the impractical fruitloop element.
I tend to be involved with Libertarian Republicans more than with actual Libertarians as I don’t place a high value on ideological purity. There are many of them who support our ideals but believe that the core of Republicanism is along these lines anyway. None of them supported Ron Paul, but are quite interested in Bob Barr.
Libertarians need these people to take those first fleeting steps into actually voting for the party, then start to feel at home there.
Barr is NO libertarian. He supports the war on drugs still to this day. He is a foreign interventionist wanting American intervention in South and Central America. He is viciously anti-gay saying that gay couples deserve no legal rights similar to straight couples. He wants to ban abortion. He wants government sponsored prayers in state schools. He supported making it illegal to burn a flat in protest (even if it is the burner’s flag). The man is a Right-wing conserrvative moralist (except when it came to cheating on his own wives and going through three of them). This man is a sham libertarian.
I don’t know enough about Barr to judge his libertarian credentials but you aren’t doing him any favours by mentioning Mike Gravel in the same piece.
I do not believe it is a good idea to run a third party this
election on our side. I am not a new republican, and warned people of compassionate conservatism. Look what that got us.
Each year my choice of republican primary candidates is usually the first out. Always the winner has been my last choice. Bob Barr was always a good one to listen to on CSPAN as he debated in congress. I was one who was sad to see him go. Always the good one’s leave or are beaten at home.
Look at my state of Ct.
This election year is of extreme importance to the future of our nation. We can not afford either of the democratic candidates. If I were to sit down and list all that is wrong with our nation and its economy I could link it all back to the Democratic party and its ideals.
For Bobs part I feel he would be a better American to stay out of the race and unify behind John McCain. John Mc Cain has never been a favorite of mine, I will not compremise my priciples. In this case however I feel I must.Bob should work to educate Americans about what it means to be free and American. To go back to our constitution and the hopes of our founders. If we can bring the constitution back in its original form and not interpret it in our modern language we would be more successful.
Protect our way of life, our hopes for retirement,our hopes for our children to be better off. In this way we may able to seat a better congress.
Thank you.
Paul Ormiston
I don’t know much about McCain but I do know one highly disturbing fact that would definitely stop me voting for him:
Because he said this: “I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/10/AR2006051001787.html
So I see a potential for further destructions to the original meaning of the American constitution and bill of rights if McCain is elected.
A third party in American politics is always going to act as a spoiler for either or both sides. I hope that third parties provide enough of a spoiler in this election that America considers REAL electoral reform.
Personally I think that the HISTORY of the Electoral College needs to be balanced against the desire for a more proportionally representative system. In my opinion electoral college votes should be delegated to candidates in accordance to an STV system similar to that seen in the Upper House of Australia.
Apologies for this being off-topic but whenever I hear about third party politicians in America I think of them being a spoiler and how wrong a non-preferential, non-proportional system is…
Tim R; I am glad you included this link as someone mentioned it on my site a while ago and I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. To put this in perspective McCain has had a consistent record of opposing the sort of corruption that goes on with election funding. Every attempt so far has been overturned as unconstitutional, on the basis of restriction of first amendment rights, which has led to a lot of frustration among those who care about it.
My conjecture is that he does not hold the opinion that corrupt payments to members and candidates is subject to first amendment rights at all. I have seen no other evidence to back an argument of general disrespect for the constitution.
One of the most serious areas of corruption comes from the earmark system they use over there and McCain has vowed to veto any bill containing them. Maybe Ron Paul will back him on this.
To get an idea check this out.
Governor Sarah Palin in Alaska often seems to me to be battling the Democrats (corruption proven among them) with one hand, and the corrupt state Republican establishment with the other. (Google ‘the bridge to nowhere).
I find myself somewhat dismayed that in probably one of the most critical elections in memory the LP has come up with some very credible candidates. In some ways I am really pleased that they are at last coming up with people who are not the usual drop kicks, I just wish they had picked a better time.
jim – i fail to see why McCain gets such a bad press from libertarians. i think it reflects worse on the latter than the former.
I am not really sure Pommy, for some reason conservatives see him as a liberal, liberals see him as a conservative, and libertarians see him as a statist.
I think one of the biggest problems people have in assessing him is in my opinion anyway, is that he tends to place ‘the right thing’ and personal integrity above politics.
On the RLC assessments of him he has tended to rate fairly poorly from 91-97, then in 98 & 99 he was rated as a libertarian, then fell back a bit until 04 & 05 when he was again rated libertarian especially in 05 with a score of 82. I personally tend to disagree with some of the methodology of the RLC though and only use as a rough guide. (05 figures put him three places ahead of Ron Paul).
Most Libertarian Republicans I know tended to support Romney after the field closed up and vowed never to vote for McCain. Most declared that they would vote for Wayne Root, or not vote at all if he were the nominee. Only one of those is maintaining that position and he is doing a lot of really good work for the Republicans, so even if he doesn’t vote Republican he is doing us a lot of good.
Hi Jim, yeah that earmarking system sounds pretty stupid to me and seems like a predictably negative by-product of political finance regulation.
I am in favour of abolishing political campign finance and donation laws, but should admit that I don’t know a huge amount on the subject.
I can’t remember if the LDP has a policy on this.
Hope you might like to read a good article I recently read calling for the abolishion of political financing regulations: http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/03/19/yaron-campaign-finance-oped-cx_ybr_0321yaron.html
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I doubt that these regulations serve any purpose other than to inconvenience the honest, McCain himself is currently experiencing difficulty in opting out of the political financing system.
The article you linked to is good, but essentially the system can be bypassed. Soros and other wealthy liberals are currently putting together a $40 million slush fund to smear McCain “regardless of who the democrat nominee is.”
It would be an impossible task to list the extensive crimes against liberty committed by both Republicans and Democrats — and then try to weigh them in hopes of determining which was the lesser of evils. The fact is that both parties desire to control the lives of Americans and others not even from this country.
McCain is no less a statist than Obama and Hillary. He would just advocate different crimes — so it doesn’t matter which of them wins.
I’ll be voting for the Libertarian candidate, whomever it is.
The problem is, Bob Barr and Mike Gravel (think socialist healthcare!) (and Wayne Root for that matter) are not libertarians at all. They are opportunist carpetbaggers. The LP is going to end up nominating either a Democrat or a Republican for their nomination. How sad.
The question I have for Bob Barr is if you headed up the impeachment for Bill Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinski, Do you think you should have been impeached for the affairs you had??
Phony, what makes you different than Clinton except Hypocrisy and why would I vote for that??
My recollection of the Lewinsky affair is that the impeachment proceedings were not for having sex but for lying about it.
Had Bill contacted me I would have told him not to say “Ah never had sex with that woman,” but “Bloody oath mate, I gave it to her and she was squealing for it.” This way he would have been praised for his honesty and got a reputation as a good ol boy at the same time.
Should the next President require personal advice, I am available on a consultancy basis at a fee which is modest in relation to the GDP.
I will not vote for McCain, even if it means a Democrat wins the White House! I am not happy with the Constitution Party’s choice so I will seriously consider Bob Barr.
NEWSFLASH: Ronald Reagan still dead. Parasites continue to try to live off his host.
I think all of poloticians are corrupt. And, the only way to vote, is to choose the one who doesn’t lie the most, or even biased