Paul's support vital for Barr's Libertarian bid
By Tom Baxter
Southern Political Report
June 16, 2008 — Can Bob Barr catch some of that Ron Paul magic? If not one of the major questions of this presidential year, this is one which conceivably could matter a lot in November, if a few more third-party votes have as much effect as they did in 2000. Last week, Barr got his strongest boost since winning the Libertarian Party presidential nomination on the sixth ballot in Denver last month. Paul’s departure from the race cleared any lingering questions about his presidential campaign this year, and some nice things they’ve said about each other have led to reports that relations between the two are warming. Both of them can be prickly enough to give some caution to the idea of a real Barr-Paul political friendship. But if he’s going to have an impact on this election, Barr needs at least a favorable nod from the Texas congressman and 1988 Libertarian presidential candidate. Politically, Barr’s relatively brief career has been a mixed bag. In his first race, for Congress in 1994, he defeated a well-regarded Democrat, Buddy Darden, but he was riding the tidal wave of the Republican revolution in a district adjacent to the one represented by Newt Gingrich. When Roger Kahn, a self-funded Democrat, came after him in 2000, Barr ran a tough, smart campaign, lambasting Kahn in ads as the “great pretender” because he owned a cattle farm in a rural part of the district, but kept a residence in Atlanta. But in 2002, unhappy with what redistricting had done to his old district, Barr took on Rep. John Linder. It was expected to be a battle royal between two former House allies, but Barr got plastered, and didn’t return to politics until this year. Given his political conversion since then it’s a sore subject, but Barr lost the Libertarian vote, large and small “L,” in that election. Libertarians were angry with him about his opposition to medical marijuana (Earlier this month, Barr joked about hash brownies on The Colbert Report.). More important, post-election polling by Linder’s campaign showed Linder scored hugely with his authorship of the Fair Tax proposal, which was being heavily promoted by Libertarian radio host Neal Boortz. Presumably, by the sixth ballot in Denver, those bridges were repaired. But it’s not Paul’s credos with party-line Libertarians as much as his ability to reach younger, disaffected voters. Whether Barr’s candidacy matters much elsewhere, Democrats base their chances of scoring a major upset in Georgia on a huge increase in African-American registration, combined with Barr shaving off just enough votes from McCain to tip the balance and put the state’s 15 electoral votes in the blue column. And even in his home state, Barr could use some of the energy Paul stirred up earlier in the year. |
