In an article written for CQ Politics, nationally known political pundit Craig Crawford says Libertarians “blew it” by nominating Bob Barr. It’s “too bad,” says Crawford, because “a party that truly believes in personal freedom and limited government is worth hearing from in these days of major parties that equivocate and prevaricate on those principles.”
But in Barr, says Crawford, “Libertarians have ended up with a loose cannon whose record isn’t even that strong on the party’s ideals.”
Crawford says Barr has “further burnished his nutty reputation and made his newfound party look like a joke” by representing a Georgia gun shop in a libel case against Michael Bloomberg, and “promoting a bogus claim” that John McCain and Barack Obama should not be on the ballot in Texas.
Crawford also touches on Snubgate.
Crawford closes with the following assessment and advice for the LP: “The Libertarian gambit to raise the party’s profile with a better-known nominee than usual simply failed. The party ought to stay focused on building its base from the ground up, such as running stronger candidates for lesser offices, and one day its natural appeal to independent-thinking voters could really catch on.”
“flower pot” . . . that’s pretty funny svf!
Note-I didn’t say it was a huge garden!
Please, lets pull the non-libertarian “weeds†out of the libertarian garden.
you mean the libertarian flower pot, right…?
A small suggestion for you — defending Barr on this website will do you no good. People here have had their minds made up months ago to oppose him and the only reason you see Barr’s name mentioned is to offer everyone an excuse to act morally indignant.
Not so. Barr remains one of the options for me, despite everything, although I must admit he is not doing much to recommend himself.
Gene Trosper // Sep 19, 2008 at 9:12 am
People here have had their minds made up months ago to oppose him
True . . . and that is because such a grave error (nomination of Barr) must be avoided at all costs in the future. If a weed isn’t pulled out by the roots, it grows back.
Please, lets pull the non-libertarian “weeds” out of the libertarian garden.
Crawford closes with the following assessment and advice for the LP: “The Libertarian gambit to raise the party’s profile with a better-known nominee than usual simply failed.
Agreed. Whatever the problems with the article by Crawford, this much is indispoutable . . . the Barr nomination by the LP is a grand failure. Libertarianism isn’t promoted . . . conservatism is. Mistake after mistake is made, and fundraising is abysmal. Where is the success?
@ rdupuy:
A small suggestion for you — defending Barr on this website will do you no good. People here have had their minds made up months ago to oppose him and the only reason you see Barr’s name mentioned is to offer everyone an excuse to act morally indignant.
I’m not happy with Barr myself, but I like to refrain from the perpetual contest to see who can piss higher on the tree.
rdupuy // Sep 18, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Bob Barr is extremely effective at getting on national media, and presenting the Libertarian message to a wider audience
Barr may be able to get a “message” out to a wider audience, but unfortunately, as the Libertarian Party nominee, that “message” is conservative (and somewhat neo-con ), NOT libertarian.
rdupuy // Sep 18, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Bob Barr has been a great libertarian for several years now, but he couldn’t have been elected without the support of the membership.
Oh yeah Barr’s been great . . . let’s see intervene in South America to stem the tide of drugs, support for provisions of the USA Patriot Act (no-Barr is not for ELIMINATING the whole act!), “allowing” medicinal marijuana, but forget about eliminating the entire war on drugs, various middle east interventions supported, etc.
Oh yeah, Barr’s been a GREAT libertarian.
The membership, or the “membership” delegates at the LP convention was mildly packed by the Barr campaign. In the Florida delegation alone, THREE additional delegates showed up on Sunday May 25th, the day of the presidential candidate voting (all by-laws, platform and other events had already been completed) and all three voted for Barr. Then they left, even before Monday morning! I am sure that this happened in several other states as well.
Yeah right, Barr had the support of the “membership”. Dream on.
If Barr won Texas and threw the election to the House, Obama would probably win. Based on the current composition of the House, and assuming party-line voting, Obama would win 26-21-3.
What drugs are rduguy on? To be that delusional, they must be pretty good. Can I get some too?
VTV – I think that it’s useful to run presidential campaigns in order to set up ballot access, conduct ballot access lawsuits, generate some publicity, etc. But they should in no way be as important as they are now. Local candidates should by far be the focus of minor parties.
I think we should get in bed with the Democrats on this one! LOL
carol’s suggestion is intriguing…
Did they follow up by noting that there is no truth in Izvestia and no news in Pravda?
Texas is reliably Republican. I don’t suppose it would hurt Obama then to readily admit that he missed the deadline — and to insist that he and McCain both abide by the laws of the state and be removed from the ballot…. 🙂
What would he have to lose….?
The party will be built from the top down, not the other way around.
Now where have I heard that before? Let me think…
I think I was small then, and it wasn’t in English.
🙂
VTV,
Gotta disagree with you on the idea of scrapping the presidential race.
Harry Browne, R.I.P, was 100% correct on this one: there is no better platform for delivering the libertarian message, however watered down some might think it is this cycle. The amount of time and effort the average american voter spends on the presidental election dwarfs the other, non-presidential election years.
Furthermore, even getting the >1% we normally get, we must keep the spot open as a “placeholder” for a future candidate who switches from the Demopublican party, in other words, the potential future scenario similar to the R3VOLution this cycle.
Despite purist arguments in holding to principle, I submit to you and others here that the most likely scenario for a Libertarian president, however UNlikely it is, would be a politician (or maybe a celebrity candidate) sensing an opportunity and switching parties sometime prior to a presidental election. When that happens, we have to be ready to offer this future candidate our spot on the ballot.
In that case, winning house or senate seats will be irrelevant. Some officeholders at that time will swtich parties, and the ones who don’t will see the writing on the wall. This will happen faster than one might think possible. One day the Republican Party (for example) will exist, and the next day it will not.
The party will be built from the top down, not the other way around.
Were you in Denver? I was.
Let’s see: The LP executive director issued a press release calling for more government and smearing Bob Barr’s top rival, Mary Ruwart. He did this without any authority. Later, he went to work for Third Party Watch, a Barr propaganda organ, and promptly halted all anti-Barr commentary and took away the press credentials of all anti-Barr bloggers for the convention. After Barr won the nomination with less than 50% of credentialed-delegates’ votes, Barr thanked this person — Shane Cory — who at that time had never worked for him, officially at least. He was then, of course, promptly hired by the campaign.
And this is just one small strand. Playing by the rules? No. Barr had people inside LPHQ and on the LNC that stacked the deck in his favor. The one debate he was in in Denver — avoiding all the rest and all before the convention — was rigged by his partisans. He brought zombie neocons in to give him the margin of “victory.” He lied about his positions on DOMA, for example, to convince gullible delegates to vote for him.
I could go on.
p.s. I’ll give you some insight how I came to support Bob Barr. I looked at the available choices, and concluded he was the best.
I wasn’t contacted by anyone, in any campaign.
I know that Wayne Allen Root, attempted to contact a lot of people. Good for him. He didn’t win, but I think campaigning is good, not manipulative.
Politics is politics, but in the end, the process was exactly as I described, membership electing activists to the convention, and these very intelligent, very honorable men and women, selecting the choice they felt was best, and by the way, they were absolutely correct.
The attempt to define Bob Barr in some other way, is mostly negative campaigning by our political foes, although I admit, the LP also tends to blow up internally as well, I cannot deny this phenomena, but its not unique to the LP.
@G.E. you’ll have to support that statement in some way. I’m just going to dismiss it. Bob Barr has been a great libertarian for several years now, but he couldn’t have been elected without the support of the membership. You show great disrespect to the membership. Maybe you just don’t believe in the capability of individuals to make decisions. If so, you’ve made a strange choice of philosophies.
p.s. while I don’t support the lawsuit, again, its simply an agree to disagree moment. Bob Barr is extremely effective at getting on national media, and presenting the Libertarian message to a wider audience, and this is precisely why they are trying to learn the ins and outs of the liberty movement and figure out how to level targetted attacks. Negative campaigning works, they know this.
This is true if and only if about 100 coincidences are exactly that. Approximate odds: 1 in several billion.
The LP Is absolutely focused on building its base, and high profile Presidential candidates is part of that process.
The LP cannot afford to be considered american’s 5th party or 6th party. It really has to stay in competition, and honestly, break from the pack as america’s 3rd party. That means 3rd in size, after Republicans and Democrats.
These people learn just enough to spew what they think is demoralizing to the LP base.
Quite frankly, I think the attacks by the CP have been successful in doing that, but, people have already caught wise to it, and frankly don’t appreciate it.
Bob Barr was nominated by the LP activists who in turn were there at the convention to do the job they were elected by the membership to do, select the best candidate.
He didn’t steal this, he didn’t manipulate the process, he didn’t write any of the rules…he wasn’t even planning on running this year, until drafted by LP activies and under the assurances of support by prominent figures in the liberty movement.
No…he is our nominee. Of course we don’t agree with him about every stategy, every dollar he spent.
I don’t even think he understood how to run a smaller campaign, and tried to run one that was too big…he didn’t 100% hit the mark, and was less effective for it.
But so what, I’m not going to vote for some candidate that will destroy liberty…I’m voting for Bob Barr, who has been a great libertarian advocate in recent years, and is doing the work of getting the LP message out to america. He’s working very hard, and getting a lot of exposure.
The LP already runs more local candidates than the other parties. Unfortunately, not as many as ten years ago.
http://libertarianpartycandidates.us/
Then do both. Because at this point, all we are doing is exposing our message, and the tiny minority that agree with us. This is where the term “Loosertarian” comes from. People look at us with less then 1% of the vote and laugh at us. Particularly when we don’t have any representation at all in government beyond City Council.
This kills ballot access in a lot of states.
The presidential candidate espousing libertarian (or Green or CP) principles exposes them to a broader audience. Many of us here were converted to our philosophies based in large part (or in whole) to the presidential candidacies of people like Harry Browne, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, etc.
Parties which scrap the presidential race usually disappear completely shortly thereafter.
Running presidential campaigns as a party that has not fielded a single Congressmen or Senator is what makes us look like a joke.
I cannot emphasize this enough. We need to do one of two things.
Scrap the presidential race entirely for now.
Or have every one of our presidential candidates run for Congress and the presidency at the same time. Just like for Ron Paul, the support Ron Paul got nationwide for his presidential efforts gave him huge help with his campaign for Congress.
We are putting the cart before the ox here. And it doesn’t give us the kind of exposure we need.
I wonder who he thinks would have been a more effective Libertarian presidential candidate, given the options.
Actually I bet he doesn’t really give a damn.
Biased slam job? Sure.
Some unfair, irrelevant criticisms? Yes.
But as AnthonyD points out, it does sound like it’s written from a “purist” perspective, and it’s pretty surprising coming from a media stooge like Crawford. I think he does sound like he has a clue here.
The TX suit is the right thing to do, no doubt, for varius reasons. It is one thing, perhaps the only thing, Barr has done right.
and Crawford is an idiot. So is Christy Hoppe over at the Dallas Morning News, who seesm to think that Barr has a “high legal bar” to clear on this one, when in fact, it’s pretty clear here what happened.
The fact that Crawford is a Hillary Clinton supporter leads me to believe the most likely reason for this slam job is that he is well aware of the irreversable miscegenation going on betwixt the Democrats and the Republicans, and that it is only a matter of time until a viable LP threat arises, a candidate millions would be ready to vote for. Had Ron Paul been 15 years younger, it could have happened this election cycle.
What Mr. Crawford really means to say is that he knows how vulnerable the Demopublicans are, knows the trend towards an unresponsive behemouth that appeals to no one is not reversable, and that the only way for the duopoly to hold onto their power is to hope the LP would continue to nominate unelectable “purists.” No offense meant to purists here, just speaking in political terms.
“The party ought to stay focused on building its base from the ground up…”
The LP has never had a base and after thirty-seven years, they’re not likely to get one.
I was trying to figure out how to work into this comment an insult relating to Crawford being a Hillary Clinton supporter, but the gears aren’t clicking at the moment. I should probably go to bed for the night…or day, or whatever.
I miss Badnarik.
His congressional run turned out to be a joke, but when he ran for president, I felt he was a guy I could get behind. Some of his speeches were outstanding and I reference them from time to time when I’m talking with folks on the campaign trail.
With so many good reasons to criticize Barr, he chooses the bad ones instead. Sad.
The Texas lawsuit is one of the best things he’s done.
Craig Crawford may I introduce you to Michael Badnarik. At least this time you’re actually talking about the LP.
Is changing one’s mind on the issues only allowed Obama, McCain and Mitt Romney? Then why can’t Barr change too.
I have my criticisms of Barr too but this was just an establishment hit piece pure and simple.
I hope that even a purist would agree that this is a ludicrous and biased slam job aimed at Barr. It seems Mr. Crawford has very little knowledge of the general history of the LP.
1) He implies Barr prevaricates on the principles of limited government and personal freedom. I don’t know where he gets that idea from, unless he is a Libertarian purist/anarchist, and I dont see any indication that he is.
2)The reference to accidently firing a revolver is clearly irrelevant.
3)What is bogus about the claim that McCain and Obama missed the deadline to get on the ballot in Texas? It seems perfectly valid to me, and at a minimum worthy of a lawsuit.
4)There is precendent for switching v.p. candidates.
5)He acts like missing the presidential debates is unusual for a Libertarian, and his “pathetic” fundraising totals are only pathetic from the Demopublicans point of view.
Biased slam job, period.