Free For All - The Free Liberal Blog: RE: Libertarians in Denver

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I felt the need to make a full-length response to Kevin's earlier entry.

I'm not sure Bob Barr would be the best candidate. While he possibly could garner more votes (being a politician who has previously held federal office), a third party doesn't merely need to siphon off as many votes as possible. Rather, it needs to provide a receptacle for the "protest vote", those that are unable to see either the Republican or the Democratic candidate as a lesser of evils.

Were Hillary to gain the nomination, there would be far more protest votes available from the anti-war community than other. Even with Barak Obama, anti-war voters for whom domestic policy also matters (and prefer limited government there, as well) really have no good options, unless it is the LP that provides it.

No LP candidate is ever going to win. However, I still see the third parties as having the potential to transform a group of uncategorized nonparticipants into a more visible potential vote mine for the major parties. To serve this purpose, a third party must have ideological standards to some degree. To nominate Bob Barr would indicate to observers that not even Libertarians particularly care about things like the War on Drugs, global intervention, etc. Even worse would be if Barr were chosen and then did better than any other LP candidate. One might get the impression that the Drug War and such really is that much of a political third rail.

It still isn't that important. But nominating Barr isn't going to win them the election, and I think the cost of those extra votes is probably more than its worth.

Comments

Daryl,

I think our disagreement stems from two different interpretations of the available information.

I take it that you would agree with the following two statements:

1.) Bob Barr is too far from libertarian ideals.

2.) The exposure differential between Barr and the other potential nominees is slight.

Barr has come out strongly in favor of drug reform, civil liberties, and constitutionally sized government. Perhaps the problem is that you and I don't agree on what constitutes "too far" and "libertarian ideals". Or maybe you don't take his statements at face value. I would appreciate your clarification of these matters.

Barr's fundraising and already existing media hits show that he is by far the biggest dog in the fight. I believe that to some degree it is because of his right-leaning viewpoint and that McCain would lose more votes than Obama. He's newsworthy. Do you disagree with this? How will the other candidates make up the difference?

How do you see the process generally? What is the role of a libertarian third party?

Thanks for the dialogue,

KDR

Posted by: Kevin D. Rollins | May 24, 2008 06:40 PM

Here's J. Bradley Jansen's take on the matter:

http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13262

Posted by: Jeremy Lott | May 25, 2008 10:13 AM