Bob Cited by Washington Times
April 25th, 2008 by StaffArticle from the Washington Times website:
Former Republican congressman and rumored 2008 Libertarian Party candidate for president Bob Barr was seen huddling with pundits and leaders of various state-based center-right and libertarian think tanks and advocacy organizations at the Sheraton Atlanta on the eve of the Heritage Foundation’s annual Resource Bank Meeting.
“No Republican, conservative or whatever should underestimate how fond we are of this guy and appreciate what it is he has done and is hopefully about to do,” one well-known conservative attendee from Washington, who requests anonymity, tells Inside the Beltway.
“It’s an ‘in our hearts we know he’s right’ kind of thing. Very exciting — could be quite huge.”
The Heritage Foundation’s annual meeting begins today, gathering more than 500 think tank executives, public interest lawyers, policy experts and elected officials from around the world to discuss issues, strategies and methods for advancing free-market, limited-government public policies.
Tags: Press
April 25th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
The 2008 Presidential election is the most importent in my lifetime. I am a lifetime conservative and cannot bring myself to vote Republican this cycle. I would like to suggest to your party for the election of 2008 to join forces with the Constitution Party, especially if Alan Keys in the nominee. Please, this is to importent for these two parties to proceed seperatly. I feel that there is enough common ground that an agreement could be reached.
In a united run for the Presidency I feel that enough votes could be won to take back our wonderful country.
Please get back to me on this.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Interesting, but make that “cited”.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Alan Keyes, if he can even secure the CP nomination (unlikely at this point, mainly because he’s so vocally interventionist and pro-war), would be about the last guy a libertarian/paleoconservative should see as an ally. He’s much closer to a more extreme version of John McCain’s “national greatness conservatism” than anything that could have a place in a broad pro-liberty coalition.
The CP as a whole might be a viable pro-liberty ally at the Federal level, since regardless of their opinions on state-level matters they do believe in the 10th Amendment, but their dogmatism might preclude that (not that the LP really has a whole lot of room to talk there). You also have to consider the fact that a lot of their strongly and vocally held beliefs might do a lot to alienate other potential allies, possibly ending up being a net negative. Their theocratic tendencies would do a lot of harm to efforts to bring in anyone not already predisposed to such opinions (a fairly small, and generally unlibertarian, portion of the electorate).
April 25th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
If you are suggesting a Barr/Keyes ticket, that would be intriguing but I doubt if it could ever happen. In our party, the delegates elect both the Presidential candidate and Vice-Presidential candidate. With his social views and his pro-war stance, I can’t imagine Libertarians voting for Alan Keyes. Besides, Alan Keyes most likely would not play second fiddle to our candidate.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Good article today’s AJC 4-26-08
Go Bob….a Bob Barr-Ron Paul ticket would be great.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Personally, I would like to see a (L/I) Barr/Ventura or a (L/C) Barr/Baldwin ticket. Either option would be quite strong. Personally, I think the Barr/Ventura ticket would get early momentum. The Barr/Baldwin ticket, however, could pull the religious right, true convservatives, and libertarians under one banner. So many options to consider. So little time.
April 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
A broader liberty coalition has to expand in all directions. Just yanking the liberty movement to the right won’t work. The CP takes extremely alienating (and authoritarian) positions on a lot of issues, even if they only want them enacted at the state level.
If anything, Barr needs a running mate to the left of him, not to the right, to counterbalance his own undeniable right-libertarianism and present a ticket palatable to the great morass of apathetic libertarian-leaning moderates/centrists/etc that’s not going to be tapped by either “major” party. Pulling in disgruntled Republicans is certainly a part of that, but keep in mind you’ll have to fight McCain hard for those voters, and he’ll be trotting out the sadly effective “That’s a vote for the Dems!” line. Look at a Nolan Chart. There is a great opportunity here to build a broad liberty coalition but you can’t do that with just a “We’re the real Republicans” campaign. That doesn’t preclude reaching out to disgruntled Republicans, but it does mean that we shouldn’t focus on presenting ourselves to the rest of the electorate as simply “disgruntled Republicans”.
Of course all this discussion about a running mate is really just pointless talk. The delegates, unlike the “major” parties, will actually be making the decision.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
It seems to me Keyes is more interested in promoting his religion and himself than liberty.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
The fastest growing third party, (the Constitution party) can not nominate Keyes since he is for this bogus war that Congress did not enact. The CP can become the largest party should the libertarian party merge into it. Should this happen,then let the convention choose between Barr or Baldwin. Then hope the victor will choose the honorable Dr. Ron Paul for v.p. should McLame win the GOP. This would surely win the popular vote over either dementedcrat. The diebold and electoral votes are totaly different stories. So keep the faith & your powder dry.