18 responses so far ↓

• 1 Andy Craig // Jun 6, 2008 at 10:47 pm

  A sign of how unreliable polls are this early.

  That stuff about “8%” is largely meaningless. Barr has to get out there and work to get votes. I know the campaign is just starting up, but it’s time to get moving.

• 2 Ross Levin // Jun 6, 2008 at 11:27 pm

  http://www.tnr.com/story.html?id=5e5abfbb-46eb-464b-9095-4df1d1f8159e&p=1

  Look at that story from the New Republic I just found.

  One of the lines in there reminds me of an ancient saying that pretty much sums up my feelings of Barr, and what happened to the people who opposed him: “I even fear Greeks bearing gifts.”

• 3 Dylan Waco // Jun 6, 2008 at 11:38 pm

  I’m a fan of Ralph’s and may vote for him, but I am shocked that any poll would register that much support for him. I’m guessing it has something to do with disgruntled Hillary voters saying they will support him primarily out of spite.

• 4 Trent Hill // Jun 6, 2008 at 11:39 pm

  Andy,

  I suspect that 8% BS is about as high as Barr will ever go. From here, conservatives will find out he’s been working with the ACLU and is an open-border libertarian and anti-war. All of this will lead to maybe 1%.

• 5 millerpolitics // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:00 am

  I agree with Trent, once conservatives find out that Barr is no longer a conservative they are not going to back him.

  Barr has a problem, he isn’t a consistent conservative or a consistent Libertarian.

• 6 G.E. // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:09 am

  once conservatives find out that Barr is no longer a conservative they are not going to back him.

  ummm…. No comment!

• 7 Trent Hill // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:10 am

  “Barr has a problem, he isn’t a consistent conservative or a consistent Libertarian.”

  Best comment iv read about Barr since the campaign started.

• 8 John P Slevin // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:12 am

  “…once conservatives find out that Barr is no longer a conservative they are not going to back him….”

  Who cares. Conservatives couldn’t by themselves elect a Republican central committee member, not anymore. After the 08 elections, most of them either will already will be gone or will have to choose a new party in which to pray.

  Democrats could nominate Laurel and Hardy and take more than 61% of the popular vote.

  That’s a fact and you are about to see it.

• 9 G.E. // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:39 am

  If you’re right, JPS, and I think you are — then maybe Barr should stop representing himself as the “true conservative” and misrepresenting libertarianism as a branch of conservatism.

• 10 John P Slevin // Jun 7, 2008 at 1:06 am

  Wow! I’ve finally ascended. G.E. thinks I might be right about something!

  I’m not sure where Barr has been “respresenting himself as the ‘true conservative”.

  Maybe you and I can agree to understand that many believe Libertarians are a branch off the conservative tree.

  Actually, my goose pimples rise whenever I see the fairly humorless, somewhat unattractive Barr with the more than a little bit sinister past representing my party.

  However, I haven’t yet seen the guy goof.

  I knew Ed Clark…advanced some of his stuff, and his successors. As a spokesperson for Libertarians, Barr wins hands down, It is obvious from every media appearance he’s given.

  Sure, he doesn’t say things which impress those of us “radicals” while turning off everyone else. The point is to win votes….he’s talking the same way I teach people to talk when I tell them how to explain a hostile, very libertarian initiative petition to masses of people when they are gathering petition signatures.

  No difference. He doesn’t misrepresent, he merely is hitting them where they live.

  I have some doubts (based solely on the guy’s [past and on some of his current associations—and by that I mean, some of the actual LP idiots he hired after the LP National first hired them), but he hasn’t crossed me yet.

  If he does, I’ll be mad. Till then, he’s got my support.

• 11 G.E. // Jun 7, 2008 at 2:04 am

  The point is to “get votes”? To what end?

  The goal should be to advance liberty.

• 12 Mike Theodore // Jun 7, 2008 at 2:07 am

  G.E., I just thought of this. Is there any video of that speech you gave at the convention? I’ve heard good things.

• 13 Thomas L. Knapp // Jun 7, 2008 at 2:32 am

  Here’s what I like about Barr:

  No, he’s nothing close to a “pure, perfect” libertarian as most radicals, including myself would define that. And yes, he’s still largely framing his appeal toward conservatives.

  HOWEVER:

  As he’s been trotting out his POST-nomination positions, they have generally been MORE libertarian than his PRE-nomination positions.

  Think about that for a minute.

  The pragmatic approach would have been for him to play it more hardcore libertarian BEFORE the nomination, then do whatever the hell he felt like after he had it in hand (hint: I don’t think this LNC will remove him as the candidate unless he fucks a goat live on Hardball while wearing a klan robe … and maybe not then).

  To me, that Barr is getting more libertarian when he doesn’t have to and when the conventional wisdom says it will cost him votes rather than gain him votes means that he’s sincere on the points in question — that he’s genuinely considering and adopting a libertarian policy approach. Maybe not as fast as some would like. Maybe he won’t be a raving Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist revolutionist by November. But he’s moving right along in the correct direction faster than I think many expected.

  I don’t know if his policy paper on marijuana has been released yet, but I’ve seen an early draft of it — he wanted Steve Kubby’s opinion, and Kubby wanted mine — and it goes further than the “states rights” rhetoric he was playing pre-nomination.

  On Iraq, he’s gone from “reducing the US military political and military footprint” to supporting complete withdrawal.

  My gut feeling is that in his speech on Iran on the 10th, he’ll move from his previous “no war, talk to them, but use more sanctions, etc.” to “get out of their faces, dismantle the sanctions, quit pushing them around.”

  So far, I’m favorably impressed.

• 14 Bill Woolsey // Jun 7, 2008 at 11:35 am

  I don’t think that Barr has gotten more libertarian in the last three weeks.

  I think he intended to come up with these positions all along.

  The question, then, is why he didn’t spell this out better _before_ the nomination. I don’t believe that they were sure they had the nomination in hand.

  Perhaps it is because he hopes to make news. When the time is right, he comes out with these positions as the LP nominee.

  Well, I suppose we will see.

  Many people become Libertarians because they are betrayed Republicans. They thought they were “real conservatives,” and the the Republicans sell them out. Taxes and gun rights appear to be the most common issues.

  Read the accounts of the 2006 debate between Barr and the lawyer from the Bush administration on the “Woo theory,” and how Barr’s pro-civil liberty view fell flat with conservative activists.

  Why did Barr participate in the debate? Surely, it is because these issues are important to him. And, what did the negative response among conservative activists say to him?

  And soon, he was in the Libertarian Party.

  I think he is looking to build up the libertarian constiuency, (something like what Boaz has been talking about,) to try to acheive something he finds important.

• 15 green in brooklyn // Jun 7, 2008 at 12:01 pm

  I would think that at least half of Nader’s “6%” in this poll would go to Cynthia McKinney, especially if they are mostly disgruntled Hillary supporters. I’d like to think that if you are a committed third party voter on the left, that given a chance between Nader and McKinney, that you’ll choose the candidate that A) actually voted against the war and war funding, filed impeachment articles, and voted against the patriot act, and B) is representing a party trying to build on the local level, as opposed to a tilting at windmills for no reason beyond that, which is Nader’s campaign.

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  [...] Third Party candidates take a chunk in new poll Jump to Comments From Independent Political Report [...]

• 17 Deran // Jun 7, 2008 at 11:43 pm

  I don’t think Nader at 6% so strange. At this point in polling he mostly represents a generalized dissent? When McKinney kicks up her camp[aign and Bob Barr is in the campaign for a few more weeks and Nader’s numbers will be lower. Although, I bet he gets some of the angry Hillary voters, but I bet McKinney gets more of those votes.

  When doing a google blog search for Cynthia McKinney, I happened to see Roseanne Barr has just announced she is voting for McKinney.

  http://www.roseanneworld.com/blog/2008/06/since_i_will_vote_for_a_woman.php

• 18 kiddleddee // Jun 9, 2008 at 12:57 pm

  Tom Knapp wrote:

  “To me, that Barr is getting more libertarian when he doesn’t have to and when the conventional wisdom says it will cost him votes rather than gain him votes means that he’s sincere on the points in question — that he’s genuinely considering and adopting a libertarian policy approach. ”

  Barr has two problems post-convention. One is that he needs activists on the ground doing his campaigning for him. Secondly, he needs to come to be perceived as an extension of the Ron Paul revolution. In order to solve both of those problems, he needs to sound more libertarian.

  In the first instance, he HAS to sound more libertarian in order to (try to) get the activist campaign workers and he HAS to sound more libertarian, now that it appears that Obama will be the Democrat nominee (since, imo, the ‘conservative’ vote will be reenergized for McCain), in order to (try to) pick up the Ron Paul vote.

  Good luck with all that!

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