Bob Barr loses his damned mind
Well, thanks to some quality reporting by LFV and others, we now know the apparent story behind Bob Barr’s no-show at the Campaign For Liberty press conference. And it’s one that James will approve of, I suppose.
Apparently, Barr pulled out of the press conference–and elected to stage his own, in the same building–literally minutes before the event was to begin. His campaign staff explains it this way:
The real question is why Bob, who is a major player in this election, want to be on stage with people like McKinney, who stands against everything the LP does, and Baldwin, who is barely on enough ballots to have a statistical chance of winning.
Barr is not a minor party candidate. Barr is a major player this year.
I guess there is a sort of a case to be made that distinguishing one’s self from the rest of the third-party pack is a good idea if you think that you can do substantially better than they can. That is to say, it’s a good idea if there’s any chance in the universe that people are going to buy into that idea. If Bob Barr genuinely thinks that his campaign is a top-echelon operation capable of competing with the Democrats and Republicans in this election cycle, then he is smoking hashish.
The CFL leadership is apparently livid about Barr’s timing. Their events director, while taking pains to state that he’s speaking for himself rather than for his organization, says this:
Hopefully, the LP will find a way to reject this candidate without rejecting the idea of engagement in practical politics.
And how does Barr spin his apparent repudiation of a man who is more beloved among his core supporters than Barr himself? By graciously offering to ditch his running mate and make Ron Paul the #2 on his ticket. Gee, how generous of him.
I would say that this decision has driven a wedge into the liberty movement, except that a wedge implies that there are people on both sides. People are apoplectic, and NOBODY, so far as I can tell, is backing Barr.
The bottom line is that, given the political beliefs of the core audience, Barr’s appearance at the Paul event would have turned it into a de facto endorsement of Barr himself. Not a lot of Paulites were going to vote for the likes of Baldwin or McKinney. Barr has thrown that away and has more or less publicly groin-kicked the most important libertarian figure in America–a guy who holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the Republican vote in the palm of his hand.
The term “ham-fisted” is normally meant as a metaphor. In Bob Barr’s case, we need to contemplate the possibility that it is literally true–that his hands and head are actually non-functional slabs composed primarily of pork byproducts. Nothing less could explain this kind of spectacular self-delusion and political insanity.
I remember having made a big deal on this blog about what a smart move the Barr nomination was for the LP, and about how it marked a new political maturity and pragmatism on their part. I apologize and I withdraw the comment. In fairness to myself and to the core LP members who nominated Barr, there was no way in hell we could have seen this coming.
Here’s what it looks like to me:
–Barr was expecting a Ron Paul endorsement. He certainly deserves it more than the others, particularly given Paul’s previous campaign in the LP. Paul endorsing Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader is a sick joke, no more and no less. Barr was understandably peeved.
–Wayne Allyn Root has been a total dud of a pick for VP. Insofar as it’s possible to drag the LP down any further, Root has succeeded.
–Still, the timing and the placement of this alternative press conference just scream “LP publicity stunt.” There’s someone or some group in the organization that just adores these kinds of shenanigans, no matter how unserious they make the party look. An oh boy do they ever.
Comment by Jason Kuznicki — 9/11/2008 @ 7:16 am
The whole thing is starting to look like The Losers Club to me.
Comment by James — 9/11/2008 @ 10:20 am
Barr probably lost 100,000 votes yesterday. Just like that. And he doesn’t have very many to spare.
Even the LP isn’t handling this very well, making it into a personal grudge match.
They’ve managed to go the worst of all worlds on this one. Give up purity for the sake of mainstream acceptance, and then piss on said mainstream acceptance for the sake of purity. It’s fucking romper room with these guys, all the time.
Comment by Brad — 9/11/2008 @ 11:12 am
I should add I’m almost kind of sympathetic to their case here. Ron’s press conference was kind of disappointing, not because Cynthia McKinney was there (I could give two tosses about that, and if you’re talking about third parties in America you have to include the Green Party, and certainly a fair few of Ron’s supporters, remember, are pretty leftist old third party anti-war progressives and even a fair smattering of Kucinich types), but because there was no action involved. It was indeed more about Ron not endorsing McCain than anything, and I don’t know that anybody was holding their breath on that one. For my taste, if he was going to make a major announcement, he should have announced something, have some kind of action behind it. But Ron has not been the most well-managed of political figures, and I think a lot of his staff are just kind of making it up as they go along.
Regardless, I’m with Rojas, Barr should have just shut up and smiled for the cameras. Lots of people can afford to marginalize Ron Paul and his supporters—most of them in fact. Bob Barr is not one of them.
Comment by Brad — 9/11/2008 @ 11:16 am
It does rather push Barr from “never gonna happen” territory to “never gonna happen even more” territory. The fool.
Comment by James — 9/11/2008 @ 1:15 pm