Comments on: Bob Barr loses his damned mind

By: James

James — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:15:16 +0000

It does rather push Barr from “never gonna happen” territory to “never gonna happen even more” territory. The fool.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:16:14 +0000

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.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:12:54 +0000

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.

By: James

James — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:20:47 +0000

The whole thing is starting to look like The Losers Club to me.

By: Jason Kuznicki

Jason Kuznicki — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:16:31 +0000

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.