Topic: Bob Barr
Barr vs. McCain (II): The Wasted Vote Bob Barr and the Libertarians get back in the news, by turning an old argument around against John McCain.by George Dance
(libertarian)
Monday, November 3, 2008
Voting third party? Then you're "wasting your vote," or "throwing your vote away'" (TYVA). That is an argument potential third-party voters hear over and over again, with increasing frequency, before any U.S. Election Day. (That, plus the charge that a vote for a third-party candidate is really a vote for that other big-party candidate. Those two claims can't both be true, but never mind ...)
More so than ever this year, or so it seems from a quick search of the blogosphere. For instance, a blog called Quicksilber quotes "a 20-year-old student, Baron Remeisen, from Fort Lauderdale," a first-time voter: "I was thinking of voting for Bob Barr (the Libertarian candidate) but because of pressure from my family, and Bob Barr probably won't win, I'll vote for Obama." (1)
In New Hampshire, another young student, Andrew Lohse, laments at the Dartmouth Review: "I have a problem. I'm voting for a third party candidate -- Bob Barr. Barr is the Libertarian presidential candidate. My parents, glaring speechlessly and wondering what happened to the young Republican who cried when Bob Dole lost in 96, tell me I'm throwing my vote away. I haven't even made this confession yet to my grandfather, a lifelong "common sense" Republican, but I shudder to think what he'll say." (2)
Rebekah Berg of Georgia, who does not appear to be a student (at least not one who has learned about the shift key), confesses on her blog: "... so by this point, its no surprise that i am an ardent supporter of bob barr, this year's libertarian candidate for president. i am really sick of people telling me i'm throwing my vote away and then turning around and telling me that they are voting for someone they don't believe in. this has happened more times than i can count." (3)
While in Chicago, a "starving artist" rants at life: "So what if I want to vote for Bob Barr, life? Why do people keep telling me that I'm wasting my vote? What if I want to vote for MYSELF?... It's my g[...]amned vote and I should be allowed to use it however I please without any issues from you and your friends, life." (4)
This year, though, some libertarians have found an ingenious way to answer the TYVA charge; to show that it applies equally, if not better, to voting for McCain. The first person I saw making that argument was Wisconsin libertarian Ed Snyder, who wrote on his FLADA blog October 8:
I said it first almost a year and a half ago in this blog entry: the only way the Republicans stood a chance was by nominating Ron Paul. Instead of listening, they chose to go with the absolute worst candidate they had running.... But, "I told you so's" isn't really why I am writing this entry.
Really, I'm writing it to tell you what you have been telling me and my fellow third party voters for years: Your guy can't win. If you cast a vote for John McCain, you are throwing your vote away. Obama has this locked up and will win in a landslide.
So make your vote count. Vote third party.... A vote for Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin is not a vote for Obama if Obama has it locked up either way. So show your disgust with the Republican party. Show your disgust with the system that nominated the worst possible candidate. Do it by giving your vote to a person who actually deserves it. Or throw your vote away and vote for McCain. Your choice. (5)
Nolan Chart's Ron Bain picked up the argument, writing here on October 21: "McCain is a loser, perhaps a bigger loser than Bob Dole. Voting for McCain will be a wasted vote that will achieve nothing, absolutely nothing... Obama will win and there's nothing you can do to stop it by voting for McCain. But a turnout of five percent or more for Bob Barr could change historical trends, could revitalize the Libertarian Party, and could show Obama that there is real, principled opposition to his (and McCain's) socialist agenda." (6)
So did the Barr campaign, with manager Russ Verney e-mailing Barr's base October 29:
It is now clear: John McCain cannot win the election. There is not one reasonable poll suggesting that he has a chance.... So the next question America needs to ask is do we want the socialism and one-party corruption of an Obama administration, or the free-markets, low taxes, small government and more personal freedom of Bob Barr?... If a principled conservative wants to have his or her voice heard in both political parties, they should vote for Bob Barr." (7)
The TYVA theme fit perfectly with the Barr campaign's endgame strategy. As New York magazine's Daily Intel blog describes it: "Barr wants to injure McCain now. That’s why he’s campaigning in Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Leaving aside Barr’s home state of Georgia, these comprise a good working list of seven states critical to McCain’s chances. McCain is now trailing in all seven." (8)
Everywhere Barr went he worked the TYVA argument into his speeches and interviews, telling (for instance) the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Particularly as Sen. McCain seems to be entering the homestretch here with a decreasing chance of winning, rather than an increasing chance, one of the things we urge people is, if you might have been predisposed to vote for McCain, you should now feel even freer not to have to do that." More bluntly: "Vote for the Libertarian. Vote your conscience. McCain's going to lose anyway." (9)
So it was natural for that theme to be the keystone of Barr's second Townhall column, of October 24 -- his first column openly attacking McCain and Bush, and directly targetting the libertarian, federalist, and fiscally conservative Republicans -- Verney's "principled conservatives" -- the campaign hopes to attract.
Barr's strongest argument to those "principled conservatives" has been the Bush and McCain records, and in this column he took dead aim at those, making the same indictment he has been making over and over again on the campaign trail:
Over much of the last eight years Republicans have controlled the presidency and the Congress, yet spending rose faster than any time since Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." Earmarks hit a record.... the budget for virtually every government agency, from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, expanded. (10)
In 2003, the president and Congress joined forces to enact the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades.... Congress approved, and the President signed, the Medicare drug benefit, adding trillions of dollars more to the bill facing future generations.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned to get rid of the Department of Education; however, President George W. Bush made this agency bigger and the Republican Congress gave it more power with the misnamed "No Child Left Behind Act."
President Reagan deregulated oil prices. The Bush administration and Republican Congress have pushed more subsidies for the energy industry.
When the housing crisis broke, the administration supported a $300 billion industry bailout that included millions of dollars for ACORN, a virtual adjunct of the Democratic Party.
The Republican president supported using hundreds of billions of dollars more to bail-out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, AIG insurance, and then all of Wall Street.
Sen. McCain wants to force taxpayers to buy up every bad mortgage in America at face value, bailing-out every irresponsible lender and borrower in the country.
And who can forget that when the Senate was considering the recent Wall Street bailout legislation after suffering an initial defeat in the House, Senator McCain was leading the effort to bulk it up with an additional $150 billion in sweeteners?
The GOP once believed in federalism, but now it is the Republican Party that pushes to expand national control over education. Republicans once recognized that the national government was one of limited, enumerated powers, yet it was Sen. John McCain who led the congressional "investigation" of steroid use in baseball.
Even more serious has been the sustained presidential and congressional assault on the system of separation of powers and checks and balances. President Bush's theory of the "unitary executive" assumes that the president can ignore any statute -- even the Constitution -- whenever he claims it is necessary for "national security."
Finally, today's GOP has adopted as its foreign policy the neoconservative ideology of global social engineering, irrespective of cost. Traditional conservative foreign policy emphasized defense of America, not endless war for nation building and democracy-promotion. Unfortunately, Sen. McCain, even more than President Bush, seems determined to sacrifice American lives and our country's wealth in a vain attempt to reorder the globe rather than defend America.
A sadly familiar tale. But all newly framed by the "wasted vote" narrative:
A conservative vote for Sen. McCain is a wasted vote. It is wasted because even if he is elected, he does not stand for conservative values and will not promote conservative values. Government will grow, spending will rise, and liberty will diminish.
For those still not unconvinced -- those "principled conservatives" who might agree with Barr's entire indictment, but still worry about wasting their votes -- Barr offers, as his clincher, the libertarian version of the TYVA argument:
But it looks increasingly likely that [McCain] won't be elected, and no one will care about his vote totals if he loses. In contrast, a vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party will be noticed and will have a lasting, positive impact. A vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party will be a vote for liberty and for America's future.
The column spawned considerable blog attention, not to mention more than 300 comments on Townhall. One enraged McCainiac even threatened Barr: ""If you throw even a single state to Obama, we will hunt you with dogs." (11)
Even more attention was generated via an October 22 Barr campaign press release on the same theme, flatly predicting a McCain loss, which was picked up by Associated Press:
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr appealed Wednesday for the support of Republican-leaning conservatives by declaring his Republican rival John McCain is going to lose the election.
"Sen. McCain will be spending the last two weeks before the election on his 'farewell tour' across America," Barr wrote in an e-mail message. "Sen. McCain's mixed and angry message, as well as his support of big-spending policies, have killed any chance McCain may have had to win this election."
The former Republican congressman from Georgia wrote that conservatives who want their vote to count should throw their support behind his longshot candidacy. "A vote for John McCain is a wasted vote," Barr said, but a vote for him would be viewed as a protest of big spending policies of McCain and President George W. Bush, particularly their support for the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.
"Now, principled conservatives can vote their conscience instead of voting for a faux-conservative just because he carries the Republican label," Barr wrote. (12)
That resulted in several main stream press stories -- mostly from Barr-friendly outlets like the Boston Globe and Washington Times -- plus some valuable TV time on CNN October 24, where Barr told an incredulous Wolf Blitzer that he "wouldn't be surprised" to see McCain lose Georgia. That last prediction led to another press release, with more coverage in the main stream and on the blogs. Even the "hunt you with dogs" comment sparked its share of blog attention.
The results? News coverage of Barr and the Libertarian Party climbed to its highest level of the campaign: higher than at Barr's nomination, higher even than at "Snubgate." (13) Google searches have climbed along in lockstep. The Barr campaign was claiming that its poll numbers, too, were starting to rise. And the "wasted vote" argument against voting for Bob Barr had been, if not disposed of, at least neutralized by the libertarians' equally valid TYVA argument against voting for John McCain.
----------
Sources
(1) "The youth vote today," Quicksilber, Oct. 16, 2008. http://quicksilber.blogspot.com/2008/10/youth-vote-today.html
(2) Andrew B. Lohse, "The Case for Libertarian Bob Barr," Dartmouth Review, Oct. 31, 2008. http://dartreview.com/archives/2008/10/31/the_case_for_libertarian_bob_barr.php
(3) Bek, "clarity...", all things go, Oct. 30, 2008. http://rebekahberg.blogspot.com/2008/10/clarity.html
(4) Stranger Danger, "An Open Letter," Me vs. the Asphalt, Oct. 15, 2008. http://mevstheasphalt.blogspot.com/2008/10/open-letter.html
(5) Edmund Snyder, "Republicans, you can't win," FLADA Blog, Oct. 8, 2008. http://blog.flada.com/2008/10/08/republicans-you-cant-win/
(7) Russ Verney, "McCain is guaranteed to lose. . . . so what does that mean for America?," Campaign Updates Blog, Bob Barr 2008, Oct. 22, 2008. http://campaign.blog.bobbarr2008.com/2008/10/22/mccain-is-guaranteed-to-lose-so-what-does-that-mean-for-america/
(8) "Look Out! Possible Obama Landslide," New York Daily Intel, Oct. 29, 2008. http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/10/look_out_possible_obama_landslide.html
(10)All quotations in italics are from: Bob Barr, "As the Election Draws Near, Americans Need to Vote for Real, Meaningful Change," Townhall, Oct. 24, 2008. http://townhall.com/columnists/BobBarr/2008/10/24/as_the_election_draws_near,_americans_need_ to_vote_for_real,_meaningful_change_in_other_words%E2%80%A6not_for_republicans_or_democrats
(11) Stephen Gordon, "McCain supporter: "If you throw even a single state to Obama, we will hunt you with dogs," Barr Blog, Bob Barr 2008, Oct. 25, 2008. http://blog.bobbarr2008.com/2008/10/25/mccain-supporter-if-you-throw-even-a-single-state-to-obama-we-will-hunt-you-with-dogs/
The views expressed in this
article are those of George Dance only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. George Dance is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
It's good to see so many people are in agreement with my analysis of the impending election.
It's nice to see myself quoted as well, although the hyperlink in your "Sources" section doesn't actually link to my blog entry.
All this is coming out as I predicted.
The real story is Libertarians giving Obama the election.
Unfortunately, the right-wing LNC deliberately set out to destroy the affiliates. About half of the state affiliates are non-functional.
Smith is no LP stalwart. her website included calls for universal healthcae re and attacks on ‘libertarian anarchism,’ which is the conservative-LRC codeword for any position they don’t like based on a voluntary approach. badnarik was the same, and helped introduce barr to the party, so all this is suspect.
Barr is doing in polls as well or worse as Badnarik.
Now Barr has done a radio interview where he calls for women to be executed for abortions, including raped children, apparently. Goodbye, LP women.
Libertarians are voting Obama in this election. Many are saying better a weak ally than a traitor who stabs you in the back. Even the Economist is writing about it, though there is total silence on the LP controlled groups and blogs.
@Ed: Thanks for the read and comment. Since the whole idea was to invite some readers to look at your blog, I fixed the live link. Thanks to you, I found a couple of others that misdirected, and fixed them, too.
@ken: As I see it, Barr is not giving Obama the election; it was pretty obvious two years ago the Dems would win. But I'll agree that the Barr campaign is doing its best to make it look that way. If that's the story that ends up believed, then the LP temporarily becomes a player at the national level.
That bit about executing raped children shocked me; I'd want to listen to a link. From what I've read researching Barr, his position on abortion has always been the same: he's personally opposed, but does not think it's a federal government matter. He supported Ron Paul's Sanctity of Life Act, for that reason, and opposed a Human Life Amendment for the same reason.
During my lunch break today I proudly went and cast my vote for Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root for POTUS and VPOTUS respectively, while still voting GOP only in some of the down-ballot contests. I sincerely hope that all Libertarians and libertarian leaning conservatives seize this opportunity to do likewise. As a true Constitutional Conservative, there is absolutely no way that I could have supported McCain. So, for the first time in 30 years the GOP lost my vote for POTUS and VPOTUS. Whether or not I decide to officially change my party affiliation from GOP to LP during the next few years will largely depend on whether or not I determine that the LP is serious about becoming truly viable.
It was heartening for me to see the LP nominate Barr and Root this year. Here's hoping that it's a sign that the LP has finally matured as a party and come to the realization that for long-term viability they must continue to embrace the pragmatists and marginalize the laissez-faire purists within the party. The next step is to begin to rid the LP platform of those planks that are the "dogs that won't hunt" (i.e., positions on certain issues that result in much of the public writing off libertarians as "kooky").
This is the ONLY way the LP will gain more votes and eventually grow enough to one day be taken seriously by the populus and media as a viable contender. Anything less is quite frankly a waste of time. During the past 14 years since they won congressional majorities in the 1994 mid-term elections, the GOP has gradually turned its back on the principles of limited government, thereby alienating true conservatives and creating a golden growth opportunity for the LP. The question now is whether or not the LP is willing to do what is necessary to capitalize on this, fill the void, and become a true contender.
It looks like today you and I were both proven correct. Although I'm not at all thrilled with the prospect of four years of Obama, I'm almost ecstatic at the thought of how McCain is feeling right at this moment. I hate to sound bitter, but I'm remembering the Republican debates where someone like John McCain wasn't even fit to carry water for Ron Paul and yet he had the nerve to stand on the same stage and mock the things that Dr. Paul was saying.
Here's hoping that when McCain is up for re-election he will lose his job in the Senate as well.
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