Bob Barr in Haiti

During the 2008 campaign, I had the pleasure of debating the dubious merits of Bob Barr's quixotic Libertarian candidacy in Barr's presence, as part of the now-defunct Debates at Lolita Bar. I said some fairly critical things about Barr, including a wisecrack about shaving cream that may have been a step beyond the proper decorum in speaking to and about a former congressman. I recall suggesting that his candidacy would be a springboard into future success in talk radio and the speaking circuit. What I never imagined is that Barr would resurface as a representative for the infamous Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier upon the latter's return to Haiti. How that squares with any kind of libertarianism I don't presume to guess. (Via LGF.)

ID's last gasp

Future historians of real and fake science, looking for the anticlimactic death rattle of the Intelligent Design movement, might pinpoint the essay "The End of Intelligent Design?" in the religious-conservative magazine First Things, by Stephen Barr, whose book I reviewed a few years ago. (Essay found via Walter Olson.) For years, I tried to point out that the ID argument (that the laws of nature are inhospitable to life, which thus must have arisen by a miracle) is at odds with the anthropic type of argument propounded by Barr and others (that the laws of nature are strangely hospitable to life, and thus the laws were deliberately fine-tuned). Getting design enthusiasts to even recognize this tension was hard. When it comes to making a choice, they're well-advised to ditch the ID argument.

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, Barr's essay gets a negative reaction from IDer William Dembski, who accuses Barr of trying to curry favor with his scientific colleagues. IDers at this point apparently care little for such respect, or have just given up on it.

Remembering Bob Barr

Ross Douthat is skeptical about Lou Dobbs' presidential chances: "Remember when Bob Barr was going to play a spoiler’s role in 2008?" Yes, Bob Barr...let him be a warning to Lou just how fast your political career can go downhill when you mess with the wrong person.

Selective memory

Matt Welch:

As Reason repeatedly pointed out in 2008, both Obama and the Democrats writ large came to the cusp of reclaiming Washington by rejecting '90s-style "New Democrat" economic Clintonism. And Obama's double-talk at this point should be no surprise.

As I recall, the burning questions at Reason last year were whether to vote for Obama or Bob Barr or nobody (because voting is bad), how to tout someone's anti-McCain book, and how to distance the magazine from post-newsletter scandal Ron Paul without losing its Pauliac readers.

Barr closing

With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Bob Barr has 490,644 votes, which CNN helpfully rounds down to a big fat zero percent. So maybe he won't get a talk-radio gig after all. But he's welcome to stop by at Lolita Bar anytime.

UPDATE: This would be a good time to point out that the electorate has been growing, and therefore comparing absolute numbers of Libertarian votes now versus previous years is misleading. Over 110 million votes were cast in the 2008 presidential election, compared to 86 million in 1980. Thus, Barr having "the second-best Libertarian presidential performance of all time," albeit "well behind Ed Clark's 921,128 votes in 1980," is actually a bit pathetic.

Congrats

Congratulations to Barack Obama, who by all indications is about to become president-elect.

And also to Bob Barr, who's probably getting just enough votes for a talk-radio gig somewhere.

Libertarians and the GOP

In Reason magazine, Ryan Sager asks: Have libertarians been driven out of the GOP? His answer: Yes.

Two years ago, I wrote a book imploring the Republican Party not to follow its worst elements off a cliff—not to evolve, in short, into an insular party with little-to-no appeal outside of the rural, the southern, the Evangelical. As the McCain campaign flames out in a ball of Rovian disgrace, scorching the center in an attempt to fire up the base, it's difficult to reach any other conclusion than that the battle for the soul of the Republican Party has been lost.

I think it's more complicated than that. The soul of libertarianism has been deeply damaged in 2008. That's the result of the Ron Paul phenomenon -- socially conservative and conspiracy-minded -- which was touted, far more than not, by Reason magazine (and deplored by Sager). Now, Ryan falls back on the definition of libertarianism as "fiscally conservative and socially liberal." But that's a dwindling segment of what passes for libertarianism these days. Ron Paul and Bob Barr, whatever their fallings out, are libertarianism's most prominent figures now.

So, I'm not an admirer of the Rovian politics and social conservatism that Sager decries. But if libertarians are no longer at home in the GOP, then I (who have long called myself a libertarian and still wear the label, however uncomfortably, now) say that has a lot to do with where libertarianism has been going, and not just where the GOP has gone.

Bob Barr too busy

Extremely minor candidates Chuck Baldwin and Ralph Nader are debating tonight.

UPDATE 10:30 PM: I watched some of it on C-SPAN2, including the closing line: "When Chuck Baldwin becomes President of the United States, this New World Order comes crashing down." Inane.

The youth vote today

Here's something for the dumb-as-bricks* file:

"I'll probably vote for Obama,'' said a 20-year-old student, Baron Remeisen, from Fort Lauderdale, who will cast his first vote in a presidential election. "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.

"I really don't have a good reason not to vote for McCain,'' he said. "I guess the Democrats are more popular right now.''

* - see here.

Barr Paul

The good news for Ron Paul and Bob Barr right now is that hardly anyone is paying attention to either of them.

Widespread demagoguery

Virginia Postrel thinks McCain is a "demagogic lunatic" for going after the SEC chairman. I agree this was one of McCain's least appealing moments of the campaign. However, if he's demagogic, then so is Obama for running his deceitful ad about immigration. (I'll leave lunacy aside; I think these candidates are engaged in rational, if unpleasant, political calculation.) And that leaves Bob Barr, who's the one candidate to have engaged in demagoguery to my face.

Hard to believe

Obama's only five points ahead in New York (!), according to a poll. Like Glenn Reynolds, I find it hard to believe that New York's in play -- hard but not quite impossible. (And I find it considerably easier to think my home state of New Jersey might be.) There goes the last rationale for voting for Bob Barr -- the Obama's-going-to-win-my-state-anyway argument.

UPDATE 9/16 4:15 PM: And there's more on that shrinking New Jersey gap.

Barr regret

By now, I've actually started feeling sorry for Bob Barr. I strongly suspect he regrets getting involved in the presidential race (much like Joe Biden) and is wondering if a performance around 0.5 percent of the popular vote will be enough for a talk radio gig in any major markets.

Barr no-show

There's chagrin in hard-libertarian circles that Bob Barr didn't show up for Ron Paul's press conference today. It makes my opinion of Barr go up a notch.

UPDATE 3:15 PM: Plenty more here. I bet some of the pro-Barr people at last June's debate are pretty confused now (I mean, more than they were then).

Barr chutzpah

Bob Barr, who for some reason is still running for president, has a complaint:

Palin didn't explain what the Republican ticket would do differently from the current Republican administration and past Republican Congresses. For example, the words Social Security, Medicare, national debt, the deficit and the Constitution didn't pass her lips. Yet Social Security and Medicare alone face an unfunded liability of more than $100 trillion. The national debt runs $9.5 trillion. The deficit next year will be a half trillion dollars.

Who was it again who voted to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare?

Barr movement update

The Bob Barr juggernaut rolls on.

A rally by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps featuring Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr drew just a few dozen people.

The man managed to attract a few dozen people to Lolita Bar a few months ago. But then his momentum stalled.

Let Bob Barr debate

I agree that Bob Barr should be included in a debate or two with John McCain and Barack Obama. Such an event should also include other electorally challenged candidates such as Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin and Cynthia McKinney. None of which removes the imperative of having some presidential debates limited to people who have a realistic chance to become president.

Beyond Barr

It turns out that Chuck Baldwin (who? the Constitution Party candidate) has an affinity for Theodore Roosevelt, who in the paleolibertarian view of things was a neocon fascist type, and yet Baldwin thinks Lincoln, whom paleos despise even more, one of the two worst presidents in history. It's getting hard to keep straight the convoluted strands of the right-wing fringe.

Bob Barr bonanza

Here, via Instapundit, is a piece on "Will Barr Have an Impact on Presidential Race?" It contains the words "While victory may currently appear out of reach..." Not just appear, my friends.

Meanwhile, at Reason, David Weigel acknowledges the Barr campaign's funding and ballot-access doldums, but still manages to find the situation "ominous" for Republicans. It'll be more ominous for Libertarians if their most famous candidate ever gets, say, 1 percent of the vote.

Readers wanting yet more on Bob Barr are recommended to click here, here and here.

The moderate on that stage

Could this be a clever strategy by Bob Barr to gain credibility by appearing with people wackier than he is?

RightMarch.com announces that Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, and Alan Keyes will all be speaking at a rally against illegal immigration that will take place in Denver on the first day of the Democratic convention.