Bob Barr brings his cause to the American public

Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr is making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows (last week it was "Fox News Sunday"; today it was ABC's "This Week"), hoping his anti-big-government message will resonate with voters fed up with what he calls "the nanny state."

And just what is the nanny state?  "It is a federal government that has become so big that it has stifled individual liberty and freedom in this country," he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.  "And Americans realize that."

Barr, who was elected to Congress in the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, came to national prominence 10 years ago ...

... as a GOP floor manager during the House vote on the impeachment of Bill Clinton.  In his 2004 book "The Meaning of Is," he writes of Clinton, whom he described as "a failed president":  "There is no core to Bill Clinton, no principle he will not sell out, no lie he will not tell, no rule he will not break, if he believes doing so will best serve his immediate interests."

But that's just the failing of an individual, Barr now says. The current occupant of the Oval Office has failed the country, he believes.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  And you now believe that George W. Bush has been a greater threat to liberty than Bill Clinton?

BARR:  Absolutely, because of this systemic assault on the Bill of Rights. 

He cites as examples the recently approved FISA legislation ("where you have a government, an administration, that believes it's OK to electronically surveil U.S. citizens in their own country without any inkling that they've done something wrong, which is what the administration wants and the Congress has now passed for this administration, we have a real problem") and statements from administration officials about Guantanamo detainees' rights to due process ("when you have an attorney general, for example, that says that habeas corpus is no longer important, we have a real problem").

Stephanopoulos noted that "a lot of your former colleagues, including Newt Gingrich, think that a vote for you is the same thing as a vote for Barack Obama, that you've going to do for John McCain exactly what Democrats think Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in 2000 -- beat him."

"Well," Barr replied, "it really is illustrative of the sort of 'Alice in Wonderland' world that Newt and the Democrats and the other Republicans up here live in.  Their world is completely circumscribed and defined by the two-party system.  And any threat to that system is to be denigrated."

He knows he's not going to be living in the White House come January (a recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has him at 3%), but he does have a goal in mind for his candidacy:  "Success will come from opening the electoral system here so that no longer, after this cycle, will Americans feel themselves bound to the artificial constraints of the two-party system. They'll know that there's a real choice, that there is real change: Bob Barr 2008 this year, and somebody else next time."

-- Leslie Hoffecker

Comments

[Dave]

I want to hear more questions to Barr about what Iran was like before the Iranian revolution when he went to high school in Tehran. He's the only one of the three people running that has that intimate a knowledge of what the people of the country are actually like.

[Tannim]

Be nice if he were a real libertarian instead of an interloper...

[keith]

WHAT? No mention of Ron Paul? C'mon Andrew, it's been a while. Load up that reel and snap that line out there a couple of times.

(You know, Keith, you're right. You take a few days off and you start forgetting the important stuff. Thanks for the reminder.)

[Carol]

I'm so pleased to see Bob Barr coming around to the libertarian viewpoint and wish him every success. I am also pleased to see the media giving the ideas of limited government some much overdue airtime. I recognize that would likely not have occurred without a widely known name like Bob Barr representing the Libertarian Party, so I appreciate him stepping up to the plate.

[Tom J]

Any thoughts on which states he's likely to get support? The only polling I've seen for him is in Georgia so far.

(And he should get rid of the mustache.)

[Brian Randall]

The latest Zogby poll has Bob Barr at 6% nationally so he is gaining respectability. Keep fighting for American liberty, Bob Barr!

[Alessandro Machi]

If I am recalling correctly, Bob Barr was one of the twelve doofuses who witchhunted Bill Clinton back in 1996-97.

Those twelve dunces never got their true payback. At least three or four of them were having affairs of their own even as they chose to bearhug the president during his last term in office.

These same imbeciles than blamed Bill Clinton for not doing more to stop Osama Bin Laden even as they accused any Clinton move as being done to take attention away from their impeachment witchhunt. This guy is a fool for thinking for a moment he would be taken seriously.

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[TJ]

What he is saying sounds much better than McCain and Obama. Those two are changing their positions to the wrong side.

Atleast Barr is changing to the right position in my eyes.

Two big social issues ,gay marriage and abortion, let each individual state decide. That should satisfy both sides.

[Web Smith]

If you actually read the Declaration of Independence and jot down the things that we are now facing that caused us to declare independence in 1776 and then you read the entire Constitution, not just the Bill of Rights, and you jot down the violations that Congress has committed, you will have a list of the causes of most of our problems today.

This will also give you overwhelming justification to want to vote for someone like Bob Barr instead of McCain or Obama.

[Terry]

Although the author says Barr knows he won't be in the White House come January, I think it is much more likely he will be there than John McCain. Barr is right when it comes to Liberty and the Constitution. His conservative viewpoints are much more mainstream than those of McCain. A recent Zogby poll shows Barr polling 7% in Arizona (McCain trails Obama in Arizona), 9% in Nevada and 10% in New Hampshire (McCain's "second home").

[dave]

obviously bob barr jumped into the race at this time to add confusion, division and distraction, to dilute and split the real conservative base opposing the neocon party hijackers and their candidate mccain, and to further divert attention from RON PAUL and his massive, popular constitutional republican movement. the positions of the only legitimate and qualified republican candidate for president RON PAUL on the crucial matters are so clear, so sound and shock proof that everyone who's ever heard and understood his message won't forget it, ever - and would write in his name if he would not get his party's nomination.