Opinion: With no bailout in sight, Libertarian Bob Barr’s campaign hits tough financial times
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Here we have, what, 26 days left until the election? The Republican ticket of Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is trying to figure out how to make up six, nine or maybe even 11 points in the polls.
And over at Libertarian Bob Barr’s Atlanta offices, they are almost ecstatic to report they are at 3% in Virginia. That’s 3% total, not points behind.
In Florida his campaign says they’re just under 4% total, in Colorado just over and in Ohio all the way up to 5.2%.
‘Those states are vital for us,’ a brave fundraising letter proclaims, ‘as it is in those battleground states where the election will be decided.’
If the little-known former Republican congressman from Georgia can multiply his support ten times in less than four weeks (and overcome the unwritten national aversion to male candidates with facial hair), he just might pull out a victory.
Otherwise, he will suffer the usual sad fate of third party bids, struggling with the two V’s: Valiantly but in Vain.
Like Rep. Ron Paul’s electorally unsuccessful though financially robust bid for the Republican nomination, Barr’s campaign is often built around adversity -- the media conspiracy that keeps it from getting free publicity, the difficulty of being obscure and raising money in hard times, being excluded from the debates by the two major parties and their debate commission and the local efforts by state parties to get or keep them off the ballots.
On Barr’s website, which not surprisingly also asks for money first thing, Barr has posted a 3 minute 25 second video (see it below) for the faithful and the curious, calmly analyzing the recent financial crisis bailout and how wrong, once again, the big government folks were in Washington.
And charging, in fact, that they all knew precisely what was coming.
In her recent fundraising plea, Ashley Petty (see photo) said a financial crisis has also hit the Barr campaign. She’d just come back from the mailbox and last week’s armload of donation checks had dwindled to a mere handful. ‘I’m asking you to really dig deep,’ she wrote.
She suggested supporters devote $5 a day for the rest of the campaign.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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