Bob Barr For President?

I'm still supporting Ron Paul and will until the GOP convention. It will be interesting to see how much monkey-wrenching Ron and his merry band of supporters can pull off at the convention, but it looks like the party has decided to drink the McCain kool-aid rather than Dr. Paul's sweet constitutional elixir. Since Paul has said he won't run as an independent or third-party candidate, I've been looking at the Libertarian Party's candidates for when McCain officially gets the GOP nod.

I wasn't too excited about any of the Libertarian Party choices. They all had good libertarian credentials, but no name recognition outside of libertarian circles. The previous forerunner was a sports-handicapper and Z-list celebrity named Wayne Allen Root. But the possible entrance of GOP congressman-turned-Libertarian Bob Barr has changed that.

Bob Barr was the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 7th District from 1995 to 2003. He played a key role in the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton and was a rare GOP critic of George Bush's abuses of privacy rights and other civil liberties. He now runs a consulting firm in Atlanta. He also is on the Libertarian Nat'l Committee and the board of the National Rifle Association.

Barr has some political baggage that might lose him support from libertarians. Barr was one of the GOP's more strident drug warriors as well as supporting the GOP's stance against gay marriage. He has since backed off on both. Another ding on his record is that he voted for the Patriot Act (like just about every other congressman, except Ron Paul), but only after demanding a sunset provision in the bill. He now says he regrets voting for it.

These things might annoy libertarian purists, but they won't much bother disenchanted paleo-conservatives driven out of the Republican tent by the stench of Juan McStain and his flock of big-government neo-conservatives. Bob Barr would seem to be an ideal candidate to siphon off votes from the GOP's former base.

Reason magazine expects big things for Barr at the Libertarian convention.

I can see myself comfortably voting for Bob Barr. Then again, the Libertarian Party could run a syphilitic chimp and I'd vote for him over McCain or Obama.