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The Great Bob Barr fizzle

For all the proud talk of breaking 1%, of breaking 1 million votes, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr justified his critics by pulling in (according to the tally available at this moment) just 477,000 votes.

By comparison:

Michael Badnarik 397,000 in 2004
Harry Browne 384,000 in 2000
Harry Browne 486,000 in 1996

Or, looked at another way, here's what other Libertarian candidates achieved last night:

Chris Cole (Senate, NC) 131,000 votes
Michael Munger (Governor NC) 121,000 votes
Allen Buckley (Senator GA) 121,000 votes
Yvonne Schick (Senator TX) 184,00 votes
The total for four Libertarian State candidates: 557,000 votes

There are a lot of ways to slice and dice this, but the simplest is to acknowledge some stark realities:

Bob Barr is not a Libertarian, and he got rejected by the majority of Libertarian voters.

The strength of the Libertarian movement is in its usually ignored State affiliates.

The strategy for electing freedom-oriented candidates needs to be rethought.

Oh, and--perhaps not surprisingly--(faux) Libertarian Republican has taken a lower road than even I could possibly have imagined:

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Comments

Eric Dondero said…
Explain to me please how this is the "low road."

The guy is an outright Nazi. Do you not believe that he has ties to Terrorist Bill Ayers? Were Rev. Wright's comments "Goddam America" made up? Is Rashid Khalidi not Obama's friend? Do you doubt Obama's close ties to racial Anti-Semite Farakhan?

Hussein has a perfect 100 liberal/fascist voting record from the Marxist ADA.

He was endorsed by the Communist Party USA.

He had Black Panthers with batons in Philadelphia yesterday blocking polling places.

And you have the audacity to even doubt his Naziism.

You have no right to call yourself a "libertarian." You are an enemy of liberty.

Kindly cease and desist from using the libertarian label.

Immediately.
November 5, 2008 at 8:10 AM
Steven H. Newton said…
To equate Senator Obama with a genocidal, mass murderer who started a World War, and to equate tens of millions of Americans with different political beliefs with Nazi brownshirts suggests that (a) you don't have a clue what German National Socialism was all about [hint: by this point in his career Adolf Hitler had already been jailed once for an attempted coup, and his party had wracked up multiple political murders]; and that (b) you don't understand the difference between liberalism, fascism, and naziism.

Neither comes as any surprise. Having been proven dramatically wrong in believing Bob Barr would pick up over 1 million votes, your tactic now is to conflate a liberal American politician with a genocidal maniac in order to district people from the reality that the "Republican" part of your so-called Libertarianism doesn't have a clue.

Last point: nobody declared you [thankfully] the guardian of the title Libertarian; I'm inordinately pleased to be considered an "enemy of liberty" by a man with such little regard for truth or history.

Have a nice day, Eric.
November 5, 2008 at 8:30 AM
Eric Dondero said…
And which tells me you don't have a clue what liberty means.

Yet you persist in calling yourself a "libertarian." That's a travesty. You should be ashamed.
November 5, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Eric Dondero said…
I posted this article at LR Blog with you in mind Mr. Newton:

http://libertarianrepublican.blogspot.com/2008/11/and-for-those-who-doubt-that-obama-and.html
November 5, 2008 at 10:31 AM
Unknown said…
FYI: Munger and Cole are in the same state. You double dipped on your total vote number.
November 5, 2008 at 5:51 PM
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