Reason Magazine slams Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr: Libertarian Republican blog responds
by Eric DonderoI've known Brian Doherty (photo) for over 25 years. Brian was a young punk (literally), back in the early days of the University of Florida College Libertarians in Gainesville, circa 1986 - early 1990s. He hung around with Phil Blumel (now President of US Term Limits and Vice-Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus), Libertarian Republican blog writer Tom Walls, and Ivan Osorio (now with the Competitive Enterprise Institute.)
During that time I was the leader of sorts, of the libertarian effort at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Brian is hardcore. He's a balls-to-the-wall Libertarian activist. Brian has served as a Senior Editor at Reason for over a decade now. Unfortunately, he's always let his cynicism get the best of him. Which, ironically, makes him a perfect fit for the oh-so-cynical Reason gang. And the cynicism shines through crystally clear in his latest slam piece on Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party.
It's a lengthy piece, so I won't run many excerpts here. I'll just give you a little taste:
Well, for an approach [Shane} Cory frames as pragmatic, it didn’t really work. It’s all over now, and Barr failed as both fundraiser and candidate to even approach those high early expectations. The total money raised was $1.2 million; total votes came in at 510,000.Brian then goes on to hammer just about anyone involved with Barr's campaign for lack of experience, bad judgement, and poor management.
Now, the backbiting and, as Barr media consultant Audrey Mullen put it to me last week, the intra-libertarian “circular firing squad” may begin.
Brian's longtime "Gal Pal" had a stake in Barr's failure
Side note - At this point it should be mentioned that Brian's longtime live-in girlfriend/wife is Libertarian National Committee member Angela Keaton. Angela is also a graduate of the UofF College Libertarians. But these days, she's known as a harsh critic of mainstream libertarian efforts, including the Barr campaign. Keaton, stridently Anti-War and decidedly culturally Left (She's a part-time Lesbian activist in Hollywood, CA), supported "Anybody but Barr" for the LP nomination. Angela, as an LNC rep. mercissly dogged the Barr campaign since the nomination on numerous fronts, most notably ballot access efforts.
I still like Brian and Angela and view them both as top-notch Libertarian activists. But let's be honest here. Angela's fortunes have been tied directly to Barr being a failure. And this latest piece from Angela's male partner Brian is relectively one-sided and incredibly biased. The bias is of course, aimed against anything "right-wing libertarian" or Republican, including Republican-turned-Libertarian Bob Barr.
Bob Barr got over Half a Million votes
Firstly, Brian glosses over Barr's vote total not once but twice in the article. Saying that it's the percentage that his peformance should be judged upon, not the raw vote.
What?! Excuse me???
Does anybody remember what percentage Ed Clark got in his 1980 Libertarian campaign for President? Hell no! All people remember from 1980 is that Ed Clark, "got nearly one million votes." That's been the mantra. That's been the standard line for the last 28 years. Nobody ever says, "hey, did you know that Ed Clark got 1.1% of the vote in 1980?"
Yes, it's dissapointing that Barr didn't break 1 million as had been hoped for. But no other LP Presidential candidate since 1972 besides Clark has ever busted the magic 500,000 number.
Michael Badnarik, the Party's 2004 Presidential candidate got 380,000. So, Barr improved upon the 2004 vote total by over 130,000 votes. About 25%. That's quite an accomplishment.
Doherty devotes only one paragraph to all the Barr and Root media
There's one measly little paragraph in Doherty's 37 paragraph piece mentioning all the media attention Barr and his running mate Wayne Root received during the campaign. CNN, Fox News (Neal Cavuto on numerous occasions), one-hour long interview on Glen Beck alone, mentions in Newsweek, big article in Time Magazine, almost twice weekly articles on the Barr campaign in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Never before has a Libertarian Presidential ticket received so much attention from the mainstrem media. Even Ed Clark. I was the Travel Aide for Ron Paul in his 1988 Libertarian Presidential Campaign. We would have killed to get even half the attention Barr/Root received by the mainstream media.
Imagine for a moment how many new voters were exposed to the libertarian message by Barr and Root's media appearances? Beck alone has millions of listeners and an even larger TV audience.
The Palin factor completely ignored by Doherty
Vote totals and media aside, Brian completely ignores the most important factor in Barr's Presidential Campaign: The pick of libertarian Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate.
Never before has the Libertarian Party influenced a major party pick for President or Vice-President. In 2008, the LP accomplished this objective to the detriment of the Party itself, but to the benefit of the libertarian movement on the whole.
At this point, I need to break and put in a plug for an interview that I'm hoping to publish here at LR blog shortly, with an "insider" within the McCain Campaign. This individual is well-known to many LR regulars. But so far, he's not given the go ahead for a full-fledged accounting of what it was like to be a Libertarian McCain staffer.
One thing he has allowed me at this point to acknowledge was that Sarah Palin was indeed picked in part, due to the Bob Barr Libertarian Presidential campaign.
Sarah Palin picked deliberately to head off Libertarian Bob Barr
Let's go back to late July, August, shall we? Over the summer, Libertarian Bob Barr was polling at 6% in two consecutive polls by Zogby. And Zogby was no outlier. Other respected polls picked up Barr's numbers, though at a slightly lower level of 3 and 4%. The very last Zogby poll in late August had Barr as high as 11% in New Hampshire and 10% in Nevada, still at 5% nationwide.
Then disaster struck for Bob Barr and Wayne Root.
Republican Presidential candidate John McCain chose one of the three identified libertarian Republican Governors in the United States as his running mate: Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska.
Palin had attended past meetings of the Libertarian Party of Alaska. The Alaska media had pegged her as a "libertarian," and she was widely viewed as the leader of the rowdy trouble-making "libertarian wing" of the Alaska GOP. Some Frank Murkowski Republicans, and social conservatives, even started a whisper campaign in early 2006, that "Sarah is not really a Republican, but rather a Libertarian." There were other rumors in Anchorage that she was a "closet supporter of marijuana legalization." The leadership of the Libertarian Party of Alaska endorsed her campaign three days before her election as Governor in 2006. Some even credited LP support as putting her over the top. On election night, the Libertarian Party was one of the very first groups she thanked in front of over 1,000 politicos gathered at the downtown Anchorage civic center.
The McCain campaign knew all this.
Here is the email exchange from "our insider friend" that I promised him I'd hold til after the election, dated Sept. 10:
Eric:
I gotta ask you this. Answer with a one word "yes" or "no." Did Bob Barr's candidacy ever enter any discussions whatsoever within the McCain camp? Was Palin's libertarian streak ever mentioned as something that might counter that?McCain Campaign Staffer:
Palin is a rock star. Did you see the convention crowd? They're screaming for her... [Very confidential information here deleted.]There you have it folks.
As to your second question, come on Eric, what do you think? This is hardly your first rodeo. If you could esentially deal a death blow to a third party candidacy that could peel off some of your supporters, what would you do? Yes.
And Brian Doherty at Reason Magazine does not even mention Sarah Palin, or what is the most important effect the Barr candidacy had on Election 2008 in his entire 37 paragraph piece.
Brian is a top-notch writer. His book "Radicals for Capitalism" is an all-time Libertarian best seller. But his investigative skills in this case have apparently gotten overshadowed by his biases. Or, perhaps he's been thinking with another part of his anatomy, which is common to us males, particularly those of us with super-sexy wives. Still, Brian should have done his homework. He should have investigated a little more the Republican connection to the Barr campaign before he put digit to keyboard, and started rambling about real world politics, a subject matter that most Libertarians, most assuredly the good folks at Reason, know very little about.
Full Disclosure - I was a Paid Petitioner for Bob Barr for President in 7 States in the Spring and Summer of '08.
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