The Race for 3rd Place
It’s beginning to look a lot like 2000. A prominent conservative bolts the GOP and wins the presidential nomination of an established third party. Early on, the poll numbers are encouraging and the media coverage respectful. Soon, however, his insurgent campaign is lost in the shuffle of a competitive two-party race. There is even competition for the dissident Right’s support, as the Constitution Party runs its own presidential candidate. Infighting, missteps, and misfortunes further erode any possibility of a major breakthrough. Even Russ Verney makes an appearance.
This election cycle was an even bigger missed opportunity than 2000. The issues Pat Buchanan ran on—foreign policy, trade, and immigration—are all more salient now than they were eight years ago. Not only are antiwar conservatives up for grabs, but the Republican nominee, John McCain, is despised or distrusted by millions of ordinary taxpaying, churchgoing, Limbaugh-listening conservatives without the paleo prefix. Moreover, Ron Paul momentarily united Buchananites and libertarians during the Republican primaries, raising millions of dollars and inspiring thousands of passionate followers.
The kind of third-party campaign that was quixotic during the Bush-Gore battle of the hanging chads would seem plausible in the fight against McBama. If there were ever a chance to free disaffected conservatives from the chains that bind them to the GOP, this would be the year.
Yet unless something significant is brewing beneath the surface of the polls, that seems increasingly unlikely to happen. There is little evidence that Chuck Baldwin will fare much better than pre-Ron Paul Constitution Party candidates and good reason to believe that Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr will do much worse than the 6 percent nationally that seemed possible this summer.
In recent years, there has been little room for serious third-party challenges on the right. The two most successful—George Wallace in 1968 and Ross Perot in 1992—were difficult to classify ideologically and did not appeal exclusively to conservatives. Wallace siphoned votes from both Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. Perot, though most of his supporters were Bush ‘88 voters, actually got his lowest percentages among self-described conservative Republicans. John Schmitz, a sitting member of Congress and John Birch Society leader, took 1.4 percent of the vote in 1972, Buchanan just 0.4 percent twenty-eight years later. The Constitution/U.S. Taxpayers’ Party has never broken 190,000 votes in four presidential elections, other smaller outfits have attracted Prohibition Party levels of support.
For paleoconservatives, this is difficult to understand. The Republican Party has manifestly failed to shrink the federal government, control immigration, reverse Roe v. Wade, curtail affirmative action, and roll back decades of cultural leftism, goals that even the mainstream movement claims to endorse. Democrats have given liberals the New Deal and the Great Society, and would deliver national health insurance if given the chance. Domestically, Republicans have given conservatives the Reagan tax cuts (Bush’s will expire in 2011), deregulation, and a welfare reform bill that had to be signed into law by a Democratic president. Yet the most successful recent third-party candidates have appealed to Volvo-driving white liberals (John Anderson in 1980 and Ralph Nader in 2000), angry moderates (Perot in 1992 and 1996), and segregationist dead-enders (Strom Thurmond in 1948 and Wallace in 1968). It is difficult to identify a significant third-party candidate who was as far to the right as Henry Wallace was to the left, although such candidacies have been tried.
Conservatives attempted to persuade both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to run as third-party candidates. They spurned right-wing entreaties, eventually winning the GOP presidential nomination and, in Reagan’s case, the presidency. The Constitution Party was founded in part as a vehicle for a Buchanan third-party bid. The Libertarians have nominated both Barr and Paul, in the latter case not doing much better than when they have run political nobodies. Paul has managed to win ten congressional elections—and is on track to prevail in an eleventh this November—as a Republican, while getting Michael Badnarik-like vote totals as a third-party candidate.
It may be difficult to remember now, but Bob Barr once seemed capable of succeeding where others failed. True, he always had his problems. He did not have the charisma of Buchanan, the dedicated personal following of Paul, or the wealth of Perot. A solid but fairly conventional conservative as a House Republican, Barr was a recent convert on a whole host of issues he would need to highlight in a successful campaign—the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, Medicare prescription-drug coverage, and, to a much lesser extent, the War on Drugs. Although he joined the Libertarian Party in 2006, endorsed its 2004 nominee over George W. Bush, and focused on civil liberties since leaving Congress, he was vulnerable to charges that he was a flip-flopper—the Libertarians’ Mitt Romney.
But Barr was famous enough to get the headlines he needed and sufficiently respected to be taken at least somewhat seriously. Paul had already proven that a candidate with the right message could raise large amounts of money without being charismatic or superrich. And Barr’s mixture of old mainstream conservatism and new libertarianism positioned him well to appeal to conservatives who thought McCain dissented from the party line too much (on tax cuts, regulations, guns, and immigration) and those who complained the Maverick did so too rarely (on Iraq, Iran, warrantless wiretapping, and the bulk of the Bush administration’s initiatives).
A coalition of Ron Paul Republicans and Rush Limbaugh Republicans would be hard to assemble and even more difficult to hold together. The Paulites would be deflated if Barr were insufficiently antiwar, whereas anti-McCain Republican regulars would be alienated by too much dovishness. But, as Buchanan’s Republican campaigns showed, such a coalition isn’t completely impossible. Early on, Barr’s candidacy was cheered by both libertarian hawk Eric Dondero and the staunchly antiwar Lew Rockwell.
Even if Barr merely consolidated the libertarian and right-wing third-party vote while also capturing some of Ron Paul’s 1.2 million votes, he would likely break Ed Clark’s record as the Libertarian Party’s top presidential vote-getter. If he won the votes of disgruntled mainstream Republicans, he could affect the outcome in several states and do better than Nader in 2000. Under this scenario, Barr would not only give newly organized Ron Paul revolutionaries something productive to do while putting Republicans on notice that they couldn’t take their conservative base for granted. He would do well enough to potentially nudge the GOP in a more sensible direction—or threaten its very existence.
At one point, Barr himself seemed to realize what was at stake. He spoke of building the Libertarian Party into an effective, mainstream political organization that could win elections. But he also talked about how Perot’s 19 percent of the vote influenced the 1994 Contract with America and persuaded Republicans, who had come to believe that deficits didn’t matter, to embrace a balanced budget in the 1990s. Once again, the GOP could lead, follow, or get out of the way.
While the Constitution Party honorably eschewed (relative) celebrity and chose the consistently antiwar Chuck Baldwin over the neoconservative Alan Keyes, Barr offered disaffected conservatives something Baldwin could not: a chance to have some noticeable impact on the election without voting for McCain. He also stood a better chance than Baldwin of continuing to mainstream ideas Paul brought into the 2008 campaign rather than have them return to the fringes of American politics.
Polls can exaggerate a third-party candidate’s support. Sometimes, people feel more comfortable telling a pollster they back a third candidate rather than admit they are undecided or have no preference. If the third-party candidate’s support is soft, many of those voters will migrate back to their usual major party by Election Day. But the early polling, both nationally and in states like Georgia and North Carolina, gave Barr supporters every reason to believe their hopes were well founded. A John Anderson-sized vote percentage was not out of the question. Some of the more effusive Libertarians even allowed themselves to dream of a Perot ‘92-like showing.
Now Barr will be lucky if he significantly exceeds the 300,000-400,000 votes a Libertarian Party presidential candidate can normally expect to receive. If his vote totals end up looking more like Harry Browne’s than Ed Clark’s, the postmortems will focus on Barr’s rift with the Ron Paul Republicans, beginning with his decision to pull out of a third-party press conference organized by Paul himself. It was never in Barr’s interest to put himself on equal footing with other third-party candidates—for the same reason Perot wanted to debate Bush and Clinton, not Howard Phillips and Lenora Fulani—but his handling of the event was nothing short of disastrous.
“There might be perfectly good reasons not to attend,” argued Eric Garris, “In any event, the decision is the LP’s. But there are no good reasons to say you will be there, to place it on your public schedule, to attend planning meetings, and then to blow it off 30 minutes before the press conference.” Worse, he held a rival event at which he seemed to question Paul’s commitment to individual liberty and continued to bait Paul until the Texan endorsed Baldwin.
On this score, Barr blew it. Yet Paul’s initial dithering was also problematic. Whatever one thinks of left-right coalitions, success in electoral politics requires supporting a specific candidate. It makes no more sense to simultaneously endorse four competing candidates, even if they agree on important issues, than it would for libertarians to be neutral in a race between Paul and Eugene Flynn. You cannot influence an electoral outcome or send a coherent message by splitting 1.2 million votes four ways. Even a straight endorsement of Nader would have been more logical, as anything that strengthens Nader could push Barack Obama in a more antiwar direction.
When Paul finally endorsed the Constitution Party nominee, he did so in a manner that was maximally harmful to Barr and minimally helpful to Baldwin: he waited until after most of the ballot-access fights were over, after Keyes snatched the American Independent Party ballot line in California, after the media became obsessed with McBama, and after the Rally for the Republic. The endorsement said more about the slight by “the Libertarian Party candidate” than it did about Baldwin’s authentic conservatism and virtues as a presidential choice. If Paul had come out for either Barr or Baldwin as early as May rather than in September, his decision would have had a much greater impact.
In February, I agreed with Paul’s decision to remain in the Republican Party, on the grounds that even one Ron Paul Republican in elected office is better than a strong but ultimately unsuccessful third-party campaign for the presidency. The country and the Republican conference needed Paul in Congress rallying opposition to the bailout plan more than anyone would benefit from him protesting his inevitable exclusion from the presidential debates. But the Paulites’ subsequent political activities and the tiny dissident Right’s multiple choices at the ballot box this November do give me second thoughts.
A majority of Paul delegates at the Republican National Convention voted for McCain, not the Good Doctor. Ron Paul Republicans have had successes in primaries—and B.J. Lawson is a particularly promising candidate—but mostly in lopsidedly Democratic areas where they stand little chance of winning in November. The Campaign for Liberty won’t promote antiwar, hard-money Republican primary candidates in exactly the same way as the Club for Growth backs GOP supply-siders. And while the party establishment has tried to exclude Paul supporters as they once sought to freeze out the despised Goldwaterites and Birchers, Paul himself hasn’t done much to build his credibility within the GOP by praising third parties and consorting with Cynthia McKinney.
There is nothing wrong with working within the Republican Party where possible and working outside it where necessary. But both types of work need to be effective. A Ron Paul third-party candidacy would not have been ideal, especially if it meant that Chris Peden would be heading to Congress instead. It probably would have been better than what has actually happened, however. At the very least, the Barr-Baldwin competition would have been eliminated, as Paul would be a candidate both the Libertarian and Constitution parties could have gotten behind.
Both of those parties also have their flaws. The influence of Christian Reconstructionism in the Constitution Party has caused most paleoconservative intellectuals, many of them serious Christians, to hold the party at arm’s length. Its tendency toward factionalism and inability to successfully integrate socially conservative Keyes supporters (many of whom are more interested in abortion than their leader’s neoconservatism) raise questions about its long-term prospects for success as a political party rather than a debating society.
The longer-established Libertarian Party suffers from similar problems and a few new ones of its own. Like the Reform Party in 2000, the LP has proved a deeply flawed vehicle for any kind of conservatism. The LP has pushed Barr to the left on same-sex marriage and immigration, to his detriment in the general election, and basically muted him on abortion. Like Paul twenty years ago, Barr has faced persistent opposition from cultural radicals within the party, some of whom were less than helpful to Barr’s state ballot-access drives. Those radicals will gain further influence in the event of a poor showing by Barr and his running mate, fellow “pragmatist” Wayne Allyn Root.
Third-party conservative efforts are also hobbled by the ease with which most of the right can be brought back into the Republican fold. In 2000, all George W. Bush had to do keep the brigades from defecting with Buchanan was to name a pro-life running mate—Dick Cheney, to add insult to injury—and talk about a “humble foreign policy” with exit strategies and without nation-building. McCain, who entered the 2008 presidential race with even weaker movement conservative credentials, just had to pick Sarah Palin. If Barr’s press conference blunder cost him the Ron Paul Republicans, Palin put most Rush Limbaugh Republicans out of reach. A single desertion by a Buchanan, Barr, or Paul does not a conservative exodus from the GOP make.
With the deck already stacked so heavily against minor parties, there is no margin for error much less problems of this magnitude. Perhaps, as Ron Paul has suggested, the combined vote totals for Barr and Baldwin will give disaffected conservatives reasons for hope. But right now, things are looking pretty grim.
W. James Antle III is associate editor of The American Spectator.
Comments
A clear-headed analysis of the current political situation.
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“The Constitution Party was founded in part as a vehicle for a Buchanan third-party bid.”
My memory is that it was founded by Christian Reconstructionists who were most-welcoming of Catholics, Pro-Lifers and other assorted fellow-travelers. So I doubt it was formed just for Buchanan .. but maybe. Howard and Pat were friends, I believe.
“Even a straight endorsement of Nader would have been more logical, as anything that strengthens Nader could push Barack Obama in a more antiwar direction.”
Thanks for this. This is truly the best strategy. If Nader can hold the balance in an Obama reelection bid in ‘12, Obama may lean a little more Dove. And as far as sending messages are concerned, the Lebanese Nader’s rejection of the Israel First policy is his loudest message at this point in his career.
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Howard Phillips and others formed the U.S. Taxpayers’ Party in ‘92 hoping Buchanan would be the candidate. The nomination was his for the asking. But it is probably an overstatement to say the Party was created as a vehicle for Buchanan.
Antle is right. The Libertarian Party can never be a consistent vehicle for conservatism because it is made up of too many modals and outright God haters. Paleos need to get behind the Constitution Party. (I’ll take Reconstructionists over modals any day.) If it has elements that paleos don’t like, and I don’t agree with Reconstructionist theology, then join the party and engage the debate.
(Actually a lot of the openly Reconstructionist element left post Tampa. There weren’t many in evidence at the Convention in Kansas City as far as I could tell. I wished there were. Then there would have been more people who saw through Keyes’ Declarationist piffle as the liberal Straussian nonsense that it is. Whether you agree with the Reconstructionists’ theology or not, they at least have their philosophical act together, and they are genuinely illiberal, which can not be said of many other elements.)
“There is nothing wrong with working within the Republican Party where possible and working outside it where necessary. But both types of work need to be effective.”
I agree. That means those who have decided to go the third party route need to go all out instead of messing around the edges. Get involved with your State and local party and get busy.
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There is a viable third party in the wings, they just don’t know it. It’s the vast group of people who are about to be pistol-whipped by a government-business combine that thought Fractional Reserve Banking and Fiat Money was forgiving of idiocy and short term thinking. Elect Democrats and we will quickly see they are powerless without an industrial base. Elect the so called Republicans and we will quickly see that they no longer exist , replaced by something along the lines of a Dominatrix Graphic Novel.
Until this current dystopic era is played out, any right-thinking political movement will retain it’s name card labeled “crazy uncle”.
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Excellent analysis, Mr. Antle.
Concentrating on local and state races might be the logical way to procede.
#1 We need to enact a a new constitutional amendment limiting citizenship to children born to:
a.) Two parents who are natural-born American citizens. and
b.) Children of parents who have already become American citizens.
#2 We also need to repeal the 17th Amendment and (hopefully) the 16th Amendment.
For all of the above we need people in the state legislatures and governor’s mansions
that understand why the states need to have their power restored (17th) and the fact that “anchor
babies” are not a good way to influence the residency status of the parent.
The current system is stacked against third parties on the Federal level. That doesn’t
mean that people in the states couldn’t elect members of Congress who are sympathetic to the
desires of the various
“alternative parties.”
Given the size of our country; I would prefer not to see a Parliamentary system. It makes
it too easy for one party to obtain control; even if their membership isn’t that large.
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Nice job by Mr.Antle. Wow! Even most of the comments so far have been thoughtful. Bottom line: either Barr or Baldwin must be the choice to show the DEMREP PARTY there are a lot of Americans out here sick of their “America Last” philosophy.
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Buchanan really picked the wrong years to run for Presidency. Immigration and the need for America First foreign and trade policies have a salience today that they just didn’t have in the Clinton years. I’m not a theocrat or a libertarian, so I can’t get behind Barr or Baldwin.
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“I’m not a theocrat or a libertarian, so I can’t get behind Barr or Baldwin.”
Would people please quit throwing around the word theocrat? What does it even mean? It is like “racist.” A boogie word. A verbal bludgeon. A thought stopper. Everything that is not militantly secularist is not theocratic. Give me a break. Can we have some intellectual honesty?
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Red,
I thought a theocrat was someone who thinks the state whenever possible should enforce the normative rules of God upon its subjects, regardless of whether those subjects are believers or not. This is a diverse country, and instead of secularists and believers fighting a cage match to determine who shall have supremacy, I think we ought to try federalism first (no abortion in Louisiana; gay marriage in California, etc.)
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“Third-party conservative efforts are also hobbled by the ease with which most of the right can be brought back into the Republican fold.”
Jim, perhaps you’re next piece should delve deeper into the question of why this
statement is true, especially in the wake of the NRA endorsement of McCain. The Palin
pick sucked the air right out of the Barr campaign, at least until the bailout bill,
which is exactly what it was meant to do and why she was chosen. The last thing McCain’s
camp wanted to worry about is whether or not they were going to carry Alaska.
At this point, the only way the Barr/Root campaign lives up to its potential is if McCain
completly tanks and it’s every one for themselves. I doubt if that will happen because
the prossibility or probability of an Obama presidency will cause a spasm of last ditch
support for McCain from conservatives as a means of spite, you know, the way Capt. Ahab
called out his last bit of spite towards Moby Dick before drowning.
I do think that Barr and Baldwin will do better vote-wise than their 2004 or 2000
counterparts but that’s not a lot of consolation. Once again the 2008 election leaves
paleos with that accursed question “What is to be Done?” Work within the GOP or go
non-major party? I agree it’s fun to dream of Ron Paul running on multiple party
ballots attacking the Fed and all the bailouts getting lots of attention for it. The only
problem is, who knew? Back in March, if Ron Paul had not eschewed the idea of a non-major
party run, Chris Peden certainly would have beat him over the head with this issue and
if the Ron Paul Revolution ended with Paul out of Congress, it would have been a major
disaster. Better to err on the side of caution. Besides, the 1988 LP presidential run,
I do believe, scarred Paul to running as an independent and he’s being sincere when he
says it was not a prospect he relished.
Harold Meyerson said it best: “Third parties divide movements” and we’re seeing this clearly
in the whole Paul/Barr dust-up. Perhaps it was inevitable given how diverse Paul’s
movement was. But that’s the biggest legacy to his campaign, that you can get libertarians.
paleos, leftists to work together for a common cause if you agree on a few basic issues
and believe in the man. Paul’s camapaign would have never got off the ground if it was
a tradition GOP campaign, it needed these outside groups to get going and prove a grassroots
base. Paul understands this which is why he had this press conference with McKinney, Nader &
Baldwin. He wants his ideas to be accpeted by all parties, not put into a non-major party
ghetto where they would be ignored. That’s why you have a Ron Paul Republican like B.J.
Lawson and a Ron Paul Democrat like Bob Conley along with Libertarians and Constitutionalists.
It was a major accomplishment to get the candidates of the major non-major parties to agree
to a set of principles even if Bob Barr didn’t show up in person.
By the way, even if B.J. Lawson or any other Ron Paul Republicans lose their campaigns
for Congress it really doesn’t matter, because in winning primaries for GOP nominations
in Democratic dominated districts, it means they’ve taken over local GOP organizations in
those districts. Given the way the GOP allocates delagates
at its national convention by Congressional District, control of such districts would
give a Ron Paul Republican and good base of power to work with inside the party. Indeed,
the Ron Paul message may very well be the only one that could sell in a Democratic
dominated district. We’ll see if it works for B.J. Certainly the party as a whole
wouldn’t mind and would probably support such organzations given they’re the only
organized Republicans in New England, the coasts, the upper tier and in big cities.
It’s all about fluidity. Parties are vehicles to an end, not ends in themselves. Only
ideologues on the extreme left and right view parties in that matter, like the Communists
and Nazis. Perhaps there isn’t an answer to “What is to be Done” but answers, working in
the major and non-major parties and using the Campaign for Liberty as a template and base
for candidates of all different stripes to use so long as they agree to basic principles.
Who care what party they run in if that’s the case? If it’s a given that both major parties
have come to a consenus on the big issues, and the only questions who can manage the
government better, then who’s to say that consensus can be changed ultimately to one
that supports Ron Paul’s ideas or the Freedom Movement in general to various degrees?
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Excellent article James. Right on in so many ways.
But you neglected to mention Palin. History will record, that what killed Bob Barr’s chances of gaining millions of votes was the selection of libertarian-leaning Sarah Palin for GOP VP. Before Palin, most of us libertarian Republicans were all behind Barr. As soon as she was picked, overnight we switched to McCain.
After all, Palin herself has Libertarian ties, having attended a couple Libertarian meetings in 2005/06, and receiving the Alaska Party’s endorsement in 2006.
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I’d consider voting Libertarian; but the thought of rubbing ballots (or elbows or anything else) with a party populated by men obsessed with fashion (men’s fashion) rather than freedom (not license) leaves me rather cold.
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Eric you are so easy.
Some of us thought Palin might have some paleo and libertarian sympathies, but she quickly extinguished any hopes when she started babbling neocon pro-war rhetoric just like McCain.
Oh wait ... that’s right ... her reckless pro-war nonsense makes you like her more.
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Very good article! Just a few remarks:
Ron Paul did not get all the Buchanites, some yes, but not all. Some of them voted/preferred Tancredo, Hunter, Thompson and then Romney in the primaries. Pat Buchanan’s own sister Bay for instance first worked on Tancredo’s team and then switched over to Romney, not Paul, and then to Palin.Terrey Jeffrey - who was Buchanan’s campaign manager - of Human Events, endorsed Thompson at a time.
Paul know very well his supporters are diverse, he attracted most Independents in the primaries, as well as disaffected Republicans AND Democrats, and then also some radical anti-war people from the left as well as Green Party members and Naderites. I think it is for this reason also that he recommended people to vote for any of the four main third party candidates. It would surely not have been his first intention to invite Cynthis MCKinney, but he did it more for her as the elected party leader, e.g. whoever would have won the nomination. I think it is crucial to note that he achieved a great breakthrough by getting all four of the leader to sign a basically a moderate libertarians message on four very important and crucial issues. His appeal to vote for not only to his own supporters, it was more also to the general apathetic voter block who normally do not vote or would have voted for one of the two lesser evils. To maximize third party support is mportant. His reference of support of Baldwin is not so important as such he did not plan to chose between Barr and Baldwin, but the Barr campaign (people like Mike Ferguson, Shane Cory and Russ Verney) made some grave mistakes. Barr put a lot of pressure on him to chose one, so he felt about doing this. On a radio show he explained his choice a bit. He said/acknowledged Baldwin is not an ideal or perfect libertarian, but I think the strong in sense on the monetary issue triumphs above certain others. Baldwin did campaign hard for him as well. As Paul noted in the same letter, future support may ironically rather come from the “left” than the “right”. In this sense it is strategically good that he chose Baldwin, to demonstrate his pro-life credentials and also to the Limbaugh Republicans, that he does not agree with everything with the Libertarians. Paul would probably have received much more conservative votes if it was not for the negative perception that some have of Libertarians and his connection with the party and that he has the candidate in 1988.In the campaign he had to describe him as a “true conservative”, not as a “libertarian”, also due to the false and negative perception and association,.. SOme though he was pro-choice as he was/is a Libertarian as well and would be for absolute open borders on immigration, which is also not the case.
Remember, all the four party leaders he recommended to vote for will have no representative voice after the election, only one person though, and that is Ron Paul. Paul can bring in a lot of people from the “traditional left”, also those that are going to vote for Obama but destined to be disillusioned from him later with his domestic and especially foreign policy.
The Ron Paul meetup groups should remain active, they form the base. The bailout as well as after the peak of the Palin-boom, will focus issues again and be favorable to Barr and Baldwin, also Nader in the election, and could ensure a stronger than usual showing. Also, if the polls show not an even race a few days before the lection, but perhaps an Obama win, some conservative and libertarians may then rather vote for the person closser to them, e.g. Barr (and Baldwin) instead of McCain - who has no chance of winning, to send them a message and as a protest vote.
Depending how things develop after the election, maybe it is important to start afresh with a new party, basically based on Ron Paul’s platform, e.g. radical , but also “moderate” and mainstream. Such a new party - like the Independence Party - can then attract most of the CP and LP voters, with or without “merging them into a new party as structure. This new party can then work on local elections in 2010 already and some breakthroughs. Otherwise - if the GOP is reformable to its roots - concentration and work can be concentrated in the GOP to bringing the party in the right direction. The majority of GOP congress still voted at least principled against the bailout. This is important and significant!
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Yes, I like the way Eric Dondero tries to “fit in” to being a libertarian. Even with his
ugly 800 pound gorilla warmonger loot-for-neocon doppelganger sitting in the room next
to him. I kinda enjoyed watching him eat his words on the impending Ron Paul defeat last
go-round. What an idiot! Does anyone really support him? Besides Bush and Cheney I mean.
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