Reason Magazine - Topics > Third Parties

In the Penal Colony

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:00:00 EDT

Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party's presidential nomination yesterday, bringing the number of former Georgia congressbeings in the race to two:

The Tao of Chuck

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Chuck Baldwin, presidential nominee of the Constitution Party, was somewhere in Arizona when I called for him, touring the border, seeing for himself that dusty expanse where Mexican immigrants violate our national sovereignty. He was en route to Utah, talking to small-town newspapers and religious types who can't stand John McCain, when his campaign called back. “He does two or three radio interviews every day,” said a campaign communications director. “He does local TV, interviews with local press. But we’ll work you in.”

I was stuck in my office that night, working away on an entirely different project. It jolted me when the campaign called back. “Chuck will be free tomorrow morning. He’ll be driving, so he’ll be on a cell phone. Is that all right?” I looked at my clock. The call had come minutes after 1 a.m. There are energetic campaigns, and then there is this campaign.

But where is all that energy going? To pluck the phrase off one of the innumerable Ron Paul T-Shirts: Who is Chuck Baldwin? He’s the pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church, which he founded when he was 23 years old. He's a political activist whose first toe-dip in the business came in 1980, when he took a leadership role in Florida's branch of the Moral Majority. He hosts a radio show that's beamed to stations in every corner of the Redneck Riveria, and writes weekly columns with themes such as "No Sanctuary for Illegal Aliens in Our Church" and "Terri Schiavo Isn't the Only One Dying—So Is Lady Liberty!" ("Her feeding tube, the feeding tube of constitutional government and bedrock principle, has been removed.")

At the end of April, Baldwin officially became the nominee of the Constitution Party, founded (as the U.S. Taxpayers Alliance) in 1990 as a vehicle for the avuncular conservative movement broker Howard Phillips. Phillips hustled around the country uniting disaffected right-wingers, Christian nationalists, and anti-tax activists in populist third parties that, in 1992, put him on the ballot as their presidential candidate. Cash-poor, the Phillips campaign got attention by running ads that spliced images from Nazi concentration camps with pictures of aborted fetuses. It was good for 43,000 votes. In the three following presidential campaigns, Phillips’s party could never place better than a distant fifth.

Baldwin, who was part of the last Constitution Party campaign—he was its 2004 vice presidential candidate—thinks the ground has shifted. “We’re spreading the message of constitutional government,” Baldwin told me as he sped through the Salt Lake City exurbs. “Ron Paul was the only candidate in the two major parties that carried that message, and now I’m carrying that message.”

But what message is that, exactly? Those disaffected citizens who gave their votes and their money to Ron Paul—one million of the former, more than a hundred thousand of the latter—already have a legion of candidates groveling for their support, claiming ownership of the Ron Paul brand. There have been dozens of congressional candidates. There was Mike Gravel, who speculated that, "if Ron Paul could raise all that money with his libertarian message, I think I could raise a lot of money." There is Ralph Nader, who in his dotage assumed that opposing the PATRIOT Act would be enough for Paul fans to overlook the fact that he's Ralph Nader. There is Bob Barr, who inspires Libertarian Party conversions and bitter online denunciations in roughly equal measure.

Baldwin's not a late-comer to the Ron Paul cause. In 2002, he was using his radio show as a bully pulpit to turn voters against the Iraq War and the neocons. He wrote column after column in 2007 endorsing Paul, recording an ad and a video message in the lead-up to the Florida primary. Today, Baldwin appropriates the Ernest Hancock "rEVOLution" logo and courts support on Ron Paul fan sites. But Baldwin appeals to a very specific segment of the Ron Paul base. They're national sovereignty voters, people who see and feel their livelihoods under threat of a crushing, encroaching world government. Baldwin took their measure in a mid-2007 column that attempted to explain who Ron Paul's donors were.

They are rank-and-file, tax-paying citizens who are sick and tired of out-of-control federal spending and deficits....They have had it with this phony "war on terrorism" that sends trillions of dollars to nations throughout the Middle East, but refuses to close our own borders to illegal immigration. They have had it with the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" being used as excuses to trample people's freedoms....They have had it with Bush's North American Union....They have had it with the Military-Industrial complex that desires to build international empires at the expense of the blood and sacrifice of the American people. They have had it with David Rockefeller and his Council on Foreign Relations [CFR].

I was curious about this last bit, so I asked him: What's so scary about the CFR? "Some people who belong to it may not really understand the true intention of the CFR," he explains. "I remember reading what a former member of it wrote: He thought the CFR was pushing America towards global government, and I concur with that. I think the overall agenda that drives the CFR is the overall merger of the US into regional and ultimately global government. And I don’t think they have the interests of the United States at heart."

The evidence for the stuff that really worries Baldwin doesn't appear much in the mainstream media. But it's there if you look for it. "I think only a blind man doesn’t see it," Baldwin says. "Its been out in the open ever since the first George Bush pledged allegiance to the New World Order. By 2015, I’m told, the powers that be want to merge Europe and America. But when I’m sworn in as president, the New World Order comes crashing down."

Arguments like that haven't hurt Baldwin. Quite the contrary: His cinching the Constitution Party nomination had a lot to do with this kind of against-the-world populism, which Party members believe has been given new life by the Ron Paul campaign. Howard Phillips himself nominated Baldwin over Alan Keyes (who, while approaching Herschel Krustofsky in his level of clownishness, still had a chance at the prize) by telling delegates "a friend of Ron Paul" could help the party tap into the rEVOLution. "In his heart Ron Paul knows that Chuck Baldwin is right," Phillips said, "and that if the Paul people are to support anyone it's Chuck Baldwin."

Since then, Paul's coalition has moved in a predictable manner. The more libertarian-minded members have organized a Republican Party insurgency or sidled up to Bob Barr. The more sovereignty-minded members have lined up with Baldwin. Texas radio host Alex Jones, the Paul backer who sees the influence of the Bilderberg Group behind every corner, quickly endorsed Baldwin as an alternative to "that CIA agent" Barr. "I wouldn’t trust Bob Barr as far as I could throw him," Jones said. "I trust you. Ron Paul better put his support behind you once he’s out of it."

Baldwin's view of the financial industry is darker than Paul's, and it comes from a different place. Where Paul worries about the influence of the Federal Reserve, Baldwin compares "international bankers" to "the money changers in the temple," rousted out by Jesus. "It's been the desire of some, throughout history, to merge the world economically," Baldwin says. "This is all driven by greed, money, and power. The thing these people always lacked was the technology to make this possible. Now it's there, and there are forces in business and in government that desire to create a global economy, and you can’t have a global economy unless you have gobal government to run it."

Anyone who backed Paul to inject libertarianism into the national debate will blanch at this. That doesn't matter to Baldwin. While libertarians squabble about whether Paul was a boon or a blow to their ideas, Baldwin has reaped the benefits of the best exposure that national sovereignty conservatives have gotten in decades. "About half of our volunteers came out of the Ron Paul campaign," he speculates. Baldwin, along with Howard Phillips, will be one of the hot-ticket speakers at the July 12 "Revolution March" in Washington, D.C. Bob Barr will not be there; Ron Paul will be on the podium. And more than 12,000 people have pledged to come.

What claim does Baldwin have on those voters? A pretty serious one, actually. The Paul campaign became a vessel for some brands of cosmopolitan libertarianism, and in states like Nevada and Montana, where Paul placed second and won the independent vote, he pulled in anti-war voters who'd given up on the Republican Party. But the coalition was so fractious that its members are moving back to their regular political poles. Paul is disinterested in "leading" them, hoping instead on another outbreak of spontaneous order. Paul's campaign was a booster shot for Baldwin's brand of conservatism; in the end, it might be one of the campaign's most lasting impacts.

"We’re going to criss-cross the country," Baldwin says. "We’re going to take our message of freedom and liberty, putting Washington back in order economically, closing our borders, repealing NAFTA, and restoring constitutional government all across America. This is just the beginning."

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

The LP Struggles to Get on the Ballot as a Party in Ohio

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:20:00 EDT

The Libertarian Party is working to get its presidential candidate on the ballot as a Libertarian in Ohio and elsewhere. They've got a lawsuit brewing in the Buckeye State, one that will be heard in a couple of weeks. Some background via the AP:

A rule put in place by former Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell required the party to turn in more than 40,000 signatures 120 days before the presidential primary. That law was struck down as unconstitutional in 2006 by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati because it violated the party's First Amendment rights of free association by preventing access to the ballot.
The Ohio Legislature, however, failed to craft a new law according to the court's guidelines, and current Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner had to come up with her own requirements. The Libertarian Party, however, still believes her directive violates the spirit of the court ruling. A hearing is set for July 14 in federal court in Columbus.

Brunner's magic number? 20,000 sigs 100 days before the primary.

More here.

Ballot-access restrictions are a continuing problem and should be a national outrage, regardless of the party in question. Especially in cases such as this one, where the law works to keep candidates from identifying themselves as belonging to a group that clearly and concisely gives information to voters in the ballot booth.

Bob Barr on the Patriot Act, Medical Marijuana, and His Mustache

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:37:00 EDT

MobLogic sits down with Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr and gets the skinny on his conversion from conservative to libertarian, his changing positions on various policies, and why he won't shave his mustache. Check it out here:

And then check out reason.tv's path-breaking interview with Barr from before he snagged the LP nod.

Bob Barr's Competition

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:05:00 EDT

While Chuck Baldwin issues his appeals to the right wing of the Ron Paul movement, another presidential candidate is pitching himself to the Ron Paul left. On Friday, Ralph Nader released a response to Paul's withdrawal from the presidential race. Here's an excerpt:

Now that Dr. Paul has formally withdrawn his candidacy for the G.O.P. nomination and is no longer seeking the Presidency, there is a clear choice for those who want to support a candidate who will stand up against the war and stand up for personal liberties and privacy that have been trampled by the notorious, misnamed, PATRIOT Act.

Bonus link: Way back in 1962, Nader wrote an article for the libertarian magazine The Freeman. It was reprinted in reason about a decade later, making Nader -- now that Paul is out -- the one reason contributor in the running. Make of that what you will.

Church Chat

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:43:00 EDT

John Lofton, the hardest of the hard-core hard-right Christians, hectors -- sorry, interviews -- Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr. Barr displays remarkable patience, though it's clearly fraying by the end.

If you'd like a quick summary of the candidate's answers, here you go: Barr admires Ayn Rand because of her support for individual liberty, not because she's an atheist; Barr is a Methodist; Barr thinks the role of government is defined by the Constitution, not God; Barr supports laws against molesting children; Barr does not think homosexuality is "lewd and depraved"; Barr does not think the government should punish Sabbath-breaking; Barr is pro-life; Barr thinks the individual states should determine the penalties for abortion; Barr does not care to discuss what he believes the penalty for abortion should be in Georgia; Barr supports the death penalty; Barr does not think the federal government should have been involved in the Terri Shiavo case; Barr does not believe Shiavo's death was a murder. And Barr would really, really prefer to be talking about taxes, education, free speech, and government surveillance.

Bonus link: From 20 years ago, Lofton's interview with Allen Ginsburg, which is -- I think I can say this without hyperbole -- the greatest interview in the history of human conversation.

There's Libertarian—and then there's libertarian

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:42:00 EDT

The New York Times reports on "Libertarians Dream of Being the Tie-Breaker," featuring a misidentified yours truly. Snippets:

"We are in the beginning of a libertarian moment," said Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason, the libertarian monthly....
There is the Libertarian Party and then there is the libertarian—small-"L"—state of mind. Those who do not necessarily vote with the party but identify with some of the core libertarian philosophy—a small government with minimal reach into people's personal lives, and minimal foreign entanglements—may be a potent, if unpredictable, group of voters....
According to the poll, conducted by InsiderAdvantage, 8 percent of registered voters said they would vote for [Libertarian Party presidential candidate] Mr. Barr in a matchup against Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama in November. (Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama received 45 percent and 35 percent in the poll, respectively.)

More here.

For the record, Matt Welch is the editor in chief of reason magazine. I'm the editor of reason.tv and reason online.

How Barr Brought It

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:00:00 EDT

reason Associate Editor David Weigel traveled to Denver over the Memorial Day weekend to cover the Libertarian Party's national convention, which culminated in former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root being selected as the presidential and vice-presidential standardbearers for the nation's third-largest party in the 2008 presidential election.

Read all of Weigel's coverage in sequence:

"Who Isn't Trying to Take Over the Libertarian Party?: Scenes from the LP's most newsworthy convention in years" (May 23)

"Anarchists of the World, Unite!: The Libertarian Party's radical candidates aren't conceding anything to the media-appointed frontrunners" (May 24)

"Three Hits and a Miss: The Libertarian Party debate elevates Barr, Kubby, and Root, while Ruwart underperforms" (May 25)

"Citizen Bob: How Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root took over the Libertarian Party" (May 26)

And don't miss his blog entries during the convention, which can be read here.

reason.tv interviewed Barr before the convention. Watch the 15-minute video by clicking here.

My Kinda Platform

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:20:00 EDT

Another electoral alternative:

I created my own party. It's called the Sloth and Indolence Party, and I am running as an anarchist candidate in the best sense of that word. I have studied the presidency carefully; I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a president who does things, we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything at all -- if he gets up at night to go to the bathroom -- somehow, mystically, trouble will ensue. I guarantee that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out, shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing. Which is to say, if you want something done, don't come to me to do it for you; you got to get together and figure out how to do it yourselves. Is that a deal?

That's the folksinger Utah Phillips talking, a few elections ago. He won't be running this time, alas -- he just died at age 73.

Citizen Bob

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

The Bob Barr campaign couldn't have plotted it any better. The former GOP congressman-turned Libertarian Party contender announces his candidacy two short weeks before the LP convention, and grabs more free media than 2004 nominee Michael Badnarik received in a year. He arrives in Denver amid bellyaching and heckling and a sea of "Mary!" stickers, and gets reporters talking about the drama of a deadlocked Libertarian convention. C-SPAN stays glued to the proceedings for all of Sunday, through six ballots that turn out closer than the results of an Olympic track meet. And when it's all over, Barr gets both the nomination and a running mate, Wayne Allyn Root, whose views comport comfortably with Barr's own.

The results may have been ideal for Barr, but they weren't plotted out that way. Early in the balloting on Sunday, Barr's strategists—and the candidate himself—thought the Radical Caucus might have beaten them. The boos and catcalls that came when Barr supporters staged a whooping march around the convention floor were louder than they expected. The 25 percent Barr scored on the first ballot was lower than everyone expected. "The Barr campaign needs to be a steamroller to win this," Steve Kubby strategist Tom Knapp said early in the day. "They needed to win 40 percent to keep people from peeling off."

Barr didn't steamroll, instead grinding out a series of ties with radical favorite Mary Ruwart before the Las Vegas businessman Root dropped out and sent his support Barr's way, wrapping up the nomination.

Here's how Barr/Root won the nomination:

A Changed Party. The groundwork for Barr's win started building after the 2004 debacle, when Michael Badnarik ran an underwhelming purist campaign that satisfied no segment of the party. An estimated 2,000 people left the LP then, and activism dropped off substantially. The strongest anti-Barr candidates, Kubby and Ruwart, were old faces who'd run for the vice presidential nomination in 2000 and 1992, respectively. Ruwart had also run for the presidential nomination in 1984.

Mea Maxima Culpa. Barr could not have won if, like fellow major-party defector Mike Gravel, he'd jumped into the party right before the convention. Instead the Georgia congressman once famous for prosecuting the impeachment of Bill Clinton built credibility with the delegates by being able to refer to his two years in the party. When he mentioned this fact in his debate performance and pre-vote speech, some of the less-active delegates who'd been surfeited with anti-Barr rumors of "hijacking the party" were surprised. Barr complemented with a few staged "road to Damascus" moments in front of the delegates; standing up at the debate and apologizing for part (not all) of the Defense of Marriage Act, claiming he wished he'd joined the LP sooner. "I may not have committed as early as y'all," Barr said in his nomination speech, "but don't cast me aside because I'm a latecomer!"

The Media Drip, Drip, Drip. The press helped Barr in two ways. It was obvious even to Barr's enemies that the media had more interest in him than in anyone else; Mary Ruwart's pre-speech montage of clips, which included the iffy likes of a Longevity Magazine cover story and "Libertarian says return tax dollars" clips from previous unsuccessful runs for office, made Barr's exposure look that much more impressive. Then, Ruwart took a pounding from the media that even her throatiest backers couldn't ignore. LP activist Barry Hess could dismiss Barr as a creature of "the old media," but by the time delegates were voting on the fourth ballot, The Washington Times had run a story on the convention that mentioned Ruwart's unforgettable argument about child pornography, and whispers were flying around the convention hall.

The Lackluster "Stop Barr" Movement. Barr's enemies printed a series of fear-mongering leaflets for delegates, one going after his un-Libertarian voting record, another painting an Orwellian future of the party re-branding as "New Republicans" if Barr won. But they didn't do the harder work of digging through Barr's un-Libertarian statements, which in fact multiplied as he did his pre-convention media tour. The impact of, say, a YouTube video splicing together Barr's waffling answer on Hannity and Colmes about drug legalization, his comment that Republicans would split their tickets for him (voting against lower-ballot Libertarians in the process), and other heretical stuff could have been devastating. As it happened, there was no compelling, real-time evidence for delegates to contradict Barr's humble convention persona.

Fair Play. All weekend, the convention swirled with rumors that a crush of Barr delegates would show up at the 11th hour to rig the vote. Over 1,000 delegate slots were open, and less than 650 had registered by the end of Saturday. The word was out for other campaigns' delegates to deny credentials to latecomers. In the end Barr's campaign took advantage of a few empty slots in Southern states, but that was matched by the arrival of a few Ruwart and Kubby supporters who signed up to stop Barr. "It was a legitimate victory in the sense that there was not significant packing," said party co-founder David Nolan, a Kubby supporter, "and what packing there was came from more than one camp." Barr campaign manager Russ Verney said that his team only brought around 50 delegates to Denver, and won the rest of their support in the Sheraton, via one-on-one campaigning and arm-twisting.

With Enemies Like This.... Fringe candidate Christine Smith did Barr a favor by using her allotted, post-elimination speaking time to rant and rave before a national TV audience about Barr's "neo-con" conspiracy. Plenty of delegates had become familiar with, and repelled by, Smith's self-aggrandizing rudeness and all-around weirdness. Ruwart until that moment had been gaining strength by appearing a victim of public bullying and LP-trashing by Barr supporters. But for the crucial 15 minutes of Smith's rant, Barr seemed like a victim himself of people who were making the whole party look bad.

The Ghost of Losers Past. Anti-Barr (and, to a lesser extent, anti-Root) campaigners never convincingly argued that some other candidate could get more votes in November. The closest anyone came was Mary Ruwart's theory that disenchanted Hillary Clinton voters would be casting about for a woman to vote for, but that reeked of liberal gender politics and alienated as many people as it won over. The Barr-or-Ruwart choice was not zero sum: It was between a square peg candidate who could get a record number of votes and a round peg candidate who would probably get the 300,000 to 500,000 votes that the party has won since 1984. Ruwart's ill-advised Sunday leaflet, advertising endorsements from 1984 candidate David Bergland (228,111), 1992 candidate Andre Marrou (291,627), and 2004 candidate Badnarik (397,265), only emphasized that point.

What didn't help Barr? The 11th hour endorsement of oddball Daniel Imperato clearly didn't. After Imperato backed Barr, his sole supporter from Arkansas voted for Imperato on the first ballot anyway. On subsequent ballots, he backed Mary Ruwart. The much-discussed support for Barr in the national party probably cut both ways. It helped Barr that national officials considered him the strongest candidate. Former executive director Shane Cory worked for Barr on the convention floor, and at Sunday's victory banquet, party chairman Bill Redpath reminisced about bringing Barr into the party, waxing: "I've been saying all along we're going to have a hell of a presidential ticket this year." But all of that support just strengthened the resolve of the anti-Barr contingent. "If the nomination was stolen," David Nolan said, "it was stolen in the national office."

But even Nolan, the strongest and most-respected voice in the anti-Barr camp, was optimistic about the ticket once the dust settled. He could see Barr/Root drawing a Nader 2000-like 2 million votes; his worry was simply that Barr, like Nader, wouldn't follow through with party building after the election, thus wrecking the LP. Party unity, which was hard to find amid the raucous boos of Sunday, started to evolve a few hours after the ballots were counted. There was talk of Barr endorsing Steve Kubby, who narrowly missed the VP slot, for a 2010 run for governor of California.

And there was startlingly optimistic talk of the party banding together to prevent Republican efforts to kick them off ballots. Why was that optimistic? Because this year the LP finally has a candidate that could swing the election.

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason. Read his first three dispatches from the LP convention here, here and here.

Bonus video: On Tuesday, May 20, reason hosted a debate about "The Future of Libertarian Politics" featuring LP presidential hopefuls Wayne Allyn Root, Mike Gravel, and Bob Barr (Mary Ruwart was invited but unable to attend). Video excerpts of the conversation are below (approximately 10 minutes long). For more information, go to reason.tv.

The One-Wing Ticket

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sun, 25 May 2008 21:56:00 EDT

I'm not a member of the Libertarian Party, so I don't often opine about its internal affairs -- if I wanted to influence the party's policies, I'd rejoin it. (I was a member for a year in college, nearly two decades ago.) But I have to say I think it just made a mistake.

The mistake wasn't nominating Bob Barr for president. I've had a soft spot for Barr ever since I first saw him on C-Span in the mid-'90s, asking the right questions during the House's Waco investigation. I have disagreed with him on issues ranging from trade with Cuba to the rights of neopagans in the military; most notably, I think he was dead wrong about the drug war, the one area where his general bias in favor of due process and decentralization seemed to go out the window entirely. But he seemed far more interested in liberty than most of his colleagues, and after he left office that interest grew stronger; when I interviewed him for reason in 2003, three years before he joined the LP, he seemed to be on the verge of becoming a full-fledged libertarian. Since then he has revised his stated views on drug laws, the Defense of Marriage Act, and other important areas. I still have my disagreements with him, but I don't expect to have trouble casting a ballot for him in the fall. And if he pulls enough votes from the candidate of perpetual war to elect the man who, for all his flaws, at least promises to pull out of Iraq, then so much the better.

But given the number of party activists who are wary of the former congressman, and given Barr's deficiencies on several issues, it would have made sense to round off the ticket with a more hardcore libertarian. The ideal choice was Steve Kubby, a medical marijuana activist whose signature issue could have balanced Barr's past support for the drug war. Instead the delegates opted for another member of the party's conservative wing. Worse yet, the conservative they picked was Wayne Allyn Root, a man with the deportment of a Ronco pitchman with a squirrel in his pants.

It might not matter in the long run. No one pays much attention to the fellow at the bottom of the ticket. But it's a tone-deaf, disappointing decision.

Three Hits and a Miss

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Sun, 25 May 2008 13:40:00 EDT

The timing was perfect. Presidential candidate Mary Ruwart, a favorite among the Libertarian Party's Radical Caucus, was 15 minutes into a hard-hitting speech and Q&A with delegates at the contested LP convention in Denver, and she'd just finished enumerating what it is she couldn't stomach in a prospective running mate. In short, she couldn't stomach Bob Barr. As if on cue, Barr's twang exploded over a next-door soundsystem.

"All right!" he said, whooping up dozens of his cowboy-hatted delegates. "Are we ready to go?"

Ruwart's face froze into a devious, oh please kind of smile as Barr briefly addressed his throng. Fired up and ready to go, he marched them past the exhibit area and over into the main convention hall to deliver delegate tokens guaranteeing Barr a place in the Saturday night debate and a nominating speech at the Sunday presidential contest. As the procession went past, Neal Stephenson, a supporter of longshot candidate Christine Smith, loudly sang John Williams' "Imperial March," the song playing when Darth Vader enters the room in Star Wars.

Jim Peron, working the Laissez Faire Books table, opted for less subtlety. "Fuckin' traitors!" Peron yelled. "Go back to the GOP!" As Barr's crowd entered the hall, Peron joined in a burst of sarcastic applause and cheers. "Hooray!" yelled a phalanx of delegates. "They're leaving the convention!"

Barr, of course, was not leaving. When the 1 p.m. deadline for the LP debate came, the former Republican congressman delivered 94 tokens to win inclusion. Mary Ruwart and Wayne Allyn Root handed in exactly as many tokens. Barr and Ruwart, though, had both passed a few of their tokens to friends they wanted to see make the debates (in Barr's case it was Mike Gravel; in Ruwart's it was Steve Kubby). Barr's decision, in retrospect, seems like a strategic coup. Ruwart's decision is harder to game out at the moment.

What actually transpired at the "C-SPAN debate" surprised most of the delegates I talked to afterward. With a few exceptions, their reaction was four-fold: Root, brash and funny, looked more than ever like an effective cheerleader for the LP. Kubby, against all odds, stole the show again and again. Ruwart, poised but bland, underperformed the expectations many delegates had for her. And Barr, faced for the first time by his fellow candidates and a puckish moderator, thrived under the pressure.

Every chance Barr got to finesse or apologize for one of his past Republican mistakes−the Defense of Marriage Act, the PATRIOT Act, the drug war−he grabbed with both hands. The only direct hit he sustained came from the audience, after Barr referenced the "tens of thousands" of innocents serving time on drug charges. A voice from the back of the room cried out, "How many did you put in there?" But the debate rolled on.

Barr was able to thrive because of a rule that was little-noticed outside of candidates' headquarters. Personal attacks, which had flown back and forth throughout the week in alternative debates and speeches, were semi-off-limits. If one candidate challenged another by name, the attackee had 30 seconds to respond. So the closest thing to candidate swipes at Barr were the occasional nameless allusions by George Phillies to a political action committee (PAC) that "gives to libertarians," plus Steve Kubby's glancing reference to Barr voting for the PATRIOT Act. If you weren't aware that Barr's PAC spreads cash around to the big two parties, Phillies' attack wilted on arrival.

The by-a-nose frontrunner benefited, too, from the rollicking performance of Kubby. The marijuana activist only made it to the debate with an assist from Mary Ruwart's extra tokens, but had told delegates throughout the day that as long as he could get on stage, he could win the nomination. In fact, he might have done well enough to surge into the top four.

Kubby scored the biggest laughs of the night. After comparing government intervention in the environment to "the fox guarding the chicken coop," he said: "I'm a libertarian! The only way I'd accept that is if the chickens are armed!" And Kubby powerfully reminded delegates why the medical marijuana issue is not some fringe or abstract concern: "I've gone to jail for liberty. I've nearly died for liberty!"

As much as Kubby soared, Ruwart sputtered. All weekend long, she had been the primary beneficiary of a backlash against "Republican converts." But in the debate she mixed rote libertarian answers with over-the-top claims of political power, such as her vital role in "fighting the PATRIOT Act." (Even though Barr voted for the Act in 2001, Ruwart let him pivot to his verifiable claim that he allied himself with civil liberties groups since then to roll the law back.) Again and again, and in a press conference after the debate, she claimed that disappointed Hillary Clinton voters looking for a female candidate would gravitate to her. Leaving aside the fact that Cynthia McKinney might win the Green Party nomination, the Libertarian Party is a terrible place for gender politics. "That's not how we want to appeal to voters," said Virginia delegate Aaron Sime.

Three of the other candidates failed to break out. Phillies appealed to his long-running campaign organization and party credibility, factors that will become irrelevant as soon as the party hands its torch to one of the candidates. Michael Jingozian gave one of his best performances in a year of campaigning, but sounded out of his depth, unfamiliar with the Tragedy of the Commons, musing about electing other third party candidates in addition to Libertarians. Gravel had too many opportunities to share his less libertarian views, compensating a few times by repeating his mantra: "Freedom, freedom, freedom!" ("He's not all the way there yet," went a common post-debate refrain.)

It was Wayne Allyn Root who most complicated Barr's plans. Root's vein-throbbing, high-decibel TV-pitchman's answers divided the crowd, but by far the larger segment thought he stood out in a party that has opted for drab candidates since anyone can remember. Not since Ron Paul shouted down meatheads on the Morton Downey Jr. Show has an LP candidate radiated such energy. After the debate, in a sprawling hospitality suite stuffed with free drinks and troughs of Italian food, Root complained that it was agonizing to sit down for two whole hours. "I'm a prize fighter!" he said. "I need to move around!" Manny Klausner, a longtime Reason Foundation trustee and former reason editor who is giving Root's nominating speech, thought that his candidate won the test of delegates imagining their candidate making the Libertarian case on TV. "You don't want a lecturer doing that job," Klausner said. "You need a cheerleader."

As the campaigns scattered to talk and party with delegates, the conventional wisdom calcified. Barr staff, who have never expected to win on the first ballot, worried about surviving a three-way race between still-beloved Ruwart and stronger-than-ever Root. Kubby supporters started dreaming of a longshot win. Libertarian Party co-founder David Nolan, who has been supporting Kubby, was seen in the hospitality suites saying that Kubby and Root were on the rise. Michael Cloud, the long-time activist who's still controversial for his role in the Harry Browne campaigns, rushed to Barr's suite to give him advice on floor management ... then teleported to Root's suite to check out the other star.

Ruwart's supporters, as they had the night before, waved off the expensive suites and gathered in The Supreme Court, a hotel bar with a live funk band. "Look, she's not a thrilling candidate," said a California delegate. "She's a candidate who won't make us look bad or drive us even further to the right." And that's the paramount concern for Ruwart backers, many of whom wear buttons with Barr's named crossed out. They know what "pragmatic" party leaders want. They've watched the party platform continue to shrink in length and boldness. They saw party Treasurer Aaron Starr and some Ohio delegates turning red as Starchild, the mono-named concubine for California, gave media interviews in a tie-dyed unitard and floppy psychedelic top hat festooned with a feather boa. Late at night, free from the party's schoolmarms, Starchild took boozy snapshots with giggly girls in cocktail dresses, and bumped and grinded with hotel guests.

"Give it up!" said the band's bassist when Starchild temporarily shimmied offstage. "Give it up for Austin Powers!" Hey, these people are used to being misunderstood.

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason. Read his first two dispatches from the LP convention here and here.

Anarchists of the World, Unite!

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:04:00 EDT

"It's the first presidential campaign button with a marijuana leaf," says Steve Kubby, grinning ear to ear. He whips out a tiny Kubby '08 pin with red letters pasted onto a familiar green leaf. Alabama political operator Steve Gordon, the suddenly controversial (after selling his Third Party Watch website to longtime GOP direct-mail activist Richard Viguerie) former Libertarian Party political director who's working for presumed frontrunner Bob Barr, takes the pin and thanks him. "I know you can't wear it," says Kubby, "but take it as souvenir."

Fluorescent yellow "Kubby 2008: Let Freedom Grow" signs have sprung up in Denver over the past 24 hours, at the beginning of the LP's most high-profile gathering in years. Kubby, a medical marijuana activist who has staged various battles with California and federal authorities, has been hobbled during this ripe year for Libertarians by an adrenal cancer that has taken a serious toll on him. "I raised travel funds, and then he couldn't travel," laments Kubby organizer and blogger Thomas Knapp. "If he'd been able to campaign, he'd be in Mary Ruwart's position right now." That is, Knapp argues, Kubby would be the preferred candidate of the LP's radical bloc.

As the convention fills up−almost 600 delegates have registered now, more than 250 of them on Friday−it's becoming clearer that this is not a Bob Barr coronation. Delegates are tolerant people who can sit through a pointless convention floor vote or a ramble from longshot Daniel Imperato, but they prefer to hear from candidates who say what they really think. Kubby and Ruwart do that.

On Friday morning, Kubby happily recalled the "Libertarians for Truth" forum, where Democrat-turned-Libertarian presidential candidate Mike Gravel asked an audience to consider cases when military force was necessary, and received a sour reception. Kubby and Ruwart, on the other hand, smacked the question out of the park. “There is no ethical argument to support government's use of force,” Kubby said to zealous applause. As Ruwart patiently explained how libertarian philosophy negated Gravel's answer, Kubby grinned. When she finished, he gave her a friendly pat on the back.

Kubby's alliance with Ruwart is the single most direct threat to a Barr nomination−the outcome that most outside media still think is assured. A motion to make it harder to participate in Saturday's "C-SPAN debate" failed, making it easier for the two radical candidates to share support and propel each other into the fray. If Kubby has a surplus of debate tokens (candidates need tokens from 10% of delegates to participate), he'll give them to Ruwart; she'll do the same if the situation's reversed. If one of the campaign is falling short and the other's on the bubble for the nomination, the struggling campaign will endorse the surging one.

Knowing this, you'd think that the radical caucus would be confident. It isn't. The whiff of a Barr conspiracy permeates radical meetings. Late Friday, every campaign except Barr's gathered for an unofficial, un-televised debate. Nearly 200 people, most of them delegates, spilled in and out of the smallish venue and cheered as Mike Gravel took a wholly un-Barrish position on immigration (no border walls for him) and Kubby thwacked the frontrunner for his PATRIOT Act vote back in 2001. Outside, Kubby supporters speculated that Barr was hoarding tokens that he'd never use for the debate. He's skipped every previous debate, the theory went, so why participate in that one? (Barr's people were flabbergasted by this: "We'd go to all this effort and forfeit the debate?")

"Paulie Cannoli," a Kubby supporter and blogger who'd been unceremoniously de-credentialed by Third Party Watch, joked around and proposed that radicals make an end run around Barr. "Give him all the tokens," Cannoli said. "Let him take the stage all by himself. Then get all the candidates back in here and tell C-SPAN!" Cannoli, who brandished the media credentials of former LP Executive Director Shane Cory (a man about as popular in this circle as Donald Rumsfeld), handed out Kubby buttons and asked for support: "A token for the tokin' candidate!"

While his opponents debated, Barr held court one floor above in a sprawling hospitality suite crammed with booze (if you had cash or a ticket) and snacks (if you had neither). If he didn't get a chance to impress delegates in the debate, he made up for it here: A self-proclaimed "bisexual pagan" named John Karr proclaimed himself a likely Barr voter because the former Georgia congressman could run the strongest campaign. When the candidate stood up on chair to address the crowd, he argued for his "background and credibility" while strategically trashing his former party. "In just two days here," Barr said, "I have had more and deeper discussions of the substance of American politics, and of the Constitution, than in 30 years of Republican politics!"

Barr didn't sway everyone in the room. Michael Kielsky, a "hardcore" Arizona delegate who sported one of the radicals' "Libertarian Wing of the Libertarian Party" buttons, gave Barr some credit for moving in the right direction. But Kielsky was still backing Mary Ruwart. A few more floors above the party, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered members of Outright Libertarians were partying and chewing on a big rumor: Two hundred-odd unexpected delegates would arrive from Ohio and South Carolina on Saturday or Sunday. Supporters of the Outright candidate, George Phillies, were spreading the word so that enough radicals would be in the hall to vote down credentials for the meddlers. "If they get in," said California delegate Chris Madsen, "we're looking at a first ballot Barr victory."

"If Barr gets this nomination, he'd better know that he can't count on an electoral vote majority," said Massachusetts delegate and Phillies supporter Arthur Torrey. "I'm on the slate to go to the Electoral College, and I will be a faithless elector." That's not an empty threat: The only electoral college vote the LP has ever received was from a faithless Richard Nixon elector (and future LP presidential candidate) who went for 1972 candidate John Hospers. Torrey's a pagan with a gay sister, so his support isn't really gettable for Barr. "You can't tell me my religion is evil and my sister can't get married and expect to ever get my vote."

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason. Read his first dispatch from the LP convention here.

Tucker Pulls a Sherman!

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:29:00 EDT

Contrary to yesterday's rumors, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson will not run for the Libertarian Party presidential nod. Not only that, he was never thinking about it. And if elected, he wouldn't serve (well, that's an extrapolation). Reports ABC's Jake Tapper:

Carlson tells me he was never running.
He's right now with his family in Maine rather than in Denver with the Marijuana Policy Project and the like.
"I probably should have done it," Tucker emails me." Imagine the bus trip."
Shoot.
Oh, well.

More here.

Carlson wrote the second-best on-the-trail-with-Ron-Paul story of the GOP primary season. Read it here. And then read the best one, by reason's Brian Doherty, here.

All about Shermanesque political statements here.

Who Isn't Trying to Take Over the Libertarian Party?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

You see right there, in between the cameras? Under the boom mike, in front of the fetching female interviewer in the cowboy hat? There's Bob Barr, holding court and basking in the glow of the national political press. When Barr walked onto the exhibit floor of the 2008 Libertarian Convention, a trail of six campaign staffers followed behind him—the kind of showy political operation that gives outsiders the impression that the former Georgia congressman is the obvious frontrunner in the race to head up the biggest third-party challenge in this year's presidential campaign.

A few feet away in the Denver Sheraton, Barr's opponents are shaking their heads, sharing "can-you-believe-this" looks. "Talk to some delegates, already!" says Jim Casarjian-Perry. A Massachusetts delegate for candidate George Phillies, Casarjian-Perry had, moments earlier, pinned Barr over whether he sticks by all the propositions of the Defense of Marriage Act, which Barr authored. Casarjian-Perry lives in Massachusetts, is married to his partner, but is unable to change his new, hyphenated name on his passport or driver's license. He wasn't at all satisfied by the purported frontrunner's answer.

"Barr doesn't understand basic libertarian principles," Casarjian-Perry says. In Phillies, this delegate (an elected city government official) sees a candidate who's laying the groundwork to elect libertarians who do understand those principles. "If [Barr] makes it to the final ballot," he says, "I'm ready to vote for none of the above."

It would be a bit much, right now, to call the 2008 Libertarian nomination fight "heated" or "bitter." The delegates trickling in to Denver, ever-aware that this city hosted the embryonic stirrings of the party 36 years ago, are happy to see each other. They're gorging on free food, face-to-face conversations with people they've known only online, and brainy discussions that aren't so easy to come by back home.

Still, there's a battle gearing up, and not just over the headline fight over who will win the nomination. Two years ago, the self-described "reform caucus" of the party took over a convention in Portland and shaved the platform from 61 planks to a pocket-sized 15. The non-aggression principle in the party's declaration survived, but only narrowly. Even before Bob Barr entered this race, radicals, who estimate they have one-third of conventioneers firmly on their side, were planning to use Denver to "Restore '04" and resurrect the older, more far-reaching platform.

The specter of a recent Republican transplant leading the LP has cranked up this platform fight to 11. A flyer labeled "CALL TO ACTION: The Libertarian Party—Not For Sale!" is being distributed around the Sheraton, spelling out a six-point theory of the right-wing takeover strategy. "The Barr campaign's principals are veteran ‘partyjackers,'" says the flyer. Smoking gun? The appearance at the convention of conservative direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, who is filling a speaking slot that was once going to go to radio host Neal Boortz. "If [Barr and Viguerie are] successful, the Libertarian Party will become just one more mouthpiece for malcontent Republicans."

The rumors are unstoppable. A supporter of candidate Steve Kubby hears that close to 150 new party members crawled out of the woodwork to register Thursday. "They're Barr delegates," he speculates. "When they hold the vote to expand the number of delegates, vote 'no.' You see them trying to give the vote to someone you don't know, vote 'no.'" The story that someone is push-polling for Tucker Carlson to enter the race at the 11th hour is getting more laughs than anything else, but it jibes with the spirit of the moment. Hey, who isn't trying to take over this party?

The beneficiary of all of this, for now, is the soft-spoken and generally beloved candidate Mary Ruwart. As Barr fielded a mix of harsh and softball questions from delegates, Ruwart walked around the Sheraton finding fans. "No one is happy about the tone," Ruwart says. "I was at the 1983 convention [where the party split over the nomination of David Bergland], and it was so spiteful and destructive that I was almost done with the party." It took decades of running unity campaigns to make her optimistic again. The pre-convention attack on Ruwart's anarchist position on child pornography, and the tone of the campaign since then, has worn on her. "This might be more heated than 1983," Ruwart says. "I hope it won't be." (Copies of Short Answers to Tough Questions, the book with the passages that started the controversy, are still on sale at Ruwart's convention booth.)

The Barr campaign doesn't want a bloodbath either, which is why it's trying to out-organize and out-argue the skeptics. Barr's floor campaign is certainly the most sophisticated, which doesn't surprise many people here. From an upstairs suite, headquarters cranks out flyers, keeps track of delegates, prints drink tickets, and collates the tokens needed to get into the official Saturday night debate. The value proposition of a Barr candidacy is taking hold.

"I want us to broaden the base," says one Texas delegate and reform caucus stalwart. "I've been a Ruwart fan for a long time but she can't do that. But Barr can get 3 to 5 percent of the vote and make McCain rue the day he stopped being a conservative." Wyoming party chair Dave Herbert simply wants to "get some votes," and Barr or Wayne Allyn Root offer the best prospects for his dream of an election thrown into the House of Representatives.

This segment of the party—the ones who care first and foremost about electoral punch—worry that a debate over ideological purity will wreck their momentum. Talking to Whitney Gravel, whose recently Democratic husband Mike's bid is beset by some of these same gripes, Americans for Prosperity's Richard Burke developed a theory. "The purists don't want a political party as much as they want a church," he said. "They need a place to worship."

At the end of a first-night mixer, two delegates who'd heard all the negativity tried to stay positive. "One thing you can say is that the top five, six candidates this time are all better than the three we had last time," said one. The second delegate swirled his drink and agreed. "I don't think Gravel's really a libertarian, but it says something that he joined the party. We nominate one of these guys, build on that, and get an even better field next time." The two then started chewing over perennial dream canddiates, Gary Johnson and Ed Thompson.

If that's the attitude that catches on among LP delegates, it will get harder and harder for the party not to nominate the Georgian heretic surrounded by all the cameras.

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

Tucker for President?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:27:00 EDT

The blogosphere is abuzz with rumors that former MSNBC talk show host Tucker Carlson may be gearing up for a last-minute run at the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, currently playing out this weekend at the party's convention (reason's Dave Weigel is there and already blogging).

From the NY Times:

"Tucker Carlson for president?" That's the headline at the personal blog for Brendan Nyhan, a former Spinsanity editor who is now a graduate student in political science at Duke. Nyhan says that Carlson, the former "Crossfire" host and former writer for The Weekly Standard, among other magazines, may seek the nomination of the Libertarian Party, according to a rumor making the rounds among delegates to the Libertarian convention, which is being held in Denver this weekend.
Someone is polling the idea, at least. Nyhan links to the blog of Michael Munger, the chairman of the political science department at Duke and the Libertarian Party candidate for governor of North Carolina. Here's Munger's description of the phone call he received:
Just got a call from a polling firm.
Checking on Lib Prez candidates. Made sure I was a delegate to the national convention.
Guy asks, "Which of the following candidates do you support for Lib Pres nomination?"
(Reads list, including Barr, Gravel, Ruart, and Root. Also includes Tucker Carlson. I figure that Carlson is just a spoiler; he has never said he's a Libertarian, and isn't running for Prez.)
I answer "Undecided," which is true.
Guy asks, "After that first choice, what is your SECOND choice?"
Stunned for a moment, I pause and say, "Still....undecided."
Guy says, "Final question: Which of those candidates would you say has true Libertarian values?"
I'm a big tent guy, so I say: "All of them....EXCEPT Tucker Carlson."
Guy rings off. I am smug, thinking I caught them on their spoiler question.
Except that, Tucker Carlson has apparently decided to think about it. And Carlson may be funding the polling of Lib Nat Conv delegates.

More here.

Check out Munger's excellent Kids Prefer Cheese blog here.

The Body is a Terrible Thing to Waste

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Jesse Ventura has come a long way since those heady days of November 1998. A Reform Party longshot in the Minnesota gubernatorial race, Ventura ran as the outsider's outsider, a flamboyant former Navy SEAL, professional wrestler ("The Body"), and Hollywood bit player who'd already achieved the impossible, serving one term as the elected mayor of his hometown, the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park. To the surprise of everyone—except the candidate himself, or so he humbly claims—Ventura grabbed 37 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating both Democrat Hubert Humphrey III and Republican Norm Coleman. To celebrate his inauguration, Ventura wore a tie-died Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and sang "Werewolves of London" onstage with Warren Zevon.

"I'm fiscally conservative and socially moderate to liberal," he told reason in December 1998. "I've taken the libertarian exam and scored perfect on it." That libertarianism was responsible for Ventura's best ideas, including the decriminalization of marijuana and a proposal to make the state legislature spend every fourth term repealing outdated laws, not passing new ones. Not surprisingly, both plans went nowhere, though Ventura did succeed in removing at least one stupid law: a state ban on playing bingo more than twice a week at nursing homes. "I put great trust in our elderly," he deadpanned before the press, "that, with this burden lifted from them, they will not abuse this great privilege."

But while showmanship helped him on the stump, it didn't give Ventura the thick skin necessary for dealing with other politicians—or with the press, who sparked his wrath after reporting that his 22-year old son had thrown wild parties at the governor's residence. "Today," he writes in his new book, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me, "I view those media people as equivalent to pedophiles, because they attacked my children on multiple occasions."

So he called it quits as governor after one term, announcing on Minnesota Public Radio that he "will always protect my family first." Since then, Ventura has spent a semester as a visiting professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (you read that right: his seminar was called "Body Slamming the Political Establishment: Third Party Politics"), campaigned for Texas gubernatorial hopeful and fellow third party iconoclast Kinky Friedman, and retreated to Mexico's Baja peninsula, where he grew a funky beard.

Now he's back in the spotlight, promoting a bizarre new book filled with conspiracy theories and the endlessly repeated question: Will he or won't he run for president? Given that just last week Ventura was hinting that he might challenge comedian Al Franken for the Minnesota Senate seat of Republican incumbent Norm Coleman (Ventura's Republican foe from the 1998 race), it seems that The Body is desperate for whatever political action he can get.

Pathetic title aside, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me turns out to be an unexpectedly fascinating read. First and foremost, Ventura has gone whole hog into political paranoia. He devotes most of one chapter, and other lengthy passages throughout the book, to challenging the Lone Gunman theory of the John F. Kennedy assassination, a subject he's clearly obsessed with. Of Pat Buchanan's success in wresting the 2000 Reform Party presidential nomination, Ventura charges, "it was a set-up all along by the Republicans. A way to destroy the momentum for a third party." As for Pearl Harbor, "some evidence exists that FDR and Churchill were privy to the Japanese attack...but needed a catalyst to bring America into World War II."

Even the Patriot Act—a piece of villainous lawmaking, no doubt about that—falls under the shadow of conspiracy. At a whopping 342 pages, Ventura simply doesn't believe that the government could have cobbled it together in those "first scary weeks" after the attacks. "Its almost as if somebody had it all ready to be unveiled," he writes, "but just had to wait for the right moment—a Reichstag fire, a Pearl Harbor type event, to make it a reality."

This is the Bush Did It theory at its most simplistic (substitute Cheney for Bush if you prefer). As Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), the Senate's lone vote against the Patriot Act, noted at the time, the proposal contained "vast new powers for law enforcement, some seemingly drafted in haste and others that came from the FBI's wish list that Congress has rejected in the past."

But it's the 9/11 attacks themselves that have really sent Ventura over the top rope. How did those two planes bring down the Twin Towers, anyway, he wonders. "I don't claim expertise about this," he continues, before citing his "four years as part of the Navy's underwater demolition teams," but "something about the official story doesn't add up." In Ventura's view, the towers should have flattened like pancakes, "rather than the concrete being pulverized and flying through the air for blocks."

As radical journalist Alexander Cockburn has remarked of the "9/11 Truth" movement, "one characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency." That certainly describes Ventura's repeated assertion that four hijacked airplanes should not have been able to bypass our air defenses. "Yet no bells went off, no emergency sirens, no fighter jets scrambled until very late."

As a former governor, not to mention a Vietnam vet, Ventura should know firsthand that the government screws stuff up, both the big things and the small ones. September 11 was FUBAR writ large. Yet here he displays a perversely unshakeable faith in American air traffic control.

It's all of a piece, really, his belief that the media "jackals" were out to ruin him, that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, that "the media today are controlled by the big corporations," that "certain people in the government were out to keep an eye on me," that if Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda "were responsible...it was not without some knowledge of those impending attacks on our side."

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing Ventura run for president (or for senator, or dogcatcher, or whatever). In addition to talking conspiracy, he's likely to raise all sorts of other trouble, from advocating the repeal of organized religion's tax-exempt status to mandating that every politician who votes for war have at least one relative in uniform (both proposals are in the book). That could be fun to watch. Plus, he's no longer so quick to identify as a libertarian, sneering nowadays that Minnesota's Libertarians "tend to want anarchy." Liberals and conservatives, after all, are just as responsible for Ventura's wacky ideas as libertarians ever were, and a new campaign is likely to spread the blame.

Besides, we might as well get some laughs in before the election. And Jesse Ventura is always good for that.

Damon W. Root is a reason associate editor.

Vote for the Socialist Labor Party!

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:00:00 EDT

No, not really. Besides the ideological problems, there's the small fact that it hasn't bothered to nominate a presidential candidate since 1976. But I must admit I admire one plank in its program:

The Socialist Labor platform called for abolishing the presidency, and party electors were instructed to vote "no president" in the comet-striking-earth chance that the SLP carried a state.

That's from Bill Kauffman's thoughtful review of Daniel J. Flynn's A Conservative History of the American Left. There's more to the article than entertaining asides about the presidential platforms of semi-syndicalist sects; read the whole thing here.

Mike Gravel Crosses Over

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:39:00 EDT

No comment:

I'm wondering where in the world Alan Keyes could be, I been looking for him even clear through Tennessee

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:00:00 EDT

For heaven's sake, stop encouraging him:

The Constitution Party may not want Alan Keyes but some people do. Keyes scored his best Republican primary performance of the campaign last night, winning 3 percent of the vote in North Carolina (although he still trailed John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and "no preference"). Keyes continues to run as an independent. And the state party chairman of the American Independent Party, Keyes's largest bloc of support at the CP national convention, told Ballot Access News that he would still like to nominate Keyes for president.

Who's Going to Get Your Wasted Vote?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

The polls have closed in the East and John McCain is winning the presidency. Florida goes red. Ohio goes red. Iowa flips to Barack Obama, but McCain needs only to lock up 16 electoral votes for victory.

And then things start going pear-shaped. McCain is down by 10,000 votes in New Hampshire with only 5,000 left to be counted—the Libertarians scored 15,000—and the networks call it for Obama. Those sparse Republican New Mexico counties start rolling in, and McCain is falling short of those Bush 2004 margins as the Libertarians rack up 2 percent, 3 percent, 5 percent vote totals. Obama wins the state. It's the same story in Nevada, and McCain can't quite make up the Obama margin out of Las Vegas. The pattern becomes clear as the sun comes up on Wednesday: Just enough Republicans have ditched their party to hand the election over to the Democrats.

When former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) announced he was exploring a run for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination, Republicans who'd sent "thank you" cards to Ralph Nader experienced their first flashes of this nightmare. "Sure, it will hurt," said South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson. "We'll just have to see how much." Republicans haven't forgotten how John McCain won his nomination over a splintered and pathetic field, and how the talk radio right's failure to settle on an anti-McCain gave them a candidate who more than a quarter of the base still refuses to vote for.

Of course, the LP hasn't ever actually swung a presidential election, and right-wing worries that they would in 2004 proved to be overheated. "I'm an LP person," says Libertarian Party chairman Bill Redpath. "Election night is my least favorite night of the year." Yet even Redpath thinks the ground has shifted since 2004. "I don't see how libertarians could vote for John McCain, and I see lot of conservatives who simply won't."

Throughout 2007, the LP watched Ron Paul vaccuum up libertarian money and siphon energy from the low-key field. Gambling guru Wayne Allyn Root, a former Republican, entered the race claiming that he had name recognition no candidate could beat. At the time, he was right. Physics professor George Phillies, a frequent local candidate in Massachusetts and national organizer for the 2004 Michael Badnarik campaign, claimed that he had more electoral experience than anyone else in the race. That was right, too. Party leaders, nervous about the strength of their field, offered the nomination to Ron Paul if he wanted it, a divisive decision lambasted by the candidates in the ring and by the more radical elements of the party. But when Paul spoke at the Free State Project's Liberty Forum, days before the New Hampshire primary, he drew a crowd that dwarfed the turnout for an LP candidates' debate.

As Paul's surprising bid for the GOP nomination winds down, it's clear that it was a boon for the LP after all. Paul's fundraising and gadfly debate performances got national pundits talking about the libertarian vote. "I'm amazed at how often I hear that word in the mainstream media now," says 2004 LP nominee Michael Badnarik. "Four years ago it was a curse word." Paul indirectly drew three high-profile candidates into the race. Bob Barr, an LP leader since 2006, introduced Paul at the Conservative Political Action Conference with a rousing speech that ramped up the movement to draft him. Mary Ruwart, a left-libertarian author as renowned in LP circles as she is obscure outside of them, re-engaged in electoral politics to support Paul, then jumped into the race as Paul withdrew. Mike Gravel, the biggest-name convert to the party since, well, Barr, made the leap in part because Paul was so successful at raising money.

The result of all this manuevering is a wild, unpredictable, and possibly disastrous battle for the LP nod. Every faction of the party is represented in the race, and the 702 delegates and 146 alternates slated to go to the national nominating convention over Memorial Day weekend are up for grabs. They will vote until one candidate scores an absolute majority. Here is a current, rough ranking of the highly fluid race, based on conversations with multiple delegates and campaigns.

1. Bob Barr. Age: 59. Experience: U.S. Attorney 1986-1990, U.S. Congressman from Georgia 1995-2003, author of The Meaning of Is.

The drive-by media view of the LP race—that Barr is all but certain to win—isn't quite wrong. If the delegates convened today, Bob Barr would win most of their votes. But he would not win a majority. While Barr’s entry into the race was greeted with a rush of support, his allies count on a bit less than 30 percent support on the first ballot.

A first-ballot victory isn't much of a prize in the LP. In 2004, Aaron Russo won the first round of balloting, only to watch third-place finisher Gary Nolan endorse Michael Badnarik for the win. Russo, like Barr, faced an intractable bloc of delegates who considered him heretical. The comparison doesn't go far, however, as Barr has spent two years in party leadership and carefully apologized for the stances that offend Libertarians most, like his pro-drug war votes and his initial support of the PATRIOT Act.

It's good enough for a lot of Libertarians, who are desparate for a candidate who can capture some of the Ron Paul mojo and avoid the fringey appearence of the Badnarik campaign. "We need to get back to basics," said Alabama delegate Dr. Jimmy Blake, "rather than discussing mineral rights on Mars and all of that crap." Washington, D.C. delegate Rob Kampia—better known as the head of the Marijuana Policy Project—is planning on voting for Barr, a sign of how much he's been forgiven. The question is how willing Barr's opponents are to accept him, and whether the party risks a fight along the lines of the razor-thin Ron Paul–Russell Means race 20 years ago. "If you nominated a Barr," said a rival candidate, "you’d lose the entire, very large, neo-pagan and non-traditional religious people. You'd lose the entire gay and lesbian groups. It would be a very big problem."

2. Mary Ruwart. Age: 59. Experience: Candidate for multiple local offices, author of Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression and other books.

Like Barr, Ruwart was pushed into the race by Libertarians who were unsatisfied by their choices. Like Barr, she didn’t need to be pushed very hard. Twenty-four years ago, Ruwart, then a scientific researcher and first-time LP delegate, threw her hat into the presidential nomination race and came in third. From there she mounted a series of unsuccessful (but often credible) bids for local offices, supplemented by reams and reams of freelance writing about nonaggression, philosophy, and left-libertarian ideas.

Ruwart's supporters see her as a singular spokesman for Libertarians, a likeable and eloquent activist who'll stay faithful to the party's message. Ruwart's opponents see her as a fringe candidate who'll do nothing to attract wayward conservatives. ”I don’t see us getting anywhere if Ruwart is the nominee,” said delegate Stewart Flood. [ed--This quote was originally misattributed to Aaron Starr.] “She’d be completely ignored by the media, or if she wasn’t ignored their view would be, ‘Boy, she’s got some strange ideas on things.’”

Proving this "strangeness" to delegates has proven tricky. Ruwart's oeuvre has been parsed for controversial statements, and a doozy from Short Answers to the Tough Questions made it sound as if the candidate favored the legalization of child pornography. It shook the campaign, and Ruwart responded, days later, with a tough statement denouncing "divisiveness" in the party. The pro-Ruwart and anti-Ruwart forces saw exactly what they wanted to see. "Mary is family," said a consultant for a rival campaign. "This isn't the Democrats or the Republicans, who'll pile on each other. If you're expecting a reaction against her from this, you're mistaken."

3. Wayne Allyn Root. Age: 47. Experience: sports handicapper, former sports talk show host, author of five books, including Millionaire Republican and The Joy of Failure!

Back in the long-ago, snow-swept days of February, Root was building a winning coalition with two groups of voters: right-leaning Libertarians and delegates who wanted a media-savvy nominee. They were willing to forgive Root’s heresies, such as his big-dollar donations to Republican candidates (and Joe Lieberman) and a shifting position on the Iraq War. Barr's entry into the race has changed that and bled some support from Root, with some of his supporters jumping ship entirely and some suggesting he'd merely make a good running mate. "He'd be a better candidate in four years if he got some seasoning under Bob Barr," one delegate said.

Root, a savvy and quick-witted speaker, hasn't adjusted too well to the new entries. One of his tongue-in-cheek slogans ("the WAR you can vote for") has occasionally cut against him, as he struggles to convince delegates that he's not an interventionist Republican in disguise. Some left-libertarians accuse him of playing dirty, calling on Mary Ruwart to leave the race after the "child sex" snippet of Short Answers spread through the blogosphere. Not all of them buy the argument that he'd be the most media-savvy candidate they could nominate, or that they'd even want him speaking for them. "The GOP launched a full court press to make sure Michael Badnarik was never on TV," rival candidate George Phillies said. "If you booked him, you wouldn’t get access to the good Repubican guests. This direct access to the mainstream media that Root and Barr talk about will crash to a halt if either one gets the nomination."

4. Mike Gravel. Age: 77. Experience: Alaska state representative 1963-1967, U.S. Senator from Alaska 1969-1981, author of Citizen Power.

Libertarians are largely happy, if somewhat skeptical, about a Democratic also-ran's embrace of their party. "Other than the fact that he's drinking the liberal Kool Aid on health care, he sounds like a libertarian," said delegate Stewart Flood. [ed--This quote was originally misattributed to Aaron Starr.] Two delegates called him blunt, and only one of them meant it as a compliment.

None of this, nor Gravel's late entry in the race, have prevented him from gaining steam. He's won delegates over by talking to them one on one, pumping his omnipresent National Initiative, and arguing for his own brand of left-libertarianism that focuses on human rights first and governing principles second. "I am not a Constitutionalist," Gravel said last week. "I'm a classical liberal."

When he entered the race, Gravel seemed unlikely to win enough delegate support to even enter the candidate debates at the Denver convention. That's changed: There's chatter that Gravel will win a berth even if he doesn't get 30 tokens, due to the media attention he'd draw. ”He’d make a great vice presidential nominee," one delegate said, for that reason. Unfortunately for that kind of delegate, Gravel has refused to consider the VP slot.

5. George Phillies. Age: 60. Experience: physics professor, 2004 Badnarik campaign organizer, editor of the newsetters Let Freedom Ring! and Libertarian Strategy Gazette, author of the e-book Stand Up for Liberty!

Before Barr and Gravel entered the race, George Phillies claimed he had the most electoral experience in the field. He's still saying that. "I have a working campaign organization," he says. "I'm in close contact with Libertarians all over the country. I'm the only candidate who's worked in a national Libertarian campaign on a Libertarian campaign budget. I have $100,000 in the bank, ready to go." But Phillies' support has remained low and steady while the newer candidates have hogged the spotlight. Nebbishy and nasal-voiced, trekking from event to event in his three-piece suit and prescription specs, Phillies has made himself credible. "He's improved a whole lot since I met him in 2004," said one delegate. ”I’d like to see him run for party chairman.”

That's the problem, though. It's easy to see Phillies in an organizing role, and considerably less easy to picture him holding the standard. "He doesn’t project 'candidate,'" said delegate Stewart Flood. "He projects 'college professor.'" For all of that, he might be the least offensive candidate to the largest number of delegates. No one is better set up to profit from a melee on the floor.

6. Steve Kubby. Age: 61. Experience: co-drafter of California's Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana in 1996, candidate for governor of California in 1998, author of The Politics of Consciousness and Why Marijuana Should Be Legal.

Kubby offers Libertarians much the same deal that Eugene Debs offered the vintage Socialists: real movement cred, battle scars from his fights with the state, and a crippling inability to campaign. Shortly after the 1998 gubernatorial election, Kubby’s home was raided and his bountiful marijuana garden was seized. A legal battle ensued that took him to Canada (for five years), to prison, and finally back to the West Coast, where his movement is limited. A candidate who nearly won the party’s vice presidential nomination in 2000 has been almost invisible on the trail, appearing at conventions via amateurish into-the-camera videos. "He’s not as clear-headed as he could be," one delegate said regretfully. Kubby has a good reason for that: adrenal cancer, the condition that turned him into a medical marijuana activist in the first place.

Kubby has tried to turn all of this to his advantage, with a little success. "I've gone to jail for freedom," he brags in one of his campaign videos. "I've gone to Canada for freedom. I've nearly died for freedom!" After Ruwart, he might be the best-liked candidate in the field, but concerns about his campaigning skills and his myopic focus on marijuana are keeping him out of the top tier. His second-place performance in his home state's (non-binding, low-turnout) presidential primary convinced some delegates that he's lost the notoreity that he had eight years ago.

7. Christine Smith. Age: 41. Experience: author of A Mountain in the Wind: An Exploration of the Spirituality of John Denver.

”I’m the leading candidate by all the ways that we can measure it,” Christine Smith claimed in a March radio interview. If that was ever true, it stopped being true when Mary Ruwart entered the race. But Smith is the most pugnacious representative of the libertarian left still in the running. "I believe the LP still has great potential in a nation whose people are disillusioned and disgusted with politics as usual," Smith writes in one of her campaign statements. "But that potential is destroyed if our party's 'leadership' continues to be weakened by people with major non-libertarian stances, ulterior motives, agendas and actions."

What's not clear is why Christine Smith is the candidate who can "save" the LP. "She hasn't been in the party that long," said Starchild, a California delegate. "I'd like to see her campaign for a lower office first." Other delegates are less forgiving, pointing out that for all her of her rhetoric about the LP, she offered to bolt the party if Ron Paul got the GOP nod and needed a running mate.

Smith's assertiveness cuts both ways. Several delegates told me they've been won over by her tough speeches, debate performances, or radio hits, or that a female nominee would be good for the party. But unless Mary Ruwart left the race, there aren't enough of these delegates to nominate Smith.

8. Michael Jingozian. Age: 46. Experience: founder of AngelVision Technologies.

A self-proclaimed "new age libertarian" whose 5-year plan assumes that he'll lose this election and win in 2012, Jingozian has funded a full-time staff and a busy travel schedule mostly through personal loans. He's become a presence in the race, but not one that the majority of likely delegates take seriously. ”I clearly got the impression he’s not lucid very often," one delegate said. "He didn’t seem...with it.”

One reason he turns off some delegates: Even though he's been a party member for years, Jingozian emphasizes the rottenness of the two-party system over the strengths of libertarianism. He's spoken at Green Party events to build cross-ideological support for his "Reset America" plan. He's waffled on policy questions in an attempt to seem more mainstream, telling one radio interviewer that the U.S. can't leave Iraq right away and a withdrawal would take six to nine months, sentiments utterly at odds with most LP voters.

9. The others. There is absolutely zero chance that John Finan, Barry Hess, Dave Hollist, Daniel Imperato, Alden Link, or Robert Milnes will get the Libertarian Party’s nomination. They are occasionally entertaining, and they are harmless. Imperato, in particular, has run a campaign worthy of Max Headroom, bidding (with no success) for the Constitution and Green Party nominations, claiming to run a multi-billion-dollar international organization, to speak seven languages, and to be descended from Emperor Nero. (If that actually was true, why would anyone admit it?) “He is the most ridiculous candidate I have ever seen,” says Starchild.

David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

Alan Keyes Loses Again

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:40:00 EDT

The Permanent Candidate has failed to win the nomination of the paleoconservative Constitution Party. Eric Garris reports:

Last night, CP founder Howard Phillips strongly denounced [Alan] Keyes as a warmonger, neocon, and egomaniac. Phillips was subsequently attacked by Jim Clymer, the CP national chairman.

In spite of Keyes bringing in a lot of delegates, the CP remained true to their anti-interventionist views and rejected Keyes.

The nomination instead went to the antiwar conservative Chuck Baldwin, by a vote of 383.8 to 125.7. It's a small but satisfying victory for two noble though possibly lost causes: the movement to end the occupation of Iraq and the transideological coalition to get Alan Keyes to shut up.

I pointed out a while back that the California affiliate of the Constitution Party is the old American Independent Party, a group formed as a political vehicle for the segregationist George Wallace. Jim Antle of The American Spectator, who has done the best reporting I've seen on the CP race, tells me that the California delegation backed Keyes, a black man -- while the party's two black state chairs were Keyes' leading opponents. It's a complicated world, innit?

Warning: This Post Is About Alan Keyes

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:16:00 EDT

Alan Keyes wants the presidential nomination of the conservative Constitution Party -- but does the Constitution Party want him? Jim Antle reports that Keyes' pro-war positions haven't endeared him to the party's isolationist rank and file:

Ricardo Davis, the state party chairman for Georgia, says any attempt to abandon the antiwar stance will go over about as well as the New Coke. "What if I was the new CEO of a midsized company and decided embark on a strategy to sell a 'me too' product that negates the company's unique sales proposition?" he asks. "What if that sales proposition is held dear by most of the sales and marketing management in the company? What do you think will happen to that company as I try to change the company's direction? A train wreck would look prettier!"...

Last Thursday, Keyes took part in a conference call with state Constitution Party leaders. Instead of smoothing over their differences on the Iraq war and other issues, at least one participant remembers Keyes being more interested in talking than listening. "I appreciate that Alan speaks his mind," says Davis. "But he is seeking our nomination, not the other way around."

Keyes has supporters, too: Some CPers seem to believe, in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, that his fame will make him a vote magnet. The Constitutional convention is coming up this weekend, so we'll soon see if Keyes' semi-celebrity status is enough to outweigh his support for Bush's foreign policy.

[Via Freddy Gray, a young Englishman who "was only recently made aware of the extraordinary Mr Keyes. I am now obsessed. Is he not the most entertaining politician in the world?" I remember that feeling, Freddy. Time will pass, and soon you'll be sick of him too.]

Obama-Keyes: The Rematch

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:06:00 EDT

We've seen this coming for a while, but tonight it becomes official. The Permanent Candidate plans to leave the GOP this evening:

Former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes has chosen April 15 to make a major announcement of his intentions, following indications he has broken with the GOP....

Keyes added that he is looking to the Constitution Party as a possible home for his future efforts in politics, including a potential run for president in the 2008 general election.

"No other 'third party' is as well-established as the Constitution Party," said Keyes. "They've been around since 1992, and have built a significant grassroots presence among patriotic, Constitution-minded citizens--with a registered membership of over 350,000. Conservatives have a home in the CP that they can find nowhere else, given the decline in the Republican Party's credibility as a voice and vehicle for conservatism."

In other words, Alan Keyes still hasn't raised enough money to pay off his old campaign debts. Give, give, give!

Fun fact: The California affiliate of the Constitution Party is the old American Independent Party. If Keyes becomes the CP nominee, then a party formed to serve as a political vehicle for George Wallace will ride into November with a black presidential candidate. Progress!

The Weekend Political Thread: Bob Barr Edition

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:29:00 EDT

The big news this weekend should be Bob Barr's presidential launch, so here's a link to the happenings at the Heartland Libertarian Conference. Starting at 11 a.m. ET there'll be streaming video of the Libertarian candidates debate, sans Barr. At 3:50, Barr's announcement will be streaming.

Steve Gordon has polled support for Barr and finds him easily leading the field--but as expected, not with a convention-stealing majority of votes.

UPDATE: Stacy McCain's efforts at refreshing bobbarr2008.com have paid off: The site is live. It looks a whole lot like Ron Paul's site. Liked "Hope for America"? Hey, try some "Liberty for America."

And no, you're not the only one having trouble watching the announcement. Check YouTube tomorrow, I guess. "I'm announcing [buffering] my intent to [buffering] seek the presidency" is a bit of a letdown; the whole speech, from what I can tell, is actually quite good.

UPDATE II: Here's the press release:

In his speech, Barr noted that, “America today faces a grave moral and leadership crisis, and those of us who care about our country’s future can no longer sit on the sidelines and remain neutral.” “As Dante Alighieri said many centuries ago,” Barr observed, “the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” Continuing, Barr stated that, “some say it is not now expedient or politically pragmatic to do the right thing, for the right reason.” But, he then asked his audience, “When has there been a better time? When has the risk of inaction carried more serious consequences? When will it be appropriate to take extraordinary steps? What must happen to our Constitution before we set aside our complacency and expediency in favor of principle?”

Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, where he served as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and as a member of the Committee on Financial Services. Prior to his congressional career, Barr was appointed by President Reagan to serve as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and also served as an official with the CIA for nearly eight years.

Since leaving Congress, Barr has been practicing law and actively advocating American citizens’ right to privacy and other civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. He serves also as a board member for the National Rifle Association, and works with the American Conservative Union and other groups.

Barr’s speech to the Heartland audience touched on the issues the candidates for the two major status quo parties have not addressed sufficiently, namely: the urgent need for truly cutting the size of the federal government, protecting our civil liberties, securing our borders, and fundamentally reforming our tax code.

“Removing ‘earmarks’ but not cutting the underlying spending is simply government as usual and is nothing more than a cynical shell game,” Barr stated; adding, “and that’s the high water mark in the debate thus far.“ Barr said this is not adequate, and that America’s voters deserve better than a choice between the lesser of two evils.”

Here's a for-the-Web announcement.

Here's four ways Barr can avoid Ron Paul's mistakes, off the top of my head.

1. Be specific. The Paul campaign was a function of its candidate, unable to stick to a few clear messages: It didn't simply try out issues and see if they got any gains from them, it bounced from issue to issue without much connectivity. Right now I see four issue areas on Barr's site: "Cut big spending," "individual liberty," "secure our borders," and "national defense." That's a good start. (And border hawk campaigning will have more resonance in a race against John McCain than in a multi-way race with other candidates going for that vote.)

2. Tap the Ron Paul network, if not Ron Paul. Obviously not everyone who donated to Paul will donate to Barr. But if the Barr campaign can purchase Paul's list, and do a little fishing to see how many of those donors are gettable, it can build the biggest war chest any Libertarian's ever built. (Badnarik raised about $1 million last time.) Whether Barr wants Paul's explicit endorsement (Barr endorsed Paul, after all) is up to him, and whether he thinks the association would help him with protest voters.

3. Attack, attack, attack. The Paul campaign was about ideas, sure, but there was precious little thirst for blood: Paul didn't go after his fellow candidates, and was thereby left out of the narrative from week to week. The only extended line of attack was on McCain's "100 years" comment, but Paul had to be prodded to do it.

4. Talk to voters where they live. That goes for the candidate and for his campaign. They can knock on doors and make phone calls while he runs a real, dogged campaign, town halls and speeches, daily press conferences. Are some of those press conferences going to have a certain lack of, uh, reporters? Sure, sometimes. But you have to feed the beast to get coverage.