The Bob Barr campaign set a goal to raise $88, 000 by July 4th to kickstart the campaign. Thanks in part to the July 2nd money bomb and more donations coming in over the past few days they’ve reached their goal.
In case you missed this (I did) interview from a couple weeks ago here it is. Bob Barr is interviewed by South Carolina’s Southern Avenger. Good interview for Barr.
I apologize for the shameless alliteration but not only does the Ron Paul style money bomb for Bob Barr begin tonight at midnight, but it also marks my birthday. I’ve always said that my love of liberty was somehow injected into me at birth since I was born on the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.
Tomorrow, or maybe later tonight I will participate in the Barr Bomb money bomb along with over 280 other pledged contributors. No the total won’t equal or even come close to the Ron Paul money bombs of yesteryear and that is a shame. Barr is spreading the liberty message of Ron Paul far and wide no matter what his tunnel visioned detractors claim. Last Sunday he carried that message to Chris Wallace and FOX News Sunday. This Sunday he will take that message to ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”.
I lament the fact that Barr has a voting record that doesn’t match his current day rhetoric. It dims the potential fervent support he could have from the Ron Paul faithful. I equally lament that the Ron Paul faithful can’t see beyond his voting record and realize he is the best vessel for spreading the freedom message left in the race. This is why I will be throwing some of my federal reserve notes into the Barr campaign coffers on my 37th birthday. I respectfully request you do the same. After all it is all about getting that sublime message into the minds of the masses. Bob Barr is accomplishing that better than anyone right now, and that includes Ron Paul.
Bob Barr spoke with Newsmax’s Ashley Martella about his campaign and several issues in a YouTube video released by Newsmax today. Barr gets in all of his usual liberty minded talking points here. Good stuff.
Bob Barr sat down for a rather lengthy grilling from GQ magazine’s Wil S. Hilton. Hilton approached the interview with an obvious sarcastic bias and attacked Barr with some of his questions. They even argued a bit, but Barr held his own, as usual. Here is a particularly argumentative excerpt:
Why shouldn’t the government interfere in the market and rein in corporations?
Is that the job of the federal government? I would say absolutely not. The government is not there to guarantee that the market is going to operate in a certain way.
Isn’t the government there to do whatever the people want? Isn’t that the whole idea of a democracy?
In a pure democracy, yes. But we don’t have a pure democracy. We have certain principles on which the nation is founded. The basic philosophy—the reason the government was set up the way it is—is to keep the government out of those areas. In our system, it’s not the job of the federal government to do those things. It is the job of the government to ensure free commerce.
Do you actually believe free commerce will cap pollution and keep the water pure and the air clean?
It may or may not.
Don’t you think the public has a right to keep its water clean?
I wouldn’t equate public concern with the appropriate role of government. The public, by and large, would like government to do all sorts of things.
And this is a democracy, and the government should do what they want.
It’s not a democracy. We have certain principles. The government exists to provide very limited functions—for example, free commerce.
The government exists to do whatever people want it to do.
Part of the problem is that we no longer have a truly educated public. The Founding Fathers lived in a very different world. They lived in a world where people understood and cared about the written word. They had a much more educated citizenry.
The reason the “citizenry” was more educated was because the “citizenry” excluded everybody who wasn’t a white male landowner.
Abigail Adams was one of the brightest people around back then.
But she couldn’t vote, and neither could slaves, or anybody who didn’t own land.
But Abigail Adams still influenced public policy through her interchanges with her husband. Part of the problem today is that we don’t have an educated citizenry like that. The citizenry may clamor for the government to do all sorts of things. That does not provide an appropriate basis for the government to do it.
Who else is going to decide what the government should do, if not the citizenry?
We don’t live in a democracy! This was not intended to be a country where the citizenry decides what they want government to do! We have a structure of government that is based on principles, independent of the vagaries of public opinion.
I’m not sure that’s true at all. The citizens can elect representatives to do whatever they want. If the citizens want to take away their own right to free speech, they can do it.
They could.
They can make government come to their doors every morning with a newspaper and donuts if they want.
Well, we’re almost at that point.
And so it goes. One wonders if they would treat Obama and McCain to the same line of opinionated questions, sarcasm, and assumptions. Read the full interview here at GQ.
The Bob Barr campaign blog posted the video from today’s interview by Mark Preston on CNN. Barr continues to get main stream media appearances increasing his reach in spreading the limited government libertarian message. Barr is asked about Ron Paul supporters and Ron Paul himself in this interview.
This was a good appearance by Bob Barr on this morning’s FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace. He reiterated saying he was wrong for voting for the Patriot Act, Iraq War Authorization, etc.. He also answers the recent criticism for not really holding any campaign or fund raising events thus far. The interview lasts about 9 minutes long.
The New York Times published an article about Bob Barr’s campaign and its potential spoiler role in the November election. The piece certainly has a negative slant to it. It suggests that Ron Paul supporters resent Bob Barr’s campaign. Certainly some of them do, but Barr’s official campaign is made up of Ron Paul supporters. The article, naturally doesn’t mention that though.
Some of the money problems might be solved if Mr. Paul’s libertarian supporters coalesce behind Mr. Barr. But Mr. Paul’s followers, many of whom were inspired by his passionate opposition to the war, might not be so quick to transfer their allegiance to a candidate who initially supported it.
Mr. Paul has pointedly declined to endorse his former Congressional colleague. Some of Mr. Paul’s former campaign staff members and other supporters have said privately that they resent Mr. Barr’s efforts to co-opt their constituency. Near the top of their list of complaints is Mr. Barr’s campaign Web site, BobBarr2008.com, which bears a strong resemblance to RonPaul2008.com, complete with bouncy graphics and a money clock at the top of the home page.
Like the Paul campaign, Mr. Barr is trying to build support on the Web. “Meetup, the Facebook, the YouTube,” said Mr. Verney, ticking off the Web sites where the campaign has established itself. “We have more Meetups than Hillary and McCain combined.”
Here is an excellent Bob Barr video produced by Martin Avila, owner of Terra Eclipse, editor of the United Liberty blog and designer of the Ron Paul and Bob Barr official campaign web sites. It perfectly blends together election and interview footage and hits it home that Barack Obama and John McCain are false candidates of change. Enjoy it below or watch it in better non-YouTube quality here at the Bob Barr site.
Bob Barr will appear on FOX News Sunday with host Chris Wallace this Sunday, June 29th. The show airs on local FOX affiliates across the country and at 6pm on Sunday evening on the FOX News channel. To find out when it will be on in your area check the schedule here.
With this appearance and the already scheduled ABC “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” interview for July 6th I think it is now officially safe to say Bob Barr is getting more media exposure than any previous Libertarian Party candidate.
I wonder if he’ll be able to resist talking about himself in the third person in these interviews. He hasn’t been too successful in doing so thus far. Sometimes he sounds like Bob Dole did during his campaign in 1996. At least he’s speaking in the language of liberty instead of “neo-conish”.
Liberty Maven
