Reason Magazine will be sponsoring a live debate event with Bob Barr on Friday during the first Presidential debate between Obama and McCain. Barr will hold a remote to mute the volume of the “real” debate while he takes time to respond to the same questions and criticize the other candidates.
As usual, the two major political parties are shutting out all third-party candidates from this season’s presidential debates, while trying to out-compete one another for how many government goodies they can promise to voters. Only this time, we have the technology to do something about it.
Please join reason, either in person or online, for a live counter-debate on Friday, Sept. 26, with Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, who will respond to John McCain, Barack Obama and moderator Jim Lehrer in real time. We will be live-blogging Barr’s responses at Hit & Run, and videotaping the whole proceedings, which will include a brief post-debate Q&A with reason staffers, bloggers, and other interested parties.
Bill O’Reilly managed to somewhat improve the quality of his programming last night.Instead of focusing his efforts on vilifying Chevy Chase for not “believing in” the Great Sarah Palin, he instead decided to address the hypocrisy of the leaders in Washington, who always show up at the Bottom of the 9th Inning during a legitimate crisis, as opposed to proactively informing the public when red flags start to appear.
While I do agree with his statements that our leaders should bite the bullet and make the tough call of delivering bad news (as opposed to McCain, blowing smoke our way the other day, claiming that our current economy has a strong foundation) and also that “both parties are to blame” for this current economic and bailout crisis, I do, however, find it quite humorous that he asserts “there was no Paul Revere in public office to alert us”.Bill, perhaps there was no Paul Revere, but there was and is a Ron Paul in office to alert us.He has been warning the country for almost 2 decades of an impending crisis, such as the one we are currently facing.
The headlines of today are the former “alarmist” predictions of “that kook, fringe candidate, Ron Paul”.It’s unfortunate that O’Reilly, most of the Fox News Network, and the Mainstream Media, in general, have spent many years ignoring the warnings of an honest and economically literate public official.O’Reilly cries out for a leader with the spine to be a leader, yet, at the same time, O’Reilly does his best to ignore a Ron Paul and sweep him under the rug.Fortunately, shrewd journalists such as Glenn Beck and Neil Cavuto regularly march the Ron Pauls and the Peter Schiffs of the world onto their shows in an attempt to inform the public of the very financial corruption thriving in D.C., as well as the dangers of government intervention.
I had a dream that Ron Paul proposed a new bill to abolish the Commission on Presidential Debates and replace it with a structured debate system based on fairness for all candidates receiving more than 1% in the polls. In my dream the bill passed due to massive public pressure. Could this dream become reality? How would such a debate system work? Isn’t this just more unconstitutional federal government regulation?
The new bill proposes that the presidential debates be managed similar to a single elimination tournament in competitive sports. The current debate candidate selection procedure contains three requirements. First, a candidate must be Constitutionally eligible to be President. Second, a candidate must be on enough state ballots to achieve the required 270 electoral votes. Finally — and most controversially — the candidate must attain 15% or more in an average of five selected national polls.
The new system would maintain the first two requirements, repeal the third requirement and institute an incremental approach to both the debates themselves and the polling requirements to be included in them. There will still be three debates. They will be scheduled 2-3 weeks apart. The polling requirements for the first debate will be 1% or better in any single national poll from an established polling organization such as Zogby or Rasmussen. The goal of this first debate will be to give lesser known candidates an opportunity to get their message communicated to the American public and to gain enough support in the national polls to be permitted participation in the second debate.
Although Ron flounders a little at the end there, he pretty much sums it up in a way that I think a lot of us have never fully considered: 16% of the country votes for one candidate, and the rest of us, the true majority, are all left feeling like “the minority”. Footage below, including what we can and need to do about it:
This is quite a shot in the dark, and I’m sure the Barr campaign discussed this internally, although one never knows. They can use the Texas ballot access fight to their advantage in an attempt to get Bob Barr into the debates.
They should continue spreading the word about Obama and McCain missing the ballot access deadline in Texas. Also, they should add a new tactic to their press releases on the matter. The Barr campaign should make it clear (and public) that if both the Obama and McCain campaigns are truly interested in “change” as they claim then they should be for what the majority of the American people want and that is for Bob Barr to be in the debates (according the the recent Zogby poll saying 55% of those polled said he should be included). This alone is already being pursued to a degree, but it must be made more public using all media opportunities. The key is to continue to use the “change” rhetoric of the anti-change Parties against them.
The final and most convincing argument can be found with the Texas ballot fight where both Obama and McCain missed the filing deadline (supposedly). It seems that threatening a lawsuit could be used as a negotiating tactic. The Barr campaign’s lawyers can offer to drop the lawsuit if both Obama and McCain agree to allow Barr into the debates. Pointing out the amount of money and time both campaigns will have to spend on defending the lawsuit instead of their own campaigns should be a key point.
It is unlikely either Obama or McCain will fold to such “offers”, but it is worth a shot, especially since the law is being relaxed to their benefit. For Bob Barr, fighting for debate access is more important than fighting for ballot access at this point.
If Obama and McCain are truly for “change” and putting the “country first” then they should not suppress Bob Barr’s inclusion in the debates. Unfortunately, unless the main stream media makes this Texas ballot fight and hypocrisy widely known most voters will never get to hear the true message of change in this election.
Neil Cavuto had a fantastic interview with Ron Paul today, in which they both discussed the election itself, as well as the policies and ideas of Ron Paul, and even the GOP’s utter shock when this “fringe” candidate ended up being a true force to contend with.
In at least two spots, Neil perfectly sums up the stance of Ron Paul and the Revolution, paraphrasing “Look, you guys [GOP, McCain, etc.] are the ones who abandoned the party, not me. I’m going back to what our roots are.”
Bob Barr gets another hour with Glenn Beck. He demonstrates his moderate libertarianism here. Hopefully he wins over some viewers who were/are on the fence about voting third party. Many topics are discussed. The video below is in 6 parts thanks to YouTube 10 minute limits and commercials on the show.
According to the Barr campaign, Barr is going to be showing up on various main stream media outlets this week. Tuesday night he appears on The Colbert Report for the second time. He will be on CNN on Wednesday and Friday mornings. He is also taping his second full hour with Glenn Beck on Thursday, likely to be aired Friday evening (as that is when Beck usually airs his full hour TV interviews).
Barr has also shown some continued traction in the Zogby state by state polling as well. Hopefully these new media appearances will continue to help him reach new heights in polling (15%) allowing him to get into the debates. Sure it is unlikely, but anything can happen in politics. I will remain realistic yet hopeful.
Bob Barr appeared on FOX News yesterday with Neil Cavuto and discussed the Georgian conflict, his spoiler role (of course), and debate access. Once again Barr gets the libertarian message out there. It is a bit of wishful thinking on his part about getting access to the debates, but it is something that must be pursued no matter how unlikely it is to happen. Watch the interview below.
Liberty Maven
