Here is Bob Barr’s excellent speech at the Texas State Libertarian Convention. He is introduced by 2004 Libertarian Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik. He covers many topics including, foreign policy, taxes, energy policy, foreign aid, and civil liberties even injecting some humor and Ayn Rand references into his speech at times.
Now that Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign is over it is time for reflection. What were the expectations? Were those expectations met? What was accomplished? What will happen in the future?
I started writing about Ron Paul online in April of 2007. This writing was purely accidental. I had just started blogging on my personal site. I ended up almost writing exclusively about Ron Paul. That was not my intent, but Ron Paul had a gravitational pull on my mind that I could not resist. Luckily it was an attraction that I did not want to resist. Watching his “In The Name Of Patriotism (Who Are The Patriots?)” speech online almost brought me to tears in a “proud to be an American” sort of way. It was not his oratorical style that did it, but rather the substance of his words. Little did I know at the time that would become the underlying theme of his campaign: Substance over surface.
Ron Paul’s own expectations were most likely equivalent to my own at that time. We live in a country where the superficial is awarded and the substantive is ignored. Paul’s lack of smooth talking used car salesman media appeal was one of my reasons for believing his campaign was dead on arrival at the time. The other reason was that his penchant for plain spoken brutal truth would alienate many voters immediately. Ron Paul has recently said that when beginning his campaign he had no idea that there were so many believers in the Constitution. I felt the same way then, but today, like him, I stand corrected.
Ron Paul was interviewed on CNN this morning. He spoke about his own “grand rally” in St. Paul and he had some very supportive words of Bob Barr. In contrast he says McCain doesn’t represent traditional Republican values.
Does Bob Barr faithfully represent the values of the Libertarian Party? Ron Paul says, “yes”. He does mention his voting record is in contrast to his own, but he also echoes many of the same things supporters of Ron Paul who also support Bob Barr now say of Barr. This is probably the most support I’ve heard yet from Ron Paul about Bob Barr. Watch the video at CNN’s website here.
Here is another good interview with Bob Barr on the Bloomberg Channel’s “Night Talk” show. The interviewer, Mike Schneider has interviewed Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano in the past few months. He always asks insightful questions and allows ample time for his guests to answer, which is unfortunately rare in the media these days.
Barr’s drug warrior past is discussed along with the Defense of Marriage Act, the Libertarian Party, the Iraq War, Iran policy, role of religion, white supremacist supporters, and big government spending. Ron Paul even makes an appearance in a clip from his previous interview. Watch the interview in 3 parts below.
Here is Ron Paul’s wonderful speech during the Future Of Freedom Foundation Conference in Reston, VA on June 6th, 2008 via CSPAN. The speech is about 45 minutes long including a Q and A session following the talk. What I find interesting is his continued use of the past tense when talking about his campaign. NOTE: The video below has audio/video sync issues. For a better version check out CSPAN’s video library here.
Here is the 6 part (full hour) interview of Glenn Beck interviewing Bob Barr from tonight (06/06/2008). Good stuff. Note that without the commercials it is not a full hour.
Vern McKinley is challenging incumbent Frank Wolf in a Republican primary next Tuesday, June 10th in Virginia’s 10th congressional district. I live in this district and have heard some seriously scary things about Frank Wolf. I will not repeat them because I have no proof, instead I will try to focus on the issues where he and Mr. McKinley differ.
Vern McKinley is a principled Reagan Republican. I’m talking about the Reagan running for office, not the Reagan who forgot about cutting spending as well as cutting taxes. I suppose his Congress could be blamed for that. Frank Wolf used to be a Reagan Republican. He even ran supporting term limits in 1980. Almost 28 years have passed and he is still in office. Wolf, from the very beginning couldn’t keep a campaign promise.
On to the issues. If an issue is not listed it means that both McKinley and Wolf generally agree on the issue with a bit of room for differences in the margins. The point is to show where the candidates truly have a different world view.
Earmarks (AKA “bringing home the bacon”): Wolf likes to tout his SAFE commission, which is yet another Wolf investigative committee like he has proposed so many times in the past without much to show for it. The idea is to “examine” earmarking and figure out methods to curb it. This, in my view, is an establishment politician trying to have his cake and eat it too. It looks good on paper, but why did Wolf propose and get over $200 million in federal money in earmarks last year? Just another sly Wolf-like move, I guess. I hope people are paying attention this time.
McKinley on the other hand is almost running his entire campaign on “earmark” reform. He rightly criticizes Wolf on earmarks, saying that states shouldn’t use the federal government as an ATM machine. Funds for local projects should be raised locally. There’s some true federalism for ya. Bravo Vern.
Grades: Wolf gets an ‘F’ for being a shyster. McKinley gets an ‘A’.
The Bob Barr campaign posted an issue video (one of many) on the official web site regarding the economy. The economy is the most important issue for me. It is one of the reasons I support Ron Paul. Here, Bob Barr sounds like Ron Paul (again) on the role of the Federal Reserve. He points out that the economy was strong prior to the creation of the Fed. He calls for getting rid of The Fed. He mentions that it is an unelected organization. If somehow Bob Barr wins the White House, I’d wager all I have that Ron Paul would be offered a high ranking position in the administration. Watch Bob Barr on the American Economy in the video below.
Prior to the Libertarian Party Convention Bob Barr was interviewed on the Glenn Beck radio program and he talked about many topics, including the Fed.
GLENN: Tell me about the role of the Fed and the depreciation of the dollar and what you would do about all of this.
BARR: If I could wave a magic wand and the Federal Reserve Bank would disappear tomorrow, I would do so. It’s a group of unelected governors that are not answerable to or accountable to the people of this country and yet they wield considerable influence over the economy by basically setting rates at which banks and other financial institutions can loan money. And they have built up, you know, huge reserves themselves that they can then dole out as they’re doing — as they did recently with Bear Stearns to prop up as failing, what they see as failing investment houses, for example.
What we’re on the verge of right now, Glenn, through this federal government monkeying around with the mortgage business, both directly and indirectly, is to have the federal government now set a “One size fits all” mortgage criteria for the country. That would be disastrous. It would stifle risk-taking, it would stifle the independence of small mortgage houses and mortgage banks and would simply create further problems down the road. What we need to be doing is tackling government spending. That is the root of all evil, so to speak. We need to get a handle on federal spending, we need to start reducing the economic footprint and, you know, all the other footprints of the federal government if we want to talk about them, and get the federal government out of running our economy. It was never intended to be the job of the federal government to run the economy.
While these aren’t Ron Paul’s exact words they represent softer rhetoric than people are used to from Ron Paul. They frame the argument in a fashion acceptable to the general populace. This is something many were critical of Ron Paul for not doing during his campaign. Saying, “abolish the fed” scares a lot of people. Saying it the way Barr has done here shows he has the potential to be a main stream version of Ron Paul. It is true Barr doesn’t have the historic libertarian bloodlines of Ron Paul, but this kind of thing is only going to spread the liberty message to more people.
At Reason Magazine headquarters yesterday four candidates who can potentially carry the Ron Paul message onward sat down for a debate. All participants except for one are Libertarian Presidential candidates. The exception was Vern McKinley, who is running for Congress in Virginia’s 10th District against Frank Wolf.
What was interesting to me as evidenced in the embedded video (thanks to Reason.tv) below is that Vern McKinley almost sounds more libertarian than some of the Libertarian candidates, most notably, Wayne Allyn Root. Check out the video below and realize it is time to figure out who you are going to support in the general election for President in lieu of Ron Paul. Writing in Ron Paul may make you feel good, but it will go nowhere. At least in Vern McKinley’s case you know you can support him as a “Ron Paul Republican”.
Liberty Maven
