Liberty Maven

Below is Bob Barr’s rather short appearance on CNN’s American Morning. It may be just me but he seemed a little perturbed about the line of questioning. I can’t say I blame him. I was too.

Many Ron Paul supporters reference the movie “The Matrix”, saying they swallowed the “red pill” when they discovered Ron Paul. They mean that Ron Paul woke them up from their slobbering apathetic slumber to the reality of a country spinning away from the rule of law in its Constitution.

There is a certain amount of “baggage” that comes along with being a Ron Paulian. You will be deemed extreme. You will be called crazy. You will be labeled a conspiracy nut. The truth is secondary to the insult to these blind and naked mobs. This and other factors like scientific polling data and little main stream media attention caused mass belief that Ron Paul was “unelectable” in 2008. If we can present a “purple pill” to these blind and naked mobs, one they can swallow a bit easier than the big red one, by the time 2012 comes around Ron Paul may magically become the most electable candidate in (or out of) the race.

The first reaction is, “Ron Paul will be too old in 2012 to run again.” This may or may not be true. 2012 is only 4 years away and no matter who takes office in 2008 it is growing increasingly likely that most Americans will be worse off 4 years from now. Ron Paul is as healthy as he can be now. There is no reason to believe he won’t maintain that health for the next 4-8 years. Will the American people be willing to accept a 76 year old Presidential candidate as viable? If it gets bad enough, maybe.

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Bob Barr appeared on CSPAN’s “Road The White House” tonight in an interview recorded on Wednesday. The interview lasts about 30 minutes and it demonstrates not only Bob Barr’s excellent liberty message, but also the CSPAN host conducting an interview how interviews should be conducted. Barr goes into details on a number of subjects including his brand of Libertarianism, Ron Paul support, Defense of Marriage, and his campaign fund raising status. This is an excellent interview leading in to his national television appearance scheduled on “FOX and Friends” tomorrow morning around 6am eastern. Available below in 4 parts.

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Bob Barr talks with David Asman on FOX Business News tonight. He calls McCain and Obama, McBama and then preaches his small government beliefs while pointing out the present day ripe opportunity for making a splash in this election. When Asman says “You’re not going to win the election” Barr takes exception and points out that there is a chance he could win because of the nature of America’s dissatisfaction with the usual politics.

A very nicely designed state by state electoral polling map is available on Zogby.com. It shows how the 4 main candidates for President are polling in most states along with some short commentary. What is most interesting is that Barr is polling extremely well in many states. This type of polling is the most relevant. It is certainly much more relevant than any national poll. National polling is not used to decide who wins the office of President. National polling merely shows which direction voters are leaning overall.

State by state polling represent, in my view, a much more accurate picture of the actual election possibilities. Bob Barr is getting 5% or more in a majority of the states with numbers listed. This includes 10% in New Hampshire and 9% in Nevada which is not surprising since both states are considered libertarian leaning. Also interesting are states like McCain’s home state of Arizona where Obama leads by a slim margin and Barr is showing at 7%. The numbers for Arizona could suggest that McCain indeed is “spoiling” Arizona for McCain to the benefit of Barack Obama. One would think McCain would be victorious in his own state, but I guess not, perhaps thanks to Bob Barr.

The main goal at this point is to get these polling numbers to go up so that Barr is comfortably above 10% nationally since national polls are used to determine participation in debates. The September New Orleans debate has rules that a candidate must be polling higher than 10% in at least 3 widely recognized national polls in order to participate. This is an achievable goal for Bob Barr and it would be a wonderful media opportunity to increase membership in the Libertarian Party.

These state by state numbers should be extremely encouraging to all Libertarians because they suggest Bob Barr will comfortably receive more votes than any previous Libertarian candidate for President. Argue in the margins about his voting record and his transformation, but in the long run his candidacy puts the Libertarian Party on the track towards electoral viability in 2008 and beyond.

Check out the map on Zogby.com.

Help Bob Barr Increase His Polling Numbers

After fellow Liberty Maven founder Mike Miller and I rated Barack Obama and John McCain according to our Ron Paul Paul-O-Meter manifestation we thought it would be more fun to get everyone else involved.

Mike sat down and put together a web based polling application so that everyone can now rate the Presidential candidates on how well they measure up to Ron Paul. The application requires poll takers to enter a valid email address where a link to the initial candidate’s poll will be sent. After rating the first chosen candidate other candidates can be rated without going through the verification again.

For each email address each candidate can be rated one time. Total results are averaged together and shown on the results page, including detailed average scores for each question. The candidates included in the poll are: John McCain, Barack Obama, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, Ralph Nader, and Cynthia Mckinney.

If you experience problems with the application let us know. If you’d like to discuss your ratings and argue the finer points of which candidate more closely resembles Ron Paul on Gun Control (for instance) feel free to do so in the comments of this article. Huge thanks goes to Mike Miller for authoring the polling application.

Now, go rate the candidates on the Paul-O-Meter.

In a new Zogby poll Bob Barr gets 6% of the vote. Also interesting in the same poll, guess how many percentage points separate Obama and McCain? That’s right, six. Obama leads McCain in the poll 44% to 38%. Since Barr is certainly getting many votes that McCain would never get, for this poll at least, Obama would win regardless of Barr.

UTICA, New York – As the race for President passes the Independence Day holiday and heads toward the dog days of summer, Sen. Barack Obama holds a 44% to 38% lead over Sen. John McCain in the horserace contest, but also leads by a substantial margin in a state-by-state Electoral College tally, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The extensive national poll of of 46,274 likely voters also shows Libertarian candidate and former Congressman Bob Barr wins 6% support, eating into McCain’s needed conservative base of support.

The online survey was conducted from June 11-30, 2008. It carries a margin of error of 0.5 percentage points.

Read the full report from Zogby.

Tomorrow Bob Barr will be interviewed by Al Rantel on KABC 790 at 2:05pm Eastern. Last Friday Wayne Allyn Root was interviewed by Rantel. He certainly didn’t sound like a neo-conservative war monger in this interview. In fact, he sounded much like Ron Paul and Bob Barr. He admits in the interview to doing a 180 on the Iraq war. Some will look at this transformation as mere convenience, others will take him at his word. Some are stuck somewhere in the middle. All in all though Root gives a pretty good interview.

Listen to the Wayne Root interview here via Rantel’s podcast (mp3).

Today Bob Barr received some significant main stream media coverage regarding his potential spoiler role for John McCain on CNN’s The Situation Room. The video below contains more than 5 minutes of footage covering Barr. The first is a segment with Wolf Blitzer discussing Barr’s impact on the election with two talking heads from the left and right. Next, Jack Cafferty covers Barr with his Cafferty File question. The final clip are the answers from viewers to that question. Ron Paul gets a few mentions as well.

This is not only great coverage for Barr but also for the Libertarian Party, especially the Cafferty portion. The viewer email by “Jacob” wins for best response to the question.

Bob Barr was interviewed by Dennis Miller on his syndicated radio show today. They discussed much about FISA and Barr’s role in the election. Interesting how Miller cuts Barr off at the end of the interview. It was an odd thing to do. Miller apparently believes that Obama and McCain will actually debate the substantive nature of issues like FISA, limited government, taxes, etc.. Miller cut Barr off for suggesting that his own candidacy will move the debate more towards the fundamentals rather than the usual political surface. The overall meat of the interview is pretty good though. The interview is about 14 minutes long (commercials stripped out).

Listen/Download the interview here (mp3).