NRO interviews Bob Barr about his highly righteous spoiler campaign for prez.
Following up on last night’s post, a knowledgable TPM Reader adds this …
Regarding Congressman Barr’s presidential run, I think that he undermines McCain without drawing votes to himself, and that’s good enough for Obama.
I think that your “does he get votes” calculus is understandably, but overly, shaped by Nader’s impact in 2000.
I think the impact of Barr out there running is that you now have two voices, one ostensibly from the Right, criticizing War On Terrorism policies, including Iraq. That’s going to make it harder for McCain to draw the usual “the Dems are weak, Republicans are strong” distinction. I think it’s going to have an impact on independent voters, even if that impact isn’t to draw them to Barr but to make it okay (you know what I mean) for them to vote for Obama.
You’re right that Barr has tended to attract quite a bit of media attention to himself – since Safire’s departure, he’s been the go-to “right-wing civil liberties guy.” Which is funny, because he was a huge “War on Drugs” guy (he now views medical marijuana as a states rights issue), and was an author of the Defense of Marriage Act.
“How many Republicans are there out there who just won’t accept McCain’s Iraq forever position but can’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat? And how many of them could Barr sop up?”
See, I think you’re asking basically the right question there, but you’re still framing it in terms of “how many votes does Barr get?” Not many, I’d guess. I don’t think it matters much.
Then again, I suck at political prognostication.
I think this is right. But for the reasons noted last night, I think he could also pull a non-trivial number of votes.
