Thursday, September 11, 2008

Bob Barr Campaign Digs Deeper Hole (Anthony Gregory)

Anthony Gregory on the Bob Barr campaign's brilliant strategy of praising George W. Bush and attacking Ron Paul:

In a statement today, the Barr campaign manages to attack Ron Paul yet again (while somehow finding an excuse to praise President Bush for his "leadership" on 9/11). They say that Ron Paul's meeting yesterday was all about promoting himself, and yet it was also supposedly about "scatter[ing] the votes for the liberty agenda to the four winds." Bah. Barr would be very lucky to get 1/4 of Paul's supporters to vote for him. The Barr campaign release also attacks non-voters.

This is really amazing. The same campaign that was willing to praise Jesse Helms, Al Gore and now George Bush, a campaign that has flip-flopped on global warming, gay marriage, the drug war and other issues, is now attacking the most popular libertarian activist movement in modern history, and attacking Ron Paul the person for caring more about himself than spreading the message of freedom – perhaps the most bizarre accusation one could make.

When Barr first got the nomination, I predicted he would not break 700,000 votes, despite hysterically optimistic estimates of millions of votes. Now, I would be somewhat surprised if he got more votes than Michael Badnarik.

UPDATE - Tom Woods adds:

Bob Barr's campaign manager, Russ Verney, sure is funny: "Today our campaign is being criticized by a few people [my emphasis] for my decision to not attend a press conference sponsored by Ron Paul's political action committee...." A few people, probably just those who are part of what he calls a "cult of personality" around Ron Paul.

How can this be topped for sheer stupidity?

As for attending vs. not attending, hasn't Barr (who was recently booted from the ballot in West Virginia) encountered some of the same frustrations all third parties do, and like a decent man wouldn't he want to join them in standing up against that kind of treatment? What am I missing?

No comments: