Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr is declaring his bid for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president today. Barr, who is perhaps most well-known for his high-profile role in the Clinton impeachment proceedings, left the Republican Party in 2006 and says that his run for the presidency will provide voters with a “genuinely conservative” alternative to John McCain. A recent Zogby poll had Barr taking three percent of the vote in a general election match-up between Obama and McCain. As you might expect, Republicans are trying to convince Barr not to run.
This creates an interesting drama on the libertarian right. While Ron Paul is the country’s preeminent libertarian, he has repeatedly declined to run for president as anything other than a Republican. But he has refused to endorse John McCain (and even gone so far as to praise Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy), leaving the door open for a run as a third-party candidate.
So here are the key questions. Will Ron Paul run as a candidate in the Libertarian Party? (I know it’s unlikely, but he did run for president as the Libertarian Party’s nominee in 1988 while maintaining his Republican affiliation.) If he doesn’t run, will he endorse Bob Barr and cede his status as America’s big dog libertarian? After John McCain secures the Republican nomination in early September and Ron Paul drops out, will his supporters shift their support to Barr, Obama, or no one? We considered this question before here; what say you?
