Blushing Virgin

Bob Barr Blusters: Pres Nomination Campaigns don’t “affect change”??!!

ElectionDissection ventured over to the National Press Club for a couple of press conferences today. The first featured Ron Paul with his by-now-signature unfocused, “aw shucks” style with which he urged his acolytes and the American electorate at large to reject McCain and Obama and consider any of four third party candidates. Green nominee and former Dem. Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, independent perennial Ralph Nader and far-right Constitution Party standard bearer “Pastor Chuck” Baldwin were all on hand to bask in Dr. Paul’s glow. Libertarian Party nominee, former GOP Georgia U.S. Rep. Bob Barr pointedly declined the invite.

  Half an hour later, Barr responded with a press conference of his own. Barr and his top aide, former Ross Perot campaign honcho Russ Verney, explained Barr’s absence that morning, with Barr insisting that his bid offers “bold, focused, specific leadership,” not Ron Paul’s “amorphous kind that says any of the above’ or none of the above.’” Barr asserted that the goal of his campaign is to amass as many votes as possible, hoping to affect policy change in his direction; a worthy and very reasonable goal for a third party candidate determined to run an actual political campaign, seeking actual votes, not just to hit the college lecture circuit and bloviate ad nausea. 

Barr’s and Verney’s “we’re the grownups here” mein bordered on farce. Barr got so wrapped up in the “we’re not goofing around here” meme that, invoking Verney’s old boss Perot repeatedly, he asserted the patently preposterous claim that primary campaign vote totals, and failed nomination campaigns, are irrelevant; rather, building significant general election vote totals is the only way for alternative presidential candidates to affect policy change. This is indubitably viagra true for segregationist George Wallace’s 1968 American Independent bid that first identified “Reagan Democrats” among Northern Urban Ethnics and rural Southern Democrats and liberal Republican John Anderson’s 1980 indie bid that gave us sneak peaks at the segments of the coalition that vaulted Obama to the Democratic nomination this year. But for the highest vote getting third party bid in modern electoral history Ross Perot’s snaring of nearly one in five votes in 1992 the jury is still out as for its long term impact.

  Barr’s claim was made to counter claims that Paul’s 1.2 million primary season votes did more than Barr’s effort will to further a libertarian agenda. There is a question to be considered that Paul’s 2008 primary totals as scattered as his message may tell us less about a long-term libertarian vote trend than does Ed Clark’s 1980 Libertarian Party high water mark. 

Nevertheless, the litany countering Barr’s ludicrous contention is a long and venerable one.

Let’s start with Wallace: the 670,000 votes and 3.75 million votes he garnered, respectively, in his upstart 1964 and 1972 Democratic nomination bids were dwarfed by the 9.9 million votes he attracted in his 1968 indie bid, but reinforced to Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips that millions of those voters especially in states like Wisconsin in ‘64 or in Maryland and Michigan in ‘72 who might never have voted for him in a general, or before his assassination attempt, were up for grabs. Peeling these proto-Reagan Democrats away built the Conservative Coalition that governed under Reagan during his first term.

Eugene cialis McCarthy’s quixotic bid for the 1968 Democratic bid may have been as unfocused as Paul’s this year, but his 2.9 million votes forced the incumbent president,

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