Will Libertarians draw conservatives from McCain?

Will Libertarians draw conservatives from McCain?

www.mcclatchydc.com

DENVER — For years, conservative-minded home schooling mom Shana Kluck of Tuscaloosa, Ala., voted Republican. No longer.

Fed up with big government at home and military intervention overseas, she worked for Ron Paul in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. Now that he's fallen short, she's switching parties, traveling to Denver this weekend to help former Republican Congressman Bob Barr win the Libertarian presidential nomination.

That kind of defection has some Libertarians thinking Barr could turn the fledgling party into a magnet for disaffected conservatives, gain national attention, and, perhaps, even draw votes away from Republican John McCain in close states as Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in Florida in 2000.

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Well in regards to Nader I doubt he will attract any Democrats this cycle... as for Bob Barr... its possible... there is a large group of disgruntled Republicans and conservatives out there who don't like him. With the nomination sewed up... still 25% of Republicans voting in the North Carolina primary (and others) have voted for someone else.

That does not bode well for McCain at all... and if he choses Romney he will lose the fundamentalist vote as well... If he choses Huckabee, he has a chance with them...

But with Bob Barr running all bets are off.

www.mcclatchydc.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The LP nominee will be decided by the end of today. The debate was apparently on C-SPAN last night www.lp.org... but I didn't know. Grrrr...

Unlike the the other two parties, the LP gets the job done and moves on. You 'Democrats' are following the Hill-Bama mess until August...? UHHHHHG!!

7 candidates were slated to debate www.lp.org... I don't have any cable or sat. hook up for the TV, so I'll see if they re-run it, while at work.

Imo, the LP should draw votes from BOTH parties and from the other 50+% of the population that never even comes out to vote. Again, I say... your only wasted votes are ones cast on Republicans AND Democrats. Please, choose anyone else.

Throw ALL The Bums Out!!

Bob Barr or any Libertarian candidate gets my vote. I cannot in good consience vote for either of the two "major" parties any longer. The only way to show them that they are no longer going to fool us is to vote for another. I'm a conservative first, and a libertarian second. Some of the party's platforms are not ones I agree with but most are. I cannot agree with almost anything the other two do.
Zindo

Three Hits and a Miss
The Libertarian Party debate elevates Barr, Kubby, and Root, while Ruwart underperforms

Barr, of course, was not leaving. When the 1 p.m. deadline for the LP debate came, the former Republican congressman delivered 94 tokens to win inclusion. Mary Ruwart and Wayne Allyn Root handed in exactly as many tokens. Barr and Ruwart, though, had both passed a few of their tokens to friends they wanted to see make the debates...

What actually transpired at the "C-SPAN debate" surprised most of the delegates I talked to afterward. With a few exceptions, their reaction was four-fold: Root, brash and funny, looked more than ever like an effective cheerleader for the LP. Kubby, against all odds, stole the show again and again. Ruwart, poised but bland, underperformed the expectations many delegates had for her. And Barr, faced for the first time by his fellow candidates and a puckish moderator, thrived under the pressure.

It's a fairly long write up. I'm 1/2 way thru. If anyone spots a winner, please feel free to beat me to the post

And here is Kubby's Website

[edit on 5/25/2008 by RabbitChaser]

I cannot believe Root was just eliminated
ROUND 5 UPDATE from www.lp.org...

Ruwart 229
Barr 223
Root 165 (eliminated) -- those are up for grabs now.
50% + 1, I believe, is needed to win.

I think Barr will definitely draw votes from McCain, especially if McCain is perceived to be unlikely to win the election come November. Too bad, in a way, because even though I like Hillary and Obama both better than McCain, I'd rather see McCain get elected President.

Why? Because I think Bush has screwed things up so badly there's no way any President is going to be able to fix things in the next four years. The economy is likely to get worse, we have an obscene national debt and we're finally going to have to start paying off some of that money borrowed from the Social Security surplus since the oldest boomers are going to be starting to hit retirement age (money that was borrowed to finance tax cuts). Iraq is a disaster. Afghanistan is going down the tubes quick. The world hates us. There is increasing speculation about a world wide economic crash.

The next four years are going to suck, no matter who is President, and I think that President is going to get blamed for how bad things are even though it wasn't their doing.

The latest from the LP website...

Wayne Allyn Root selected as vice presidential candidate

Wayne Allyn Root was selected on Sunday as the 2008 nominee for vice president at the Libertarian National Convention.

Endorsed by Barr following the selection of the presidential candidate, Root was selected as the vice president after two rounds of voting.

That's obviously the guy I wanted all along and I feel he is a huge asset to Barr.

Here are other links going thru the process...

Libertarian Party selects Bob Barr as 2008 presidential nominee

Presidential and VP Vote Totals

Here are the two nominees' websites...

Barr '08 LIBERTY FOR AMERICA

Root for Liberty, Root for Freedom, Root for America!

And as a reminder, let's not stop at the office of the President...

The "Kick Them All Out" Project

Go 1/2 way down that page to find the link to your states' Federal Representatives and find out when yours are primed for the boot.

Sadly, my Senators aren't up til 2010 (Specter) and 2013 (Casey). But, my District Rep. is teed up and you can be certain he won't be getting back in. There are many teed up in PA, so you should all check yours and do your part to get rid of these guys, peacefully. Enough with the lawyers and lifetime politicians already My basic voting philosophy anymore is to tell people to be sure to vote, but you're only wasting your vote if you vote for a Democrat or a Republican... please, people... vote for anyone else.

Bob Barr is not a liberatarian

he voted for the war in iraq and was a supporter of the patriot act

He'll draw a few, but I wouldn't expect it to be much. Remember, conservatives not too many years ago got 8 years of Bill Clinton because they split over Ross Perot. It hasn't been so long that its out of the collective conservative memory and you can bet it won't happen again anytime soon.