Noah Millman details the reasons why Bob Barr could have a significant impact on the 2008 Presidential race, and here are a few of the highlights:
McCain has little positioning room to try to win back potential Barr voters, for two reasons. First, he is not trusted by the religious right. Among other things, that means he has to pick a VP who is acceptable to this wing. But the same kind of pick who would appeal to the religious conservative wing (Huckabee in particular) will be anathema to a certain sort of libertarian-leaning Republican. This will be an issue in debates as well; what if a question about “don’t ask, don’t tell” is put to the three candidates, and Bob Barr answers thusly. How does McCain answer the question? Second, McCain’s biggest opportunity vis-a-vis Obama is to try to solidify his support among blue-collar whites who Obama has had difficulty winning in recent primaries. But again, the appeals he’ll probably make to win over these voters – whether economic or cultural – may create an opportunity for a strong libertarian candidate to pick off other voters – “leave us alone” small government types who might have voted McCain anyway in a contest with Obama.
Incidentally, here’s what Barr said about don’t ask-don’t tell:
Asked about reconsideration of the don’t ask, don’t tell policy in favor of a more open and honest approach, the simplistic responses by several Republican presidential candidates left me — and I suspect many others — questioning whether those candidates really even understood the issue, or were simply pandering to the perceived “conservative base.” The fact is, equal treatment of gay and lesbian service members is about as conservative a position as one cares to articulate.
I doubt you’ll hear John McCain say anything like that, even though, as a veteran himself, I’m sure he realizes that the ban on gays in the military is stupid, short-sighted, and bigoted. Since he can’t offend the so-called Religious Right, though, he won’t say it.
Also, as I noted earlier today, Barr could generate enough support to put into play states that might otherwise be solidly Republican:
In general, Obama is going to have a tough time in the deep South – even if he gets record African-American turnout in states like Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, overwhelming white support for the GOP will make an Obama victory impossible. But if Barr gets a significant vote in his home state, and Obama can generate historic levels of African-American support, there may be a window for Obama to contest Georgia, which would otherwise be out of reach.
And the final reason that McCain should fear the possibility of limited government conservatives and libertarian Republicans being attracted to Barr is this:
Significant third-party candidacies do more harm to the candidate identified with the status quo. It was true in 2000, it was true in 1992 (and, I suspect, 1996, though then it didn’t matter), it was true in 1980, it was true in 1968, and the editors of the Chicago Tribune thought it was going to be true in 1948. I had figured that this year we’d see a significant anti-war, anti-immigration candidate running on a third party platform, but Barr will do in a pinch.
This has been an interesting, historically significant election from the day it started, there’s no reason to think it’s going to stop once the major party nominees have been decided.
