Reason’s David Weigel chronicles in one of his latest dispatches how a former Republican Congressman managed to snag the Presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party:
The Bob Barr campaign couldn’t have plotted it any better. The former GOP congressman-turned Libertarian Party contender announces his candidacy two short weeks before the LP convention, and grabs more free media than 2004 nominee Michael Badnarik received in a year. He arrives in Denver amid bellyaching and heckling and a sea of “Mary!” stickers, and gets reporters talking about the drama of a deadlocked Libertarian convention. C-SPAN stays glued to the proceedings for all of Sunday, through six ballots that turn out closer than the results of an Olympic track meet. And when it’s all over, Barr gets both the nomination and a running mate, Wayne Allyn Root, whose views comport comfortably with Barr’s own.
So how did they do it ? Weigel points to a number of factors that helped:
A Changed Party. The groundwork for Barr’s win started building after the 2004 debacle, when Michael Badnarik ran an underwhelming purist campaign that satisfied no segment of the party. An estimated 2,000 people left the LP then, and activism dropped off substantially. The strongest anti-Barr candidates, Kubby and Ruwart, were old faces who’d run for the vice presidential nomination in 2000 and 1992, respectively. Ruwart had also run for the presidential nomination in 1984.
Mea Maxima Culpa. Barr could not have won if, like fellow major-party defector Mike Gravel, he’d jumped into the party right before the convention. Instead the Georgia congressman once famous for prosecuting the impeachment of Bill Clinton built credibility with the delegates by being able to refer to his two years in the party. When he mentioned this fact in his debate performance and pre-vote speech, some of the less-active delegates who’d been surfeited with anti-Barr rumors of “hijacking the party” were surprised. Barr complemented with a few staged “road to Damascus” moments in front of the delegates; standing up at the debate and apologizing for part (not all) of the Defense of Marriage Act, claiming he wished he’d joined the LP sooner. “I may not have committed as early as y’all,” Barr said in his nomination speech, “but don’t cast me aside because I’m a latecomer!”
The Media Drip, Drip, Drip. The press helped Barr in two ways. It was obvious even to Barr’s enemies that the media had more interest in him than in anyone else; Mary Ruwart’s pre-speech montage of clips, which included the iffy likes of a Longevity Magazine cover story and “Libertarian says return tax dollars” clips from previous unsuccessful runs for office, made Barr’s exposure look that much more impressive. Then, Ruwart took a pounding from the media that even her throatiest backers couldn’t ignore. LP activist Barry Hess could dismiss Barr as a creature of “the old media,” but by the time delegates were voting on the fourth ballot, The Washington Times had run a story on the convention that mentioned Ruwart’s unforgettable argument about child pornography, and whispers were flying around the convention hall.
Whether these changes will be permanent, of course, depends on how things go in November.
