One commenter over at Town Hall had some particularly harsh words for Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Bob Barr:
If you throw even a single state to Obama, we will hunt you with dogs.
Wow, I wonder what it was that the former Georgia Congressman could have said that could have inspired such vitriol.
Perhaps it was this:
The GOP long ago abandoned those who believe in limited government and individual liberty. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Republican Party responded to new Democratic spending initiatives with “me too.” Richard Nixon embraced and signed into law much of today’s regulatory establishment.
Ronald Reagan attempted to break the cycle, but his successors returned to pre-Reagan patterns. The new House majority elected in 1994 also took a run against the status quo, but the Republican leadership soon started looking like the Democrats, putting reelection above principle.
Over much of the last eight years Republicans have controlled the presidency and the Congress, yet spending rose faster than any time since Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” Earmarks hit a record. The GOP increased domestic, as well as military, outlays. As a result, the budget for virtually every government agency, from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, expanded.
In 2003, the president and Congress joined forces to enact the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. With Medicare and Social Security costs exploding—today we face $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities for these two programs alone—Congress approved, and the President signed, the Medicare drug benefit, adding trillions of dollars more to the bill facing future generations.
But since all of that is true, I can’t imagine why they’d be arguing against the facts of history.
Maybe, it was this:
[T]he Republican Party has abandoned its commitment to constitutional government. The GOP once believed in federalism, but now it is the Republican Party that pushes to expand national control over education. Republicans once recognized that the national government was one of limited, enumerated powers, yet it was Sen. John McCain who led the congressional “investigation” of steroid use in baseball.
Even more serious has been the sustained presidential and congressional assault on the system of separation of powers and checks and balances. President Bush’s theory of the “unitary executive” assumes that the president can ignore any statute—even the Constitution—whenever he claims it is necessary for “national security.” The Republican Congress aided and abetted the administration’s pervasive and systemic misconduct.
But, you know, that’s all true as well, so that can’t be it, can it ?
Maybe it was this:
A conservative vote for Sen. McCain is a wasted vote. It is wasted because even if he is elected, he does not stand for conservative values and will not promote conservative values. Government will grow, spending will rise, and liberty will diminish.
But it looks increasingly likely that he won’t be elected, and no one will care about his vote totals if he loses. In contrast, a vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party will be noticed and will have a lasting, positive impact. A vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party will be a vote for liberty and for America’s future.
Hmm, perhaps Barr’s rhetoric is hitting a little to close for him for those conservatives who are starting to recognize the truth of the past eight years……
