[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
“Bob Barr … probably will seek and get the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party,” opines George Will. (Conical hat tip to Lew Rockwell; italics mine.)
Is Will right about the “getting” part? Will the delegates in Denver really choose as squishy a libertarian as Barr (who, for example, has been saber-rattling over Latin America and favours banning drugs at the state level) over more consistently libertarian candidates like Ruwart or Kubby? I’m inclined to doubt it; I know that the LP has grown less radical over the years, but it’s not my impression that the corruption has progressed that far.
Of course I could be wrong; I’m not as involved with the LP as I used to be, so maybe I’m out of touch. And certainly one could point to the gutting of the platform as evidence of how far the LP has slid. But it’s my impression that the platform-gutting was put through as something of a stealth measure; moreover, the relative radicalism of the last two nominees, Browne and Badnarik, suggests that radicalism still sells in the Party. (Badnarik was less radical than Browne, but still more than Barr, and at least as much as the other major contenders for the nomination that year.) So although I wouldn’t have been surprised at Ron Paul’s getting the LP nomination if he were to seek it, I’m betting against Barr.
Incidentally, a question for my fellow Rothbardians: Ruwart is clearly the most Rothbardian candidate in the race, so why do I detect so little Rothbardian love for her candidacy? All the talk on LRC, for example, is about Paul and Barr; according to Google, nobody on the LRC blog has so much as mentioned her apart from Anthony Gregory. (The question I asked Walter Block at the end of this post still stands.)
This coming weekend I’ll be presenting a paper on “