Citing Chris Hayes‘ Nation essay on Democratic-leaning activist groups working to scuttle key progressive programs, Kevin Drum laments “the biggest threat to the Democratic agenda these days isn’t the Republican Party.  It’s the Democratic Party.”

But, of course, the same could be said for the Republican Party.  (Or, for that matter, the Libertarian Party.)

We’ve got the Club for Growth, Red State, and other conservative action organizations working to defeat not-fiscally-conservative-enough Republican incumbents in the primaries, not caring that they’re almost guaranteeing the victory of even-less-conservative Democrats.  We’ve got conservative bloggers, pundits, and show hosts lambasting Republican leaders for making sensible choices and issuing such over-the-top attacks on Obama nominees that even moderately conservative Republicans are embarrassed and have to go on the defensive.

It’s the nature of Big Tent politics that there are as many casualties from shots fired inside the tent as from without.

I was invited to participate in Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr’s first blogger conference call and decided to do so as a public service to OTB readers.

I called in three minutes before the call was scheduled to start and was the first one in.   Doing so required entering two different sets of pin numbers, which strikes me as not very Libertarian.  Then again, the call started late and (unlike every other such call I’ve participated in) everyone was live the minute they completed the login gauntlet, so I was able to chat with Ed Morrissey and Jazz Shaw while I waited.

Jazz points out that Barr finally has an Issues Page up for examination.  I’ve yet to examine it.

Congressman Barr joined us at 2:09 and we were apparently the entirety of the audience ( a couple of others joined in during the call).   The difference between major parties and third parties, I guess.

What follows is a summary, not a transcription, unless quotation marks are used.

Morrissey: What does Barr hope to accomplish with this campaign?

Barr: Three goals:

1. Sour political climate. Current system not serving us well. Presents opportunity, especially with maturation of Libertarian Party, to make this truly competitive three-way race. Winning our goal.
2. People not bound to “artificial constraints of two party system.” Young people not as wedded.
3. Discuss issues of importance to people in “more fundamentally constitutional ways.” Beyond sound bytes. FISA, e.g., about listening into conversations of Americans, not just al Qaeda operations. Econ and tax policy, go beyond “earmarks” and other simplistic solutions. “Get people to focus on what a $3.1 trillion budget is” and whether all spending needed.

Shaw:  Where to make substantive cuts in spending?

Barr: Most president can’t do without Congress.  “First day in office” mandate 10 percent cut in EOP spending to “set the example.”  Both parties part of same fraternity, need a broker.  Would be beholden to country, not party.  His victory would “send shock waves” and demonstrate that they would be out if they don’t fall in line with the people’s wishes.   Would call for freeze in federal spending as starting point.

Would follow Reagan’s example with Grace Commission to identify and study waste, fraud, and abuse.  Would folow through better, though.  Two commissions:  1) Identify every agency’s Constitutional basis and cost-benefit analysis.  Slate for disbanding if fails to meet test. Dept. of Education likely at top of list.  Stands in the way of improvements at state and local level.  Dept of Commerce does “little more than spend billions of dollars putting out statistics” and the Dept of Energy, most of whose legitimate functions could be spun off.

Me:  Given constraints of Electoral College, which states does he think he can win?  Map to 270?  And how to break through fraternity as outsider?

Barr:  Russ Birney, the campaign manager, is “the best guy in the country” to figure this out after experience with Ross Perot’s campaign.  Will have to “prioritize our efforts” by focusing on states and regions where we feel we’re competitive.  The Mountain West states, “common sense tells us,” would be more receptive than Northeast.   New Hampshire, Georgia, and others also quite likely receptive.

Me: Follow-up:   Perot won zero electoral Votes.  How is 2008 different?

Barr:  Perot got close to 20 percent of the popular vote in an environment less ripe for a third party.   We “need to boost our poll numbers to meet the requirement to participate in the debates” and they’ll do that by focusing on key states.

Shaw: Switching to foreign policy, what would a President Barr say to Israel right now?

Barr: Would emphasize our friendship but also the need for cool heads.  Iran not at all close to posing threat to Israel, so rash action not warranted.   We’re making a mistake and boost Ahmadinejad’s prestige unduly by focusing so much on him, especially since he’s not in charge.

Overall, despite the call’s brevity, it was an interesting exercise.  Barr comes across as serious, with none of the “Crazy Aunt in the Basement” vibe that one got from Ross Perot, the narcisism of Ralph Nader, or the Wrestlemania circus act of Jesse Ventura.  He’s an intelligent, experienced guy who has command of the issues.

At best, though, his candidacy can serve as a platform for getting out a message.  It’s simply inconceivable that he’ll win a single state, much less 270 Electoral Votes.  Jazz noted in the call that all Barr has to do is to deny either McCain or Obama 270 votes.  But, at that point, the election would go to the House of Representatives with its 435 Members, none of whom are Libertarians. As such, as much as third party candidates hate to hear this, Barr’s role is that of spoiler.  He is likely to take away votes that would otherwise go to John McCain, making him essentially an Obama stalking horse.

None of that’s to say that Barr doesn’t have a right to run.  He does.  And it may well be that he doesn’t think there’s enough difference between Obama and McCain or the Democrats and Republicans for it much to matter.

UPDATE:  Jazz Shaw and Ed Morrissey have their own summaries and reactions.

Former Representative Bob Barr has won the Libertarian Party nomination for President, narrowly defeating longtime Party activist Mary Ruwart. This is a rather welcome change for the LP, who have taken to nominating more radical, but relatively unknown candidates in past election cycles. As I’ve said before, Barr is their best candidate since Paul in 1988, and is someone I think has a real chance of spoiling McCain in a few states if he’s able to build any kind of campaign momentum at all. Time’s going to tell on that one, though, since he’s only raised about $127,000 as of the time of this writing) for his campaign in the two weeks since its inception. One thing he is guaranteed to do, though, is to have a higher media profile than any recent Libertarian candidate.

Here’s a roundup of other takes from around the Blogosphere:

Will Wilkinson yawns at the news:

I am not excited. Nor would I have been excited had Mary Ruwart taken. Mike Gravel? Now that would have excited me. I just like that guy, and I think he has a much better claim to being libertarian that Bob Barr, who voted for the PATRIOT Act oh so many years ago. And Wayne Allyn Root struck me as a first-class tool at the Reason event. So my LP enthusiasm meter remains, as always, pegged close to zero.

Tim Lee sees this as a bad idea.

Ultimately, I wish the LP would just go away. The structure of American elections dooms third parties to perpetual failure and obscurity, and that, in turn, creates a vicious cycle where the most talented activists and potential candidates go elsewhere, causing the party to be even more out of touch and politically tone-deaf in the next election. But given that the party is going to nominate somebody, Barr was probably the best choice. He’s a reasonably credible candidate, he’s got decent media skills, and so far, at least, I haven’t seen him take any positions that I strongly disagree with (since his road-to-damascus conversion in 2006, anyway). But I don’t plan to support his candidacy because while he may be the least-bad option on this November’s ballot, he certainly isn’t the kind of person I want associated with libertarianism. And every vote he gets will mean more visibility for the embarrassing candidate the party is likely to nominate in 2012.

Radley Balko is more optimistic:

Barr has the potential to win more votes than any LP nominee in history. If he helps the GOP learn that it’s time to boot the neocons and pay more attention to its limited government wing, all the better.

This is a good thing.

Jesse Walker likes Bob Barr, but sees Wayne Allyn Root as a disappointing VP choice.

But given the number of party activists who are wary of the former congressman, and given Barr’s deficiencies on several issues, it would have made sense to round off the ticket with a more hardcore libertarian. The ideal choice was Steve Kubby, a medical marijuana activist whose signature issue could have balanced Barr’s past support for the drug war. Instead the delegates opted for another member of the party’s conservative wing. Worse yet, the conservative they picked was Wayne Allyn Root, a man with the deportment of a Ronco pitchman with a squirrel in his pants.

It might not matter in the long run. No one pays much attention to the fellow at the bottom of the ticket. But it’s a tone-deaf, disappointing decision.

Jim Henley sees hope that Barr on the ticket will mean the GOP will return to mouthing small government platitudes while ignoring small government principles.

I don’t expect Barr’s candidacy to really get Republicans to, in Radley’s words, “learn that it’s time to boot the neocons and pay more attention to its limited government wing,” because I don’t think the GOP’s limited-government wing is either very large or very popular. What might happen is, over the last few years, Republican leaders and para-intellectuals have stopped paying even lip-service to the Party’s libertarianish wing, even expressing open contempt – if Barr/Root cost McCain the election the GOP might return to the era of mouthing limited-government platitudes while reifying the corporate state.

Something really strange is going on with the Libertarian Party. I mean, more so than usual — I wouldn’t bother to point out the obvious.

Their annual convention is going on as I write. Some highlights:

• Bob Barr, most famous for opposing medical marijuana and for his role in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, is running to be its presidential nominee.

• So, possibly, is Tucker Carlson, the bowtied guy who filled the Pat Buchanan chair on Crossfire.

• Richard Viguerie, who has sent me approximately 6,000 emails since railing that Rudy McRomney wasn’t conservative enough at CPAC 2007, has just delivered the Keynote Address. The text is available at Richard Viguerie’s Conservative HQ.com.

What in the world is going on here? These people aren’t even from the libertarian wing of the GOP, let alone honest-to-goodness, according to Hoyle big-L Libertarians.

The LP has always been something of a joke as a political party. Basically, they’re a bunch of folks who get into a room to debate which of Ayn Rand’s books was the best and to rail against the injustice that hemp is illegal. Why, the Founding Fathers loved hemp!

But at least they were predictable. You could always count on them being true to their principles. Indeed, it’s right there on the masthead:

What’s up with this cast of characters? It’s not as if embracing these guys will suddenly make them legitimate contenders for winning the presidency. So, why compromise without some gain?

As Alex reports below, former Republican congressman Bob Barr has thrown his hat into the Libertarian Party nomination contest. Assuming Barr does secure the Libertarian nomination–a big assumption, given that the LP isn’t exactly known for picking the most electable presidential candidates–how much of an impact will Barr really have in November, and if so, on whom? Certainly the conventional wisdom is that LP candidates generally draw from Republicans more than Democrats, but would that hold in this election year?

One of Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder’s correspondents suggests that presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama may face more of a challenge from Barr than John McCain will:

There is a line of thought to which i am tempted to subscribe at this early hour that Barr actually hurts Obama more than McCain. Most of the libertarian voters would probably be tempted to vote against McCain and the horrible Republican record on [the Iraq war and civil liberties] and if Obama was the only choice, Obama could get it (since he has actually pretty good on the narrow subject of civil liberties) which would be a way to secure those margins in the West to the Democratic party for quite a while.

It is difficult to know for sure where those voters would have gone but when a Republican constituency goes from swing voters with two choices to third-party leaners, it is a loss opportunity for Obama at the very least.

It seems more likely to me, however, that Barr’s appeal will largely be to social conservatives who remember his behavior in Congress more than his (partial) conversion to libertarian orthodoxy. That said, the continued acrimony in the Democratic primaries could drive at least some of the rump Clinton campaign’s supporters, who decades ago we might have called the “Reagan Democrats,” into Barr’s camp in November to Obama’s detriment, at least if the polls in states like West Virginia are to be believed.

Daniel Larrison notes the irony that Mike Gravel, announcing that he’s leaving the Democrats (for whose nomination he came in dead last) his and running for the Libertarian Party nomination, gave the following explanation:

The fact is, the Democratic Party today is no longer the party of FDR. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism — all of which I find anathema to my views.

That is, after all, precisely FDR’s legacy. And, I’d add, it’s not like libertarianism was the dominant strain in Democratic Party when he announced that he was seeking their nomination.

GWU political scientist John Sides is the latest individual to dispute the thesis that Ron Paul is a revolutionary figure in American politics. My working guess (given the givens about social scientists generally, but not knowing him personally) is that Sides is less sympathetic to Paul’s agenda than a libertarian (on the big L/little l boundary) like me, but all of his points about Paul’s prospects are in line with my thoughts; in brief:

1) He is introducing few new ideas that are gaining any traction, which I will define as “earning the support of a substantial fraction of the American public.” His opposition to the Iraq War and immigration already tap into healthy veins of American public opinion and indeed the views of many Democrats (re: Iraq) and Republicans (re: immigration). So it is unclear that he is having any independent impact. His opposition to federal government programs is in line with Americans’ skepticism of government, but this general skepticism tends to give way to broad support for many specific programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and most forms of gun control. The American public is not consistently libertarian and Ron Paul’s doctrinaire species of libertarianism is unlikely to win favor. …

2) His ideas and electoral support are not causing the other Republican candidates to change their strategy. Independent candidates and third parties can sometimes force the two major parties to tack in their ideological direction. If so, even if they lose, as they almost always do in American politics, they can still have an effect. Paul is if anything, having the opposite effect. His opposition to the Iraq War and the Patriot Act only encourages his fellow Republican candidates to defend Iraq and the War on Terrorism by beating up on Paul. If Paul runs as an independent, this could change, but I suspect that either party’s nominee can respond effectively with cheap talk — i.e., they will minimize defections to Paul with rhetoric rather than with any substantive shift in their goals or issue positions.

3) Most importantly, he is not building any infrastructure that would ensure his impact can survive the 2008 campaign. By infrastructure, I mean a formal organization, and one that is committed to something other than Paul himself. Indeed, he is doing the opposite. His campaign is driven by grassroots supporters, who, taking advantage of the Internet’s ability to lower transaction costs, raise money and organize events. Such a “bottom-up” campaign is a noteworthy departure from traditional campaigns, but different does not mean better in this case. What will remain when his campaign folds? Little, it would appear, unless he is planning a new political organization or party. Will his supporters constitute a political force? If he is not going to lead an organization of some kind, then likely they will not, especially those of his supporters who are otherwise politically alienated or inactive.

I think the third point in opposition to Paul is the most salient to many libertarian-leaning voters. We’ve consistently seen libertarian presidential candidates run for office without leaving behind any infrastructure for the future success of the movement; arguably the only libertarian figure of any stripe to have a meaningful impact on national politics in modern history is Barry Goldwater, and the support infrastructure he and his supporters built was hijacked by the statist-conservative Richard Nixon in the late 60s and the Christian Right in the 70s after Nixon’s fall from grace. Paul has shown none of the wherewithal in his past Libertarian Party presidential run or during his two decades of congressional service, other than building a reputation as “Dr. No” and having his snout at the trough for his district like all 534 of his other colleagues.

On another (related) Ron Paul note, I think those conservatives who took Paul’s comments on Meet the Press about the possibility of Iran invading Israel as coming from ignorance about Iranian military capabilities miss the point; it’s not that Paul doesn’t think Iran is a threat to Israel, it’s that Paul doesn’t care whether or not Iran is a threat to Israel. If nothing else, his isolationism is consistent. Oh, and he’s at best a neoconfederate sympathizer too. What’s not to love?

Libertarian bloggers from across the political spectrum have come out against Ron Paul.

Right-libertarian lawprof Ilya Somin believes that “Ron Paul deserves credit for his strong commitment to limited government on many issues, including taxes, regulation, federal spending, and federalism-based limits on federal government power.” Yet, he feels unable to support Paul, even as a protest candidate, because “There are also a number of major nonlibertarian elements to Paul’s issue positions, some of which are extremely disturbing.”

As the Club for Growth describes here, Ron Paul has opposed virtually all free trade agreements. Few ideas are more fundamental to libertarianism than free trade. As the Club has documented, Paul also has opposed school voucher programs.

[...]

Perhaps worst of all, Paul has bought into the conservative nativist line on immigration. He not only favors a massive crackdown on illegal immigration but even seems to endorse the view that immigration should be “reduced, not expanded” whether legal or not. To my mind, the freedom to choose where you live and the right to move to a freer and more prosperous society are among the most important of all libertarian principles. From a libertarian perspective, our relative openness to immigration is one of the most admirable aspects of America.

[...]

Lastly, like David Bernstein, I am troubled by Paul’s refusal to repudiate the Stormfront neo-Nazis, racists, 9/11 “Truthers,” and other assorted wackos who have endorsed him. Paul is not responsible for the views of these people, and I do not believe that he personally agrees with them. However, his apparent unwillingness to distance himself from them suggests that he is insensitive to the despicable nature of their views, and the significant damage that association with them could do not only to his campaign, but to libertarian causes more generally.

Neolibertarian Dale Franks has a much more detailed criticism of Paul’s statement on racism .

Now, we can certainly have a discussion about whether government’s proper role is to ban private discrimination, but I think we can all agree that, at minimum, government itself cannot be allowed to discriminate on the base of race. I think Equality Under the Law is supposed to be the ideal.

In any event, this statement of Mr. Paul’s is certainly true in part, e.g. that the government should not be picking winners and losers in the marketplace, nor should it be distributing pelf to favored groups. But the idea that the government played any significant part in the racial practices of early America is simply ludicrous. Indeed, before FDR, most Americans had a fairly tangential relationship to the Federal government. Indeed, it was the federal government’s generally hands-off attitudes towards racial matters that led slavery to fester, and after that Jim Crow.

Left-libertarian Ron Chusid is dismissive of the idea that Ron Paul is a libertarian at all: “Confusing Paul’s social conservativism with libertarianism reinforces the view that libertarians are just Republicans who have tried marijuana.”

Sometimes when diverse groups support a candidate it is a sign of broad appeal, however when both libertarians and neo-Nazis claim Paul as their preferred candidate at least one of these groups must be badly mistaken. The tactics used by many Paul supporters who habitually spam blogs which say anything negative about him further compounds the problem. The comments by Paul’s supporters far too often are characterized by total lack of respect for opposing viewpoints, racism, and belief in conspiracy theories. Any disagreement with Paul, and anything short of one hundred percent approval of his actions, is treated as a sign of either idiocy or evil motives by his supporters.

I’ve recently half-jokingly suggested that it might be in the best interests of libertarians if a publication such as Reason were to distance themselves from Paul. I’m finding an increasing number of libertarians who have expressed similar views, or least frustrations with aspects of Paul’s campaign. Liberty Papers has frequently noted such concerns and and summarizes them in a post today. Freedom Democrats expresses concern with Paul’s “association with the cultural right.”

Now, I find the guilt-by-association business troubling. It’s not surprising that white supremacists, who have been targeted by the federal government for half a century, would gravitate toward the candidate with the least intrusive vision of federal power. That he’s also a closed borders guy is an additional bonus.

Candidates shouldn’t be tarred with the views of those who profess support for them. Further, I’m not sure they have any obligation to denounce said groups. That’s probably especially true for candidates whose whole rationale for running is that people’s private lives are none of the government’s business.

I must agree with Somin — and my OTB colleague Alex Knapp — that the concept of a closed borders, trade protectionist libertarian is paradoxical. Free trade is a founding principle of libertarian thought, going back to Adam Smith, if not earlier.

That Somin, Chusid, and Franks — whose political views are wildly divergent on many issues — all consider themselves “libertarian,” though, says quite a bit about the movement. While most of us think of libertarianism as the only ideologically coherent political view with strong support in the American system, there’s obviously plenty of room for disagreement. Presumably, considering he was once the Libertarian Party nominee for president, there’s room for Ron Paul.

Image via Crash Martinez.

Michael Kinsley argues that the intellectual positions of the two major parties are incoherent and concludes that libertarians “are going to be an increasingly powerful force in politics.”

Many people feel that neither party offers a coherent set of principles that they can agree with. For them, the choice is whether you believe in Big Government or you don’t. And if you don’t, you call yourself a libertarian. Libertarians are against government in all its manifestations. Domestically, they are against social-welfare programs. They favor self-reliance (as they see it) over Big Government spending. Internationally, they are isolationists. Like George Washington, they loathe “foreign entanglements,” and they think the rest of the world can go to hell without America’s help. They don’t care–or at least they don’t think the government should care–about what people are reading, thinking, drinking, smoking or doing in bed.

[...]

Republicans are far more likely to identify themselves as libertarians and to vilify the government in the abstract. And yet Republicans have a clearer vision of what constitutes a good society and a well-run planet and are quicker to try to impose this vision on the rest of us. Now that the Republican Party is in trouble, critics are advising it to free itself of the religious right on issues like abortion and gay rights. That is, the party should become less communitarian and more libertarian. With Democrats, it’s the other way around.

Very few Democrats self-identify as libertarians, but they are in fact much more likely to have a live-and-let-live attitude toward the lesbian couple next door or the Islamofascist dictator halfway around the world. And every time the Democrats lose an election, critics scold that they must put less emphasis on the sterile rights of individuals and more emphasis on responsibilities to society. That is, they should become less libertarian and more communitarian. Usually this boils down to advocating mandatory so-called voluntary national service by people younger than whoever is doing the advocating.

[...]

The chance of the two political parties realigning so conveniently is slim. But the party that does well in the future will be the one that makes the better guess about where to place its bets. My money’s on the libertarians. People were shocked a couple of weeks ago when Ron Paul–one of those mysterious Republicans who seem to be running for President because everyone needs a hobby–raised $5 million from July through September, mostly on the Internet. Paul is a libertarian. In fact, he was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1988. The computer revolution has bred a generation of smart loners, many of them rich and some of them complacently Darwinian, convinced that they don’t need society–nor should anyone else. They are going to be an increasingly powerful force in politics.

The problem with this thesis is that most indications point to a more communitarian government rather than a more libertarian one. Socialized medicine is happening incrementally but its rise is inexorable. Social Security isn’t going away and now that the Baby Boomers are starting to collect it’ll become an even bigger program.

Yes, we’ll likely become more free in some ways, with society becoming more friendly to gays, sexual license, and perhaps even recreational drug use. But we’ll be less free in all manner of other ways as the nanny state regulates all manner of formerly private activities and as the information age makes privacy a much less widespread commodity.

Democratic Representative Ellen Tauscher has apparently replaced Joe Lieberman as Netroots Enemy #1, according to a front page story in today’s WaPo by Juliet Eilperin and Michael Grunwald.

The Democratic majority was only three weeks old, but by Jan. 26, the grass-roots and Net-roots activists of the party’s left wing had already settled on their new enemy: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), the outspoken chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. Progressive blogs — including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher — were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its “Worst Offender.” And in Tauscher’s East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

[...]

The anti-Tauscher backlash illustrates how the Democratic takeover has energized and emboldened the party’s liberal base, ratcheting up the pressure on the party’s moderates. That pressure is also reaching House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a San Francisco liberal who recognizes that moderate voters helped sweep Democrats into the majority. Pelosi has clashed with Tauscher in the past, but she’s now eager to hold together her diverse caucus and to avoid the mistakes of GOP leaders who routinely ignored their moderates.

So far, Pelosi and her leadership team seem determined to protect Tauscher and her 60 New Democrats — up from 47 before the election. In fact, the day after Working for Us, the new progressive political action committee, targeted Tauscher, Pelosi sought her out at a caucus meeting and assured her: “I’m not going to let this happen.” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) spent 20 minutes complaining to Working for Us founder Steve Rosenthal, who swiftly removed the hit list of “Worst Offenders” from the group’s Web site.

Said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly: “We want to protect our incumbents. That’s what we’re about.”

Democratic leaders want their activists to focus on beating Republicans. But the grass roots and Net roots believe the political tide is shifting their way, and they can provide the money, ground troops and buzz to challenge Democratic incumbents they don’t like. MoveOn.org had two Bay Area chapters before the election; now it has 15, and they could all go to work against Tauscher in a primary. “Absolutely, we could take her out,” said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga — better known as Kos — the Bay Area blogger behind the influential Daily Kos site.

The Left Blogosphere is far ahead of their Right counterparts in organization and energy but lags substantially in political maturity. Keeping a governing coalition together requires the likes of Tauscher being included at the leadership table. Purging non-purists will lead to permanent minority status. Done with sufficient enthusiasm, it leads to the Libertarian Party.

Conservative firebrand Bob Barr has quit the Republican Party and become a Libertarian.

A former Georgia congressman who helped spark President Clinton’s impeachment has quit the Republican Party to become a Libertarian, saying he is disillusioned with the GOP on issues such as spending and privacy.

Bob Barr, who served eight years as a Republican congressman before losing his seat in 2002, announced Friday that he is now a “proud, card-carrying Libertarian.” And he encouraged others to join him.

“It’s something that’s been bothering me for quite some time, the direction in which the party has been going more and more toward big government and disregard toward privacy and civil liberties,” said Barr, 58, a lawyer and consultant living in Atlanta. “In terms of where the country needs to be going to get back to our constitutional roots … I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to do that is to work with a party that practices what it preaches, and that is the Libertarian Party.”

It would be unkind to note that Barr has nothing to lose by this move, since he’s unelectable anyway. So I won’t note that.

I’m sure that there are plenty of us in the Barry Goldwater-Phil Gramm wing of the party who are tired of the profligate spending and catering to the more fanatical elements of the religious right that has marked the GOP of late. I still believe that it makes more sense to try to fix the problems from within than the splinter off into another party.

While there may in fact be more Americans that are, broadly speaking, libertarian than that are ideologically liberal or conservative, there is not a governing coalition to be had. A platform that would satisfy Bob Barr would not satisfy the libertarian left. Indeed, the divide between the laissez faire economic (low taxes, limited regulation of the economy) wing and social anarchy (drug legalization, gay marriage, cops are evil) wing of the libertarian movement is far greater than that between the social and economic conservatives within the GOP.

An interesting article in the Economist (via Instapundit) suggests that this was indeed the case.

Libertarians are a generally Republican-leaning constituency, but over the last few years, their discontent has grown plain. It isn’t just the war, which some libertarians supported, but the corruption and insider dealing, and particularly the massive expansion of spending. Mr Bush’s much-vaunted prescription drug benefit for seniors, they fume, has opened up another gaping hole in America’s fiscal situation, while the only issue that really seemed to energise congress was passing special laws to keep a brain-damaged woman on life support.

I’d say that is a fair summary of the problems many libertarian minded people (such as myself) have had with the Republicans.

In two of the seats where control looks likely to switch, Missouri and Montana, the Libertarian party pulled more votes than the Democratic margin of victory. Considerably more, in Montana. If the Libertarian party hadn’t been on the ballot, and the three percent of voters who pulled the “Libertarian” lever had broken only moderately Republican, Mr Burns would now be in office.

Note to the Republicans: stop spending so much money you fools.

Of course, this kind of thing isn’t without its own problems.

Does this mean that the libertarians are becoming a force in national elections, much as Ralph Nader managed to cost Al Gore a victory in 2000? Hope springs eternal among third-party afficionadoes, but the nature of the American electoral system, which directly elects representatives in a first-past-the-post system, makes it nearly impossible for third parties to gain traction. The last time it happened was in the 1850’s, when the Whig party dissolved over internal disputes about slavery, opening the way for the emerging Republican party to put Abraham Lincoln in office. And acting as a spoiler is dubiously effective at achieving one’s goals. In theory, it could pull the Repubicans towards the Libertarians, but in practice, it may just elect Democrats, pushing the nation’s economic policy leftwards.

Hopefully it will have the effect of inducing the Republicans take the libertarian wing of their party more seriously. And with Bush’s policies, I don’t think there would be much difference in terms of the “leftward shift in the nations economic policies”. After all, Bush hasn’t seen a government program he didn’t like and would spend lots of money on.

Update: Here is an amusing story about the Montana Senate race between Burns and Tester.

Libertarian Party candidate Stan Jones garnered about 10,000 votes, making him a likely target for accusations of being a spoiler because Libertarians are generally seen as siphoning votes from Republican candidates.

This is the Stan Jones who turned himself blue by drinking colloidal silver out of fear that Y2K would devestate the country and leave the health care system in shambles. No really.

No, it’s not Lucy Baxley, the current Democratic lieutenant governor, or incumbent Bob Riley. It’s a candidate who couldn’t even get on the ballot but is nonetheless getting national attention.

Loretta Nall, the Libertarian Party’s write-in candidate for governor of Alabama, is campaigning on her cleavage and hoping that voters will eventually focus on her platform. “It started out as a joke, but it blew up into something huge,” said Nall, a 32-year-old with dyed blond hair.

Her campaign is offering T-shirts and marijuana stash boxes adorned with a photo of her with a plunging neckline and the words: “More of these boobs.” Below that are pictures of other candidates for governor — including Republican incumbent Bob Riley and Democratic Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley — and the words: “And less of these boobs.”

Her Web site has a cartoon of someone stuffing bills down the front of her low-cut top. And for $50 donation she apparently offers to show a cartoon of herself flashing her breasts.

Nall, who spoke in an interview Friday on the Capitol steps, realizes that is about as close as she is going to get to the governor’s office. But her outrageous antics have helped her attract attention not normally enjoyed by write-in candidates.

Nall is calling for the withdrawal of the Alabama National Guard from Iraq, tax credits for sending children to private school and home schooling, opting out of the No Child Left Behind Act, legalizing marijuana, and not complying with the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act.

The Libertarian Party could not collect the 40,000 voter signatures needed to get her name on the ballot, and she has not reached the $25,000 threshold in contributions that would require her to file a campaign finance report.

Despite the political handicaps, she knows how to get free attention. Early in her campaign, she talked about how her misdemeanor arrest for marijuana possession in 2002 led her to start the U.S. Marijuana Party. Then she entertained readers of her campaign Web site with lots of information about her personal life, including a discussion of why she doesn’t wear panties.

Going beyond the mainstream media reports, I have searched for more information, especially photographs, to provide added value to the readers. It turns out not to be much of a service:

via Bill Jempty

Gone Hollywood

UPDATE: The Nall campaign is getting more national attention, including an appearance on Keith Olbermann’s show Wednesday the 25th. Here’s the video:

Jeralyn Merritt is impressed with her candidacy and notes that if Nall loses, she’s already planning to run for Congress in 2008. One imagines some sort of double entendre about Capitol Hills will be employed.

Ryan Sager has a piece at RealClear Politics wondering what the Republicans have done to lose libertarian voters and trying to figure out how they can woo them back. He bases his analysis on polling results and definitions provided by Gallup, “which labels as libertarian voters who say they oppose the use of government either to ‘promote traditional values’ or to ‘do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses.’” He also cites a Pew survey which “finds 50 percent of libertarians identifying as Republicans, 41 percent as Democrats.”

Given that libertarians’ traditional home has been in the conservative base of the Republican Party for about five decades, as part of a strained partnership with social conservatives, their almost 50-50 split between the two parties today is big news.

Ryan thinks the answer is that too many libertarians would rather sit in their hot tubs than get out to vote. This strikes me as quite unlikely. Indeed, the idea that libertarians should naturally be Republicans is bizarre and ungrounded in reality.

Yes, there is a large group of economic libertarians who are likely to be most comfortable in the GOP. Call them “Phil Gramm-” or “Jack Kemp Republicans.” (Of course, the fact that the most obvious names to mind are of retired Republicans may say something about the decline of that wing of the GOP.) But there are also lifestyle libertarians who are chiefly motivated by drug legalization, sexual freedom, gay rights, and similar issues. Those people are much more affiliated with the Democrats. And always have been.

Indeed, the fact that libertarians don’t neatly align with one party or another is the reason there is a Libertarian Party. The fact that they only comprise 9 percent of the population explains why the Libertarian Party is spectacularly unsuccessful.

Scott Elliot analyzes current trends and thinks that, twenty years from now, the Libertarians will be a viable party.

In the next twenty years or so, we’ll become a three-party political system. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party will be joined by the Libertarian Party as a legitimate force in American politics. The Libertarian Party will grow substantially over the next couple of decades, pulling support from both the GOP and the Democrats.

Here’s the reason why: Many Americans are libertarian at heart – they just don’t recognize it…yet. These folks believe in less restrictions on behaviors (a liberal or Democratic view) and less involvement by the government in economic issues (a conservative or Republican view). Right now, many closet Libertarians are counted among the two major political parties. As Democrats continue to espouse increasingly liberal economic policies – such as universal healthcare – it is becoming more and more difficult for libertarians in their ranks to remain. Likewise, philosophical libertarians in the GOP are getting increasingly uncomfortable with the growing influence of the values-based politics – such as pro-life policies and the Defense of Marriage Act – in their party.

This has been predicted before. The bottom line is that the Libertarians will never be viable at the national level unless 1) there are radical structural changes in the American electoral system and 2) the Libertarians become markedly less weird.

For a fuller examination of these points, see my discussions about this with Michael J. Totten, Stephen Green, Bill Quick, and Robin Goodfellow.