This Time Bomb is Poli-Ticking!

Recently I had responded to a letter to the editor in the Tulsa Beacon which was also picked up and commented on by Third Party Watch (and I even put it on my own website just in case the others eventually take it down).

It is an interesting read if you think that John McCain is the only candidate with something to fear from Bob Barr’s campaign.

I would like to add also to this that Ralph Nader isn’t out of the woods with Bob Barr.  Many people voted for Ralph Nader as a “none of the above” vote.  They did this on name recognition alone.  But at the same time as Nader was a known commodity in the race he garnished much more news than did Michael Badnarik, the previous Libertarian candidate and he gained far more media attention than Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party and David Cobb the Green Party candidate.  I believe as the Libertarians gain speed on this many of the people who still don’t like the Republicrats will come our way.

And, by the way, I am not from Tulsa!

I have been seeing lots of mumbo jumbo in the media about Bob Barr hurting John McCain’s chances for election as the United States president.  I would respectfully disagree with the general assertion that Bob Barr’s candidacy overwhelmingly supports Barrack Obama to McCain’s detriment.  For one, I believe that our mainstream media has fallen into the ill logic that equates Bob Barr’s candidacy to Ralph Nader’s independent run in 2000.  Here the media concluded that the Nader run cost Al Gore the presidency.

Simply put, to believe this conclusion is to accept that only Florida’s vote
mattered in deciding the year 2000 presidential election.

Concerning the matter that Bob Barr will cause John McCain more pain than Barrack Obama is to deny the fact that first and foremost Bob Barr is running as a small government Libertarian candidate which neither Barrack Obama nor John McCain are doing.  Libertarian candidates like Bob Barr are for minimizing government influence over our lives and shrinking the governmental apparatus.  If Al Gore was in fact “Naderized” it would have been more due to the fact that Ralph Nader ran on very similar issues to the Democrats.  Ralph Nader simply put an anti-establishment spin on his message and as a result it resonated well with many younger liberal voters.  Bob Barr on the other hand has serious differences with both John McCain and Barrack Obama regarding the war in Iraq, how to deal with Iran, the overblown fiscal budget, border security, the detainees in Guantanamo and many other issues.  Secondly, not only is Ralph Nader also in this race but so is Cynthia McKinney, who is running for the Green Party.  She is not only a former Democratic congresswoman but she is also an African American. Both Nader and McKinney will put a drag on Barrack Obama rather than John McCain.

There are clear distinctions on the Libertarian sides of the major issues facing our country as opposed to both the Republican and Democratic sides.  I would hope that Americans would be much more responsible in looking closely at the candidates rather than simply whining that a third candidate only hurts their candidate’s chances of winning.  When it comes down to it, if there is more merit in John McCain’s positions he won’t have to worry about Barrack Obama nor Bob Barr.

Personally, I think anyone should look at where Bob Barr stands before deciding against him.