Bob Barr, former GOP congressman from Georgia, and a member of the Libertarian Party since 2006, is now the LP nominee for president.
He has four main political positions:
(1) Significantly reduce the size of government, (2) promote individual liberty, (3) a national defense based on non-intervention, and (4) ‘securing’ our borders (point 4 being a deliberately vague statement that leads to an anti-immigration interpretation.)
(There would have been a time when it would have been clear to a libertarian that free labor markets were America’s best course, and that immigration should be as free as possible. Those days have passed for the LP, and more so for many Republicans and Democrats. We’re a country in the thrall of a new version of mid-nineteenth century Know-Nothing rhetoric. There is little advocacy for liberalized immigration these days. There will be yet again, and when that time comes, those who have held fast to the principle of a free labor market will have been vindicated.)
Barr leads a party that has never won more than 1% of the vote in a presidential election. In the last few presidential races, the LP has fared far worse, winning only a few hundred thousand votes nationally, while Ralph Nader — as the Green Party nominee — has won more votes. (Even Pat Buchanan in 2000 won more votes than the LP nominee that year.)
A majority of LP delegates, and some party officials, think that Barr will bring more votes to the party than ever before. They’d like to see him double the party’s historic 1980 showing. If Barr does so, then he’ll be close to two million votes nationally.
(I know Barr says he’s in the race to win, but many in the LP would consider two million votes the very definition of victory.)
Barr won’t be a factor in Whitewater’s totals. Obama, or even Hillary Clinton, will carry Whitewater over McCain. Barr won’t change that result; even if Barr were to drain votes from the GOP, he would be draining votes from an already-losing local effort.
This is not the town, and surely not the year, for the GOP to expect a local majority to support the Republican presidential nominee.
Barr may change the result somewhere (and in many places if he receives two-million votes), just not Whitewater, Wisconsin.