The NRA has
passed on endorsing Bush, which is tying any such endorsement to Bush's action on the assault weapons ban. If he renews the ban, it won't endorse Bush, if he doesn't, then he's got it. Which is a huge political problem for Bush, as the assault weapons ban is popular amongst the suburban set the Republicans are trying mightily to hold.
Compounding the problem, as MyDD notes, is that the Libertarians have a star in the making. Hollywood producer (and Emmy and Tony Awards winner) Aaron Russo is the favorite to get the Libertarian Party's nomination. He's already been widely quoted in articles discussing the possibility of a military draft (he's anti-draft, anti-Iraq War), and is becoming a favorite of the gun people (already garnering the endorsement of KeepAndBearArms.com).
As many libertarian-leaning Republicans and disaffected conservatives look for alternatives to Bush, Russo may become a force to be reckoned with. With a unified Right in 2000, the Libertarian ticket received 382,892 votes (Nader and the Greens got 2.9 million). What's more:
In addition, [the Libertarian Party] ran 1,430 candidates -- more than twice as many as all the other third parties combined. We fielded candidates for 255 of the 435 seats in the U.S. House, as well as 25 of the 33 Senate seats up for election, making the Libertarian Party the first third party in 80 years to contest a majority of the seats in Congress. On Election Day, our U.S. House candidates received 1.7 million votes -- the first time any third party has received over a million votes for the U.S. House.
I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say the Libertarians can easily double, if not triple, that total this year, posing a real threat to Bush, particularly in some battleground Western states.
One other wildcard to watch -- the libertarian contingent on the web is huge. In fact, many of the blogs on the Right are actually more libertarian-leaning than movement conservative. It will be interesting to see if Russo can tap into this natural well of support and use it to catapult into bigger prominance. It'll be interesting to track his MeetUp numbers and activity on his campaign blog.