John Zogby may not be the most reliable of pollsters, and his "interactive" poll of this week is probably skewed toward internet junkies who are more likely to include Libertarians and disappointed Ron Paul supporters.
Zogby's poll has Bob Barr in high single digits in a number of states, not just the "quirky" places like Oregon, Minnesota, and his home state of Georgia. And some of the other more conservative polls have Barr pulling in what would otherwise presumably be GOP voters in states like Colorado and Arizona.
But are Libertarian-leaning voters really turning away from McCain? Why?
Because McCain is not close enough to Bush? Give me a break!
As something of a Libertarian myself, I think Obama has some appeal to those who now may say they support Barr. On several important issues, Barr is closer to Obama than to McCain. This is especially true in matters of civil liberties and Presidential powers.
I guess the first question I have about the Barr candidacy is whether these voters are really those who would otherwise vote for McCain or the generic GOP candidate. Nobody would suggest that Nader voters in 2000 would have voted for Bush if Nader had not been on the ballot.
Is it possible that Barr is attracting voters who might otherwise vote for Obama? Do these voters embrace the gold standard, etc. or have they just been energized by Ron Paul's quixotic campaign, where the only GOP candidate who made sense on the Iraq issue was treated by the media as a nutcase? And maybe they preferred budget surpluses to the massive debt that Bush will leave with us.
One could make the argument that McCain is the most Libertarian of the GOP candidates other than Paul. He used to oppose torture; he opposed the gay marriage junk; he was part of the "gang of fourteen" who were concerned about so-called "conservative" judges who are actually statists.
So why are Libertarians turning away from McCain? First, it's all about the war, which Libertarians recognize as the biggest tax hike in history.
And one could argue that only Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul were truly right from the beginning on the Iraq war. And was any Democratic candidate other than Kucinich as good as Paul on the war issue back in the primary debate season?
Barr has matured since the days of the Clinton impeachment. He and Paul were among a very few Washington politicians to sign on to the American Freedom Agenda. This is about civil liberties and Presidential abuse of power. And has anyone else noticed that the "imperial Presidency" is one of the "untouchable issues" in this campaign? See below:
http://www.americanfreedomagenda.org/
Though I have voted Democratic in most elections since 1972, when I first was eligible, I have also voted Libertarian from time to time, usually in state election contests. Libertarians are not all about gun rights, or the gold standard. We are also about preserving the civil justice system
(something that the late free-market economist Milton Friedman believed in as an effective check on capitalist excess and that most of my fellow lawyers are very concerned about). That was a big part of the FISA debate.
I have been supporting Obama since he announced. And my informal polling suggests that Libertarian-leaning people are just as likely to be leaning toward Obama than to McCain.
So is our candidate reaching out to Libertarians? I think he is, with the remarks about the recent Supreme Court decision on gun rights (a decision that I disagree with). But it's subtle, and maybe that is best.
I know that Ron Paul is regularly dissed here, but I'd like to see Obama or at least some of his surrogates reach out to the Libertarian crowd. Maybe some of those Barr voters in Colorado, Montana, Arizona, or even Texas (Zogby's poll has Texas close largely because of Barr) would go for our candidate.