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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (68724)	5/27/2008 10:23:45 AM
From: Ron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542787

Will Libertarian Bob Barr 'Naderize' McCain? By STEVEN THOMMA McClatchy Newspapers DENVER \| For years, conservative-minded home-schooling mom Shana Kluck of Tuscaloosa, Ala., voted Republican. No longer. Fed up with big government at home and military intervention overseas, she worked for Ron Paul in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. Now that he’s fallen short, she’s switching parties, traveling to Denver this weekend to help former Republican congressman Bob Barr win the Libertarian presidential nomination. That kind of defection has some Libertarians thinking Barr could turn the party into a magnet for disaffected conservatives, perhaps even drawing votes away from Republican John McCain in close states. “I traditionally voted Republican. But we wanted a conservative and we didn’t get that. McCain is not a conservative,” Kluck said. “With Barr as the Libertarian candidate, people will be willing to cross party lines.” Party members cheered a keynote speech from longtime conservative strategist Richard Viguerie titled “Conservatives Are Off the GOP Reservation. Will They Find a Home in the Libertarian Party?” “Millions of grassroots conservative activists and donors have left the Republican Party and taken with them their volunteer time, their checkbooks and their votes,” he said in his speech. “The Republicans have betrayed us, abandoned the conservative cause,” he said in an interview. While he doesn’t agree with the Libertarians across the board, he does see them as closer to the true conservative cause than the Republicans. Some Libertarians fear that an influx of Republicans could remake their party. Delegates on Saturday found on their chairs an anonymously printed mock news release dated two days in the future proclaiming the renaming of the party as “the New Republican Party.” That could present a challenge to Barr’s nomination, according to Russ Verney, Barr’s manager and the former manager of Ross Perot’s third party campaigns in 1992 and 1996. “The Barr nomination puts the party in a whole new league. Barr would draw more media attention, and more votes,” he said. Libertarians do resemble conservatives in some regards: pushing for smaller federal government and lower taxes, for example. But they tend to break with the Republican Party on many more, notably opposing U.S. military interventions in Iraq and elsewhere, the suspension of civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism, and federal regulation of social or moral issues such as abortion and marriage. How much he could affect the election depends on several factors, including how many states would put him on the ballot and how close the race ends up between McCain and the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. kansascity.com