You write:

“The right question is: Can he put L ideas into play better than anyone else?”

Okay, great. I can agree that that is the question.

The answer to the question is, “in order to put L ideas into play better than anyone else, he has to put L ideas into play.”

So far, I’m not seeing much evidence that the ideas Barr has been putting into play since coming to the LP are, for the most part, L ideas; nor have I seen any evidence of a sudden change toward L ideas on his part since the launch of his exploratory committee.

Federalism and Constitutionalism are interesting procedural concepts. They are not, however, “libertarian ideas.” They can be used for libertarian purposes or non-libertarian purposes, and Barr made it pretty clear on Hannity & Colmes last night that he’d prefer to see them used for conservative, not libertarian, purposes. I wouldn’t rate that particular outing a “20” unless you put a negative sign in front of it.

Thank you. It’s been a while since I’ve had this good a laugh.

CAVUTO: As Obama, Clinton, McCain, they keep pushing ahead, now word that a new name could be entering this race—my next guest forming an exploratory committee to run as a third-party candidate.

With us now, former Republican Congressman from Georgia Bob Barr.

Congressman, good to have you.

BARR: Neil, it is always a pleasure to be with you.

CAVUTO: John McCain does not cut it for you?

BARR: No, John McCain does not cut it for this libertarian. And he’s not going to be able to cut it for an awful lot of Americans out there that see in John McCain more of the same old problem, Washington insider, status quo, big government, that Americans have come really to look very, very disdainfully on.

CAVUTO: All right. What have other Republicans said to you, Congressman?

BARR: Well, I have heard mostly good things from other Republicans who are very upset with not having a real choice, of being faced with a very closed system.

Some Republicans certainly are upset, because they feel that anybody that would dare try and play in their game—that is, a game that has been controlled for 150 years by just two parties—is somehow un-American. But most people that I have talked to and that have communicated with me are very excited about the possibility.

CAVUTO: All right.

But there is that—and you have heard this before, I am sure, sir, that you’re going to take votes away from John McCain, presumably. And it could change, but that would probably hand the White House, in that event, as we look at all the ones who are considering or have announced a third-party run—which I guess in this case would be a fifth-, sixth-, seventh, or eighth-party run—that it’s going to hand the White House to a Democrat.

What do you say?

BARR: Well, frankly, I would worry about John McCain siphoning votes away from my candidacy, if I run.

(LAUGHTER)

But I’m not going to whine about that.

CAVUTO: Good point.

BARR: Really, the sad state of affairs is, if you have two major-party candidates, and each one of them simply whines that they might lose the election because somebody else might get into the race on their side or against them, it really ought to cause those two parties, and particularly Senator McCain and the Republicans, to take a long, hard look at why their platform is so weak, why their candidate might be so weak, that they would have to worry about… (CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: Well, it’s a very good point, Congressman. But since I’m Italian by heritage, I think, if—this is how Italy does elections. You know, they have half-a-dozen people running, and they—for the ultimate winner, it’s really just a plurality.

So, do you think that, if you all run—and I was showing Ralph Nader and Gravel, if he goes in there, and on and on—that—that the ultimate winner is going to get really just a plurality of the vote, which I think the last time that has happened would be Bill Clinton in ‘92, with Ross Perot taking a large chunk of the vote? What do you think?

BARR: What I’m concerned about is opening up our political system, so that it is no longer dominated by the two-party status quo monopoly.

And the voters really are very upset, not just with the system, not just with the candidates, but with some of the issues that they’re not really hearing debated, particularly on the Republican side, about really cutting government spending and the size of government.

We just heard from my good friend Vito Fossella, who’s talking about, Well, we really shouldn’t throw billions at the problem, but, if we are going to, let’s do it according to my plan.

CAVUTO: OK.

BARR: That is not really smaller government at play there.

CAVUTO: All right, Congressman, very good seeing you.

Oh, I’m sure Barr has taken MANY positions I’d disagree with. Of course, I disagree with Badnarik, too, on many things…drivers licenses come to mind.

Barr seems to have evolved mightily. Are his positions “ideal”? Of course not. It’s the wrong question. The right question is: Can he put L ideas into play better than anyone else?

Yes. He’s articulate. He’s credible. He’s a 20 on compared with the rest.

Gravel adds balance. And credibility.

What more is there to say?

The alternative is Hogarth/Nolan.

Politics is poetry, not science, IMO. Image actually IS everything.

Not to mention the 7-10 million Democrats nationwide that voted for Bush, or the fact that Gore ran a lame campaign, or that he chose a hawkish morality cop as his running mate (who is now campaigning for McCain), or the Supreme Court stopping the recount, or the Gore campaign not asking for a full state recount, or the uncounted overvotes that would have thrown the election to Gore, or the thousands of black voters wrongfully disenfranchised, or the butterfly ballot that accidently gave some Gore votes to Buchanan.

That’s a lot of folks to toss into the gulag.

I could have chosen my words better. I think we essentially agree. Barr has left me pretty lukewarm so far but I am ready to be persuaded.

Barr’s rhetoric, at least, is willing to take a stand against future preemptive wars of aggression. Obama’s isn’t. That’;s the justification I use for my “worst case scenario”.

Barr’s stance on the war is much shakier than many other Libertarian hopefuls’ like Kubby or Phillies. Here’s hoping that he doesn’t use the comparative argument against someone like Root (who is historically much more hawkish and pro-war) to create the illusion that he’s more anti-war than he actually is.

I’m basing this on the fact that Obama doesn’t even mouth the rhetoric of non-interventionism. In fact, he does the opposite when talking about situations other than Iraq.

He limits his anti-war rhetoric to Iraq alone and seems quite willing to openly continue the Bush Doctrine in countries like Iran and Pakistan. He provides cover for himself by creating a false moral high horse over the issue of whether nuclear weapons should be used in our preemptive wars.

Back to the Jeffrey Dahmer/ Ted Bundy comparison. Both were vicious serial killers, but Bundy didn’t eat his victims. Dahmer did.

While Dahmer is clearly worse, Bundy’s still a bad guy.

There’s always a lower rung on the moral ladder and its easier to point to someone that’s worse than yourself than it is to justify your own place on it on its own inherent worth.

Sure, Obama said we wouldn’t “nuke” Pakistan, but he’s totally open to a unilateral preemptive invasion on a country that didn’t attack us simply because it served our perceived interests.

It’s essentially rationalizing a terrible policy by creating a worse alternative – and a worse alternative always exists.

That’s the equivalent of defending Bush’s Iraq policy because he didn’t call for nukes either, had their been neocons (and I’m sure there were) who wanted the use of nuclear weapons to remain on the table.