Don't Count On Seeing Poor Ole Bob Barr Back In Congress

Phil Gingrey represents Georgia's 11th congressional district, mostly Atlanta suburbs in Cobb, Bartow, Fulton and Cherokee counties. It includes all of Marietta, the east side of Smyrna, and part of Atlanta's upscale/uptown Buckhead neighborhood (the Beverly Hills of the South). The PVI is R+19 and the only part of the district even remotely competitive for Democrats-- and only remotely-- is the Cobb County section. The current congressman is far right extremist-- and crackpot-- Phil Gingrey and he won reelection last cycle 196,968 (68.6%) to 90,353 (31.4%), beating his unknown, unfunded Democratic challenger by 70% or better in Bartow, Cherokee and Fulton counties but with "only" 60% in Cobb.

Gingrey gave up his seat to run for Senate. He got trounced in the primary, coming in 4th, nosing out even further right-wing extremist congressman Paul Broun. Now both are out of their jobs.

• David Perdue- 185,466 (30.64%)
• Jack Kingston- 156,157 (25.80%)
• Karen Handel- 132,944 (21.96%)
• Phil Gingrey- 60,735 (10.03%)
• Paul Broun- 58,297 (9.63%)

The new congressmen will be determined by Republican runoffs on July 22. Broun's replacement will be either Mike Collins, son of ex-Congressman Mac Collins, or a crazed teabagger and Hate Talk Radio host and Baptist preacher Jody Hice. They were virtually tied in the primary, Collins 17,378 (33.5%) to Hice 17,108 (33.0%) out of 51,876 votes cast. Both are extremists and the "establishment" candidate, Collins, has been endorsed by Rick Santorum.

The race for Gingrey's seat is more interesting because it includes always controversial ex-CIA agent and former Congressman Bob Barr, the guy in the two videos up top. Last I had heard was that Barr had quit the GOP to become a Libertarian. He ran as their 2008 nominee for president, coming in 4th-- with 523,715 votes (0.40%)-- behind Barack Obama, John McCain and Ralph Nader. His best performance was in Indiana, where he got 29,257 votes (1.06%), followed by his native Georgia, where he took 28,731 votes (0.73%). In 2012 he split with the Libertarians and endowed Newt Gingrich for president instead of Ron Paul and rejoined the GOP.

Barr, another standard issue delusional Republican devotee of Ayn Rand's, was appointed U.S. Attorney for Northern Georgia by Reagan after his stint with the CIA. He successfully prosecuted Republican Congressman Pat Swindall for campaign finance fraud and perjury, sending Swindall to prison and handing the district over to the Democrats. Barr then represented GA-07 from 1995-2003 and is best known as one of the more obnoxious and deranged of the Clinton impeachment managers. The other thing he was famous for was being an anti-marijuana fanatic, although he later became a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project and is now adamantly pro-pot (unless he changed his mind again). He was the author of the notoriously homophobic Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and he has since apologized for having done that and is now pro-marriage equality and says he would vote to repeal DOMA. Loudermilk is painting him as an untrustworthy flip-flopper and it's working and will probably win Loudermilk the seat.

Barr came in second in the May 20th primary and will now face state Senator Barry Loudermilk in the runoff. Loudermilk has been endorsed by Club for Growth, RedState, FreedomWorks, the Madison Project and Georgia Right to Life. Barr has been endorsed by Tom Tancredo, Richard Viguerie and Gun Owners of America. These were the primary totals:

• Barry Loudermilk- 20,708 (36.6%)
• Bob Barr- 14,596 (25.8%)
• Tricia Pridemore- 9,655 (17.1%)
• Edward Lindsey- 8,389 (14.8%)
• Larry Mrozinski- 2,277 (4%)
• Allan Levene- 959 (1.7%)

Barr, who accepts contributions in BitCoin (as well as real money), has raised $683,795 and reported $96,425 cash-on-hand as of April 30. Loudermilk raised $449,054 and had $89,882 cash-on-hand on April 30. So far FreedomWorks, the Senate Conservatives Fund and Club for Growth have put in a total of $34,768 on behalf of Loudermilk. This kind of zombie-stupid, rote, right-wing yawnathon of an ad still excites deluded Georgia voters:



There's been some back and forth about Loudermilk claiming he was a fighter pilot-- he wasn't-- but it probably won't lose him the runoff. To show he can be as amusing as Barr, if he wanted to lie about his background, he could have claimed he was the son of Nashville songwriter John D. Loudermilk. This wasn't even his biggest song but "Tobacco Road" was a hit for the Nashville Teens, Jefferson Airplane, The Animals, Edgar Winter, Lou Rawls, Spooky Tooth, Status Quo, David Lee Roth, and the Blues Magoos. My fave:

JANE MAKES BOB BARR THINK OF HAVING A CIGAR

A few days ago, my friend Jane Hamsher told me she was going to be interviewing Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and asked me if I had any ideas for questions. I suggested she write him a check. Barr has a role to play in 2008-- and that role is to make sure that Bush doesn't get a third term in the person of dazed and confused John W. McCain. Barr was one of the moving forces behind the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Today-- actually yesterday-- he told Jane that Bush is way way worse than Clinton ever was. He explains why he feels Bush's presidency was "destructive of our notion of government."

President Clinton... I certainly had my problems with him. But what he did, in terms of perjury and obstruction was bad but it was not destructive of the very systemic foundations of our country.

Watch the video:




Tomorrow's NY Times profiles Barr and his presidential run, which he seems to be thoroughly enjoying, even if a national poll shows him with only a 3% share of the vote right now..

On the ballots in 30 states so far, Mr. Barr has the chance to be a spoiler for Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, in several states, among them Alaska, Colorado and Georgia. Mr. Barr’s campaign advisers also assert he has similar potential in other mountain states, New Hampshire, Ohio and other swing states.

...Now, on the war in Iraq, he advocates for a speedy and complete withdrawal of troops, with no permanent bases; on same-sex marriage, he believes that states should make their own laws; and on wiretaps without warrants, he is fiercely opposed, arguing that the bill that would legalize searches without warrants violates an individual’s constitutional rights.

Mr. Barr says he is running because he is fed up with what he calls years of Republicans turning their backs on the party’s fundamental values of tight spending and limited government. He is doing it with very little money; just over $300,000 has trickled into the campaign so far.

HOW BAD WILL BOB BARR'S CANDIDACY HURT McCAIN?

I can't be certain of this, but I do believe that when Bob Barr was serving in Congress he and fellow-Republican John McCain were allies. Both were on the right of the political spectrum. But today, where McCain has gone in the corporatist/rubber stamp direction-- in order to appeal to what'd left of the Bush-Cheney base-- Barr has veered off in a libertarian direction... in fact the Libertarian direction. I'm sure the party would have preferred Ron Paul, but they're settling in to a serious run with the former Georgia congressman.

Yesterday Barr tore into his former GOP ally, offering an unflattering critique of McBush that could swing some key and crucial states away from him, dooming a candidacy that already looks pretty doomed to begin with. Barr hit him on his Bush agenda positions on Iraq, energy, and government spending.

"With regard to domestic policy, Sen. McCain really has put forward nothing that would indicate he believes in dramatically shrinking the size and cost of the government," Barr said during an interview on washingtonpost.com's "PostTalk" program. "He does talk a great game about doing away with earmarks, but that really does not get near to the heart of the matter of the massive federal spending, the massive federal debt and the deficits we're running."

...Barr, 59, for years was a conservative Republican foot soldier in the House who strongly supported the war in Iraq, was a booster of the Patriot Act that strengthened the government's domestic surveillance powers, backed measures to ban gay marriage and voted to block the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

But since renouncing the GOP and embracing the anti-government tenets of the Libertarian party a couple years ago, Barr has flip-flopped repeatedly and now strongly opposes the war, condemns the Patriot Act as a violation of civil liberties, criticizes efforts to restrict gay rights, and even favors the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes.

Barr said that "the tremendous growth" of federal government powers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "has so dramatically shrunk the sphere of personal liberty in this country ... that it has really caused myself and many other Americans ... to take a much harder look at government power than we did in the past."

Strong Libertarian Party efforts in Montana, Alaska, New Hampshire, Georgia, Colorado and possibly even Texas and Idaho could take enough votes from McCain to swing some of those stats to Obama. As of now McCain's only safe states are Utah, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Tennessee. He is expected to work very hard to capture both Dakotas as well.

BOB BARR DRAWS A LINE IN THE SAND FOR RON PAUL SUPPORTERS

Slightly different approach on the fascism thing

All over L.A. signs are appearing for racist psychopath Bill Johnson-- and the signs are being put up by the same people who are putting up Ron Paul signs. Although Paul officially withdrew his endorsement of Johnson once word of Johnson's egregious racism leaked out, the two campaigns were so completely intertwined that it is virtually impossible to separate them. Johnson' campaign manager, Holly Clearman, is also Ron Paul's state coordinator (as well as a Republican Party candidate for the GOP County Central Committee).

This is far from Paul's first tango with bizarre extremists beyond the pale. But Bob Barr, who is courting the more rational members of the Ron Paul Revolution, say he wants nothing to do with the lunatic fringe. The neo-Nazi fringe of the Republican Party base has been urging that people support Barr in order to "send a message to the Republican Party that conservatives and Whites won’t sit still as they are stuck with a liberal presidential candidate like McCain. Supporting Bob Barr might even pave the way for a Third Party to replace the increasingly repugnant Republican Party... If voting for McCain is a waste of time, since he’s never going to win (because conservatives hate him), then the best course of action may be a protest vote for the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr."

Unlike Paul's confused organization, Barr's campaign was very clear and direct in their response to the hate-mongers on the right of the GOP coalition:

The Barr campaign is not going to be a vehicle for every fringe and hate group to promote itself. We do not want and will not accept the support of haters. Anyone with love in their heart for our country and for every resident of our country regardless of race, religion, nationality or sexual orientation is welcome with open arms.

Tell the haters I said don't let the door hit you on the backside on your way out!

Tomorrow is the primary in L.A. in which even Ron Paul agrees that Bill Johnson is unworthy of support. His own words (in his crazy book, Amendment to the Constitution, beloved on the outer fringes of Republican-loonyland:

“No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.”

You want that sitting on the bench as a judge? And if he starts there, how much longer before rubber stamps like Susan Collins, James Inhofe, Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith, and John Sununu are voting to confirm him to the Supreme Court? Don't forget to vote on Bill Johnson tomorrow so these creeps never get a chance to.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR McCAIN-- LIBERTARIAN PARTY JUST NOMINATED BOB BARR

Can he throw Arizona to Obama?

It was a surprisingly-- and hilariously-- contentious convention battle, but the Libertarian Party picked Bob Barr as their nominee today. Barr wound up with 324 votes to Mary Ruwart's 276 on the 6th-- and decisive-- ballot. The mainstream media is asking how badly he will hurt McCain. With only a tiny handful of states eager for a 3rd Bush term, how much harm could e really do anyway? I guess he could take away some votes in places like Georgia, Montana, Alaska, maybe even Texas, to swing the election in those states to Obama.

A couple weeks ago Barr said that "if Senator McCain... does not succeed in winning the presidency ... it will be because Senator McCain did not present, and his party did not present, a vision, an agenda, a platform and a series of programs that actually resonated positively with the American people." Barr derides McCain as a status quo candidate and polls show him taking 6-7% of the vote nationally.

In a news conference following the vote, Barr's campaign manager, Russell Verney, said the campaign's headquarters would be in Atlanta and that the campaign hopes to raise $30 million to battle Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and whichever Democrat emerges with that party's nomination.

The 59-year-old Barr said the Libertarian Party anticipates being on the ballot in 48 states, but work remains to be done in 20 of those to ensure access.

Barr had to overcome the objections of many Libertarians who viewed him as an interloper and who questioned his commitment to Libertarian ideals.

Ruwart said Barr had not embraced fully the Libertarian message on key party issues, such as legalization of all drugs or of ending all federal taxation. But in the end, enough delegates saw a chance with Barr to take the party to new heights.

Having someone with Barr's relatively high profile "means great things for the Libertarian Party," national party spokesman Andrew Davis said. "It means the best year the Libertarian Party has ever had in its 35-year history."

IF RON PAUL BACKS BOB BARR, NO MATTER WHAT TOE-SUCKER DICK MORRIS SAYS, McCAIN IS THE WALKING DEAD

With GOP toe-sucker Dick Morris publicly urging McCain to shed his far right extremism and move to the center if he's going to have any chance at all to win a few states outside of the Old Confederacy plus Utah, Wyoming and Idaho, a very different kind of reality is closing in on McCain who, says toe-sucker, "has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track." He offers the hapless Republican nominee a roadmap, a roadmap dependent of Jeremiah Wright-- "the honorary chairman of McCain's get-out-the-vote efforts"-- even though every voter in red, red, red Mississippi first congressional district was inundated with Jeremiah Wright and still voted against Bush and the GOP.

The growing fear of Obama, who remains something of an unknown, will drag every last white Republican male off the golf course to vote for McCain, and he will need no further laying-on of hands from either evangelical Christians or fiscal conservatives.

So McCain doesn't have to spend a lot of time wooing his base. What he does need to do is reduce the size of the synapse over which independents and fearful Democrats need to pass in order to back his candidacy. If the synapse is wide, they will stay with Obama. But if they perceive McCain as an acceptable alternative, there is every chance that they will cross over to back him in November.

But even as toe sucker/Fox News shill admits that McBush's endless war in Iraq agenda could kill the deal, another dynamic has arisen that negates whatever toe sucking meditations popped into Morris' demented little right-wing brain: Bob Barr.

Micah Sifry, a lot smarter and far more with it than Morris was even when he was relevant, thinks if McCain doesn't watch his right flank, he's a dead duck. He warns that if McCain follows the toe-sucker's strategy Barr will siphon off enough votes to insure a McCain loss, "not because Barr is such a compelling candidate, but because he could become the vehicle for the many disaffected Republicans gathered under Paul's flag."

More than a million votes have been cast for Paul, about 5 percent of the total cast in Republican primaries so far.
Paul's activists are swarming local Republican party committees and conventions, quietly capturing or lining up delegates in states such as Alaska, Missouri, Minnesota, Florida, Texas and Washington.
And on the Web, the Paul movement -- which, astonishingly, generated enough grassroots support to make him the top Republican presidential money-raiser in the fourth quarter of 2007 -- is still going strong. His Web site is getting about 50,000 unique visitors per week, compared to 90,000 for McCain, according to data marketing company Compete.com. (The two Democratic candidates' combined traffic is about six times higher.) On Google, people are searching for the term "Ron Paul" almost as often as "John McCain." And Paul's new book, "The Revolution: A Manifesto," which has been topping Amazon's sales chart for weeks, hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list today.
Clearly, one sizable chunk of the Republican base -- small-government types who also oppose the Iraq war -- hasn't reconciled itself to voting for McCain. In Minneapolis, at the Republican National Convention, Paul may have a couple dozen delegates and enough street presence to spoil McCain's show. These days, all it takes is one person with a Web-enabled mobile phone to put live video on the Internet, and Paul's fans have already shown how good they are at using the Web to spread messages and keep their movement going. So even if the Republicans manage to keep Paul himself off the stage at the convention, his voice will still be heard. If Barr manages to capture the attention of Paul's base, it could spell real danger for McCain.

McCain will be forced to name an extremist wingnut-- either Buy Bull-thumpin' Mike Huckabee or someone genuinely insane like Jim DeMint (R-SC) or Richard Burr (R-NC) of Tom Coburn (R-OK)-- as a running mate. And since many Americans expect to see the first sitting president since the assassinated JFK to die in office if McCain gets elected, the running mate decision will take on unusual significance. What pleases the nutty base is likely to scare mainstream Americans.

HOW BADLY DOES THE McCAIN LOBBYIST ARMY THINK BOB BARR WILL HURT THEIR POWER GRAB? NO CREAM FOR BARR, NOT FROM McCAIN'S BREASTS

The 66 lobbyists running the Double Talk Express are frantic-- even hysterical-- about Bob Barr's possible candidacy. It will allow McCain no room to maneuver. His hopes to trick moderates into voting for him with bogus promises of environmental-friendly policies or a less rabid position on Choice, will be non-starters if the far right base of the GOP has someplace else to go. Yesterday's Moonie Times explained how McCain's forces were pressuring Barr to not run. "Mr. Barr says even people who have tried to dissuade him understand why he thinks it important to raise issues from what he calls a 'genuinely conservative' perspective and to offer alternatives to the positions of the two major-party candidates. 'In the month since we formed our exploratory committee, not a single Republican who has spoken with me to try and convince me not to seek the Libertarian nomination has disagreed with my reasons for considering a run,'" Mr. Barr told the Moonies. That changed today when McCain's team gave him a really good reason not to run: a taste of the vicious mudslinging he has in store for him. After reading Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post this morning, Barr knows this isn't going to be a debate over who is truer to conservative principles.

As a Republican candidate for the House in 1994, he rose to national attention when reports alleged that he had licked whipped cream off the breasts of two women at a charity event.

As a congressman from Georgia, the thrice-married Barr returned attention to the whipped-cream episode when, speaking in support of the Defense of Marriage Act, he argued that "the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundations of our society."

He may have "licked whipped cream off the breasts" at a charity event but the vicious and hardened cadre of Republican gunslingers McCain has assembled to destroy Barack Obama will make mincemeat of Bob Barr-- and they're licking their chops and feeling... less than charitable.

Can Barr compete in the big leagues? McCain's crew will throw everything including the kitchen sink at him. Imagine Republican operatives wringing their hands about how divisive he was to lead the charge against Bill Clinton! Yesterday, though Barr gave the McCain camp reasons to worry.

"What's your problem with McCain?" one of the reporters asked after Barr's announcement speech.

Barr turned to his campaign manager, former Ross Perot adviser Russ Verney. "How long do we have here, Russ?"

Time enough, evidently.

Barr took issue with McCain's Iran policy. "I'm not going to go around making up songs about such a serious matter as going to war with a sovereign nation, as Senator McCain did," the former congressman said, tut-tutting McCain's "Barbara Ann/Bomb Iran" episode.

He quarreled with McCain's Iraq policy. "These troops need to be brought home," he offered.

He ridiculed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which, he said, means McCain "cannot ever lay legitimate claim, at least with a straight face, to . . . being labeled as a conservative."

He put down McCain's plan to do away with pet-project earmarks, claiming it "would make barely a drop in the bucket with regard to the national debt, the deficit."

And he disparaged McCain's fiscal policy, saying "there are some legitimate questions that have been raised over whether Senator McCain is simply a Johnny-come-lately to the modest tax cuts."

RON PAUL, BOB BARR AND JAN SCHNEIDER-- TRUE BELIEVERS TAKING ON THEIR PARTIES' CORRUPT ESTABLISHMENTS

Republican congressman Ron Paul of Texas is certainly not going to endorse John W. McCain, and it isn't likely that he'll endorse Barack Obama... or is it? On CNN yesterday he told Wolf Blinzter that he has no intention of endorsing a warmonger like McCain.

Having a Republican win the upcoming presidential election is “secondary” for Paul who is more interested in defending the Constitution, having the country go in what he considers the right direction, having a sound currency, and achieving balanced budgets. Paul parts ways with McCain over McCain’s support for the Iraq war, his approach to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and his willingness to spend federal dollars to support military operations in Iraq.

Instead, Paul favors Sen. Barack Obama because of positions on foreign policy. “But that’s doesn’t mean that’s an endorsement,” Paul quickly added.

I mentioned yesterday that I wound up sitting next to a dedicated Paulista on a flight this week. He plans to write in Paul's name on his presidential ballot. I'd save McCain has no chance whatsoever of getting his vote and Obama has, maybe, a 20% chance. But Obama doesn't need it to win. McCain is unlikely to win even with it but without it... forget it.

And just as detrimental to a McCain run is the Libertarian candidate: Georgia ex-Republican congressman Bob Barr.

The possibility of a run by Barr has sent shudders through the mainstream of the Republican party.

Barr, who will probably not declare his intentions for several days, has already been labeled a "spoiler."

In an interview with the [Philadelphia] Inquirer, Barr dismissed those accusations as whining.

"The notion that Republicans see a third-party candidate as spoiling their chances simply illustrates the arrogance of the two-party system," Barr said.

Republicans may have good cause to worry.

A run by Barr could be to John McCain "what Ralph Nader was to Al Gore-- ruinous," wrote George Will in Newsweek. Some party experts believe Barr could siphon off essential conservative votes from Sen. John McCain, about whom many rightward voters have been less than enthusiastic.

Right-talking radio hosts-- Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter-- have expressed reservations about McCain or have been downright dismissive.

The American Spectator editorialized last month that "conservatives see the choice of McCain or the Democrats as analogous to picking between being punched in the stomach or kneed in the groin."

Barr points to Ron Paul, as well as GOP Senators Chuck Hagel, John Sununu and Larry Craig-- one who is retiring honorably, one who is about to be defeated by a Democrat, and one who was caught toe-tapping in a men's room while picking up used toilet paper-- as examples of mainstream Republicans who are sick and tired of the Bush Regime's slide into neo-fascism. "What laid the groundwork for my epiphany was the result of six years of the Bush administration," explained Barr. "They claimed to be Republicans and for a smaller government. Instead, with a complicit Republican Congress, they moved to dramatically expand the size, power and scope of the federal government. I concluded that the party I had been associated with for decades was no longer that party I had joined and no longer had an interest in smaller government. They no longer had an interest in increasing individual liberty and showed no signs of changing in my lifetime... Since 9/11, there has been unprecedented growth in government power and the ascendancy of this notion that, because they are fighting terrorism, the government can do whatever it wants regardless of law... We have to be much more zealous in protecting ourselves against government power."

And Barr doesn't recognize McCain as a conservative or someone he could support. "His view of civil liberties is very much in the Bush administration mold. I have major disagreements with him. His position of a lengthy occupation of Iraq is well known. I would disagree with him there also... If my platform polls well, it will be because the voters contrast it with McCain and whatever Democrat senator wins the nomination. If my platform polls well, its because the agenda I espouse is preferable. By offering a choice, it's something the other candidates should embrace rather than whine about."

And speaking about third-party candidates, a lifelong Democrat and heroic progressive, Jan Schneider, has declared her candidacy for a seat in western Florida, just south of Tampa, that looked like it would have been a contest between an extreme right wing Republican incumbent, Vern Buchanan and a former Republican embraced by the Democrats' uber-corrupt Inside the Beltway Rahm Caucus. Jan was screwed out of the nomination in 2006 by shady dealings from Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer who preferred the reactionary Chris Jennings, who-- following Emanuel's diktat of playing down the occupation of Iraq-- went on to lose to Buchanan, a race Schneider would have probably won. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune implies that by running Schneider could be a "spoiler." But she is the only candidate representing core progressive values and if anyone is a spoiler, it is Jennings, who should have run against Buchanan in a Republican primary.

"I've had it with both political parties," said Schneider, 60, who will be making her fourth try for the seat.

Schneider says she will run as an anti-war candidate dedicated to bringing the troops home.

...In 2004, Schneider beat Jennings in Democratic primary election, before losing to Rep. Katherine Harris.. Schneider said after the general election that Jennings cost her the race by forcing her to spend money in the primary that could have been used to beat Harris.

In 2006, Jennings turned the tables, beating Schneider soundly, before losing to Buchanan in the general election. Schneider said Jennings used distorted negative attacks against her to win the seat.

UPDATE: RON PAUL KNOWS WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING

Congressman Paul is predicting a win for Obama in November over his own party's pathetic and deceptive bag of wind.

WILL BOB BARR BE McCAIN'S VERY OWN RALPH NADER FOR 2008?

Barr has a certain appeal to part of the GOP base

How badly will another cranky old right-winger in the presidential race hurt McCain? Looks like we're about to find out. Far right extremist, Georgia ex-Congressman Bob Barr, has been muttering darkly of late about how the Insider GOP Establishment has abandoned conservative principles. He happens to think McCain has morphed into George Bush and agrees that a McCain presidency would basically just be a third term for Bush. He's been talking openly about running for president as an independent and this weekend he is expected to announce his candidacy at the Heartland Libertarian Conference in Kansas City, where he is scheduled to speak.

“There’s been a tremendous expressed to me both directly and indirectly on the Internet. I take that support very seriously, and I think it also reflects a great deal of dissatisfaction with the current candidates and the current two-party system. So it is something, to be honest with you, that I’m looking very seriously at... Ron Paul tapped into a great deal of that dissatisfaction and that awareness. Unfortunately, working through the Republican party structure, it became impossible for him to really move forward with his movement. But we have to have ….a rallying point out there to harness that energy, that freedom in this election cycle.

“What we’ve fallen into in recent years-- not just since 9/11, but particularly since 9/11-- is this notion that, in order to protect ourselves, we have to preemptively go into and-- in the case of Iraq--  occupy another sovereign nation. Simply saying, ‘Gee, it’s better to fight over in this other nation and destroy another nation, so we’re not potentially attacked here, is the height of arrogance.”

Today's Moonie Times speculates that a Barr bid could hurt McCain's already slim chances to slip into the White House. He would probably negate whatever benefit McCain would get from Nader's run, although progressives overwhelmingly blame Nader for all the damage Bush has caused and are unlikely to vote for him in any significant way. He's unlikely to break even 1% of the vote anywhere. Barr, an NRA board member and a hero to rabid Clinton-haters, would probably attract far more voters among Republicans than Nader would among Democrats. Most Democrats are happy with either Obama, the likely winner, or Clinton. Many Republicans, especially the dominant conservative wing, are still mistrustful of McCain.

Republican campaign pros said a Barr bid could range from causing them some damage all the way to being the equivalent of Ross Perot's 1992 presidential bid, which many Republicans think split their party's voters, unseating then-President Bush and electing Democrat Bill Clinton.

Gun rights fanatics don't like McCain and there are plenty of Republicans who have been schooled by extremists like Limbaugh to hate McCain for his "support" for campaign finance reform. The Moonies interviewed Michigan's crackpot Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis, who said Barr would do well in fascist-leaning states like Texas but it wouldn't matter because McCain would win by a big enough margin there to triumph anyway. Anuzis apparently hasn't been watching the demographic shifts in certain parts of the country. In any case, he acknowledges that where Barr would kill McCain's chances are in the swing states, GOP strategists are counting on-- Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.