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I was somewhat surprised when Stacy McCain reported that Bob Barr decided to go on the attack against Barack Obama's recent Marin County gaffe. Not surprised that Barr would find Obama's view of frightened Americans "clinging" to their gun rights silly and even offensive. But in terms of hunting where the ducks are, it would make more sense to be going after John McCain from the right. Yet judging from his comments to the American Conservative, Barr doesn't seem focused on taking votes from (John) McCain.

This seems odd strategically. In several radio interviews last week, I noted that when you combine Ron Paul's votes in the Republican primaries with the Libertarians' usual pull of 300,000-400,000 popular votes nationwide (even taking into account some overlap and the occasional Ron Paul Republican who votes for the GOP ticket), Barr could break Ed Clark's record as the top LP vote-getter without taking many votes from McCain. But that doesn't necessarily seem like something his campaign would set out to do. I still think it's implausible that Barr will take more votes from Obama than the Republicans, but it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Of course, as (Stacy) McCain reports on the main site today, there is no guarantee that Bob Barr will even get the Libertarian Party nomination. He's got some people to win over there as well.

topics:
John McCain, Barack Obama