Steve Kornacki has a column in the New York Observer
arguing that Bob Barr's national poll numbers are "wildly inflated
right now" and that there "is really no reason to believe that Barr
will do any better than any previous Libertarian candidate." Maybe.
As I've said
before, third-party challenges from the right have fizzled in
recent years so it's not unreasonable to bet against Barr. And with
Ralph Nader currently polling better than he actually ran in 2000,
much less 2004, it's possible that his current poll numbers are
inflated.
Nevertheless, Kornacki's case really isn't as airtight as he
seems to think. For one, he points out that Ron Paul didn't effect
the outcome of the 1988 presidential race, even though he was a
former Republican congressman and there was conservative discontent
with George H.W. Bush. But Paul wasn't anywhere near as big a
national figure in 1988 as he became after his 2008 presidential
campaign. Paul always enjoyed a national cult following but in the
pre-Internet era he wasn't anymore famous across the country than
Harry Browne.
Second, the political environment was very different twenty
years ago. While there was always conservative discontent with
Bush, conservatives simply felt better about the Republican Party
after eight years of Ronald Reagan than they do now. Conservatives
didn't even try that hard to beat Bush in the Republican primaries.
One of the examples Kornacki cites as evidence actually bolsters my
point: In 1988, even Howard Phillips wasn't publicly
endorsing Paul and was instead telling the New York Times
that he backed Bush. Phillips tried to run to the right of Pat
Buchanan in the 2000 presidential election!
Buchanan actually would have been a better example for Kornacki
than Paul. When Buchanan bolted the GOP for the Reform Party in the
fall of 1999, he was getting a John Anderson-sized share of the
vote in national polls. He had run second in the 1996 Republican
primaries, taking more than 3 million votes. He was among the best
known conservatives in the country. On election day, he got a
little over 0.4 percent of the vote -- barely beating the
Libertarian nominee for fourth place and receiving a lower
percentage of the popular vote than did Paul in 1988. Part of this
was due to the closeness of the Bush-Gore race. So far, polls show
McCain-Obama to be close too.
Yet even here there are differences. Barr is running in a much
more favorable issue environment than Buchanan. Barr had to slog
through six ballots to win the Libertarian nomination, but Buchanan
had to battle a rump faction of the Reform Party in dueling
conventions and in court. And finally, John McCain is not the
George W. Bush of 2000.
Maybe Barr's actual numbers will be much lower than what the
national polls suggest. But I'm willing to go out on a limb and say
that he does better than the Brownes and Badnariks. Even if he
isn't a Ralph Nader, he could be 2008's John Schmitz. Schmitz, a
more obscure Republican congressman than either Barr or Paul,
didn't effect the outcome of the 1972 presidential election but he
still got 1 million votes.
topics:
John McCain, Environment
