And I do mean anybody. Ron Paul held his press conference at the
National Press Club where the Republican congressman said he
spurned the McCain campaign's
request for an endorsement and urged his supporters to vote
third-party -- but didn't specify which party. Instead Paul
appeared with an eclectic set of minor candidates who professed to
agree with him about Iraq, civil liberties, the national debt, and
the Fed: Ralph Nader, Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin, and
the loathsome Cynthia McKinney. Bob Barr bailed
on the event, for reasons not yet clear but probably at least
partially attributable to his desire to stand apart from the other
third-party candidates this year.
To the extent that the Paul movement is a transideological,
left-right coalition that was never going to unite around a single
candidate like Barr or Baldwin, this move makes a certain amount of
sense. Most of Paul's supporters probably were going to go
third-party anyway and this just helps reassure those who might
haave been thinking of McCain or Obama. But it also makes the
Paulites less of a coherent political movement -- we're talking
about a little over a million people splitting their support
between three or four candidates with very different platforms --
and makes Paul, as Dave Weigel puts it, "the patron saint of
political outcasts."
Paul's tacit position had previously been that his supporters
should vote for either Barr or Baldwin, which makes a little bit
more sense since the three are closer on the issues and it splits
the Paul vote between fewer candidates. The two men certainly
needed some shoring up from Paul, since Sarah Palin is rapidly
bringing disaffected conservatives back into the GOP fold.
UPDATE: Weigel has more on Barr's decision to drop out of the
event. While I agree with Barr that Paul's "any of the above"
approach is a mistake and represents a failure of leadership, it is
a huge tactical blunder for Barr to pick a fight with the Paulites.
The Libertarian nominee has enough problems with his lack of
consistency over the years, he doesn't need this.
topics:
Sarah Palin, Constitution, Iraq
