Congressional Democrats for Bob Barr?

September 5th, 2007 by Steve

While I’ve met and spent considerable amount of time around quite a few politicians, there are two who stand out in my mind as really great people. The two statesmen to whom I refer are Ron Paul and Bob Barr.

Not only have I been at many public events where I’ve heard Barr debate or speak about civil liberties, I’ve been blessed to have been in a good handful of very private settings with him where he broached the topic.

As we live in a world where eight out of ten GOP presidential hopefuls justify torture in national televised debates, it’s no wonder that Barr left the GOP to join the Libertarian Party. We welcomed him into our folds, and now it seems that congressional Democrats are holding Barr in high regard, as well. This is very interesting, considering his history with them. From the AJC :

Flash forward nine years. Same committee and many of the same Democratic lawmakers. Yet this time, lawmakers nearly fell out of their chairs to praise Barr as a “patriot.”

Why? Barr appeared today before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about ways to fix new legislation sought by the White House that temporarily grants spy agencies expanded eavesdropping powers in America. (Congress passed the legislation in haste, without any public hearings, just before lawmakers left town in early August.)

Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., praised Barr for having the courage to stand up to the White House and his conservative brethren to oppose the legislation. [snip]

That was music to most Democrats’ ears. Following Barr’s testimony, Conyers took the unusual action of interrupting the next speaker to give Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., the floor.

“I would like to recognize Bob Barr,” Johnson said. “I deeply respect his patriotism.” Johnson said the two haven’t always agreed on every issue, but that Barr has done great work as lawyer for the people of Georgia.

Despite a few very early head-to-head poll results (Paul’s name ID isn’t high enough, at the moment), my thought is that Ron Paul is the only candidate who can beat Hillary or Obama in the general election. Independents and Democrats won’t consider any of the GOP candidates who support the Iraq War and disregard civil liberties.

It might heed Republicans well to begin listening to people like Bob Barr and Ron Paul — unless they wish to amplify their 2006 election losses into a generation of political oblivion.

Posted in Bob Barr, Ron Paul, National Politics, Libertarian Movement




4 Responses to “Congressional Democrats for Bob Barr?”

  1. Matt Swartz wrote on 09/6/07 at 3:37 pm :

    Can this man win a congressional seat on an LP ticket?

  2. Anonymous wrote on 09/6/07 at 9:48 pm :

    Whenever marxist Democrats like Maxine Waters and John Conyers start praising you, then you must be doing something very, very wrong. And you guys just lap it up and point to it like it’s something to be proud of???!!!

  3. Matt Swartz wrote on 09/7/07 at 2:59 pm :

    The answer, Mr./Ms Anonymous, is in the question. You correctly stated that Waters and Conyers have serious problems on economics issues (i.e. they’re Marxists). If they were praising Barr for his economic policies, that would be a (huge) problem. They’re not.

    They’re praising him for something else, the oft-forgotten issue of personal privacy. Just because the 2 democrats you mentioned are wrong about economics doesn’t mean that they’re wrong about privacy. In fact, it’s almost physically impossible to be wrong about everything.

  4. Anonymous wrote on 09/9/07 at 10:18 pm :

    They are.

TrackBack URI

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

« Older entry Newer entry »