It took six ballots for Bob Barr to finally secure the LP Nomination, beating Mary Ruwart 54%-46%. Mary Ruwart could have cakewalked to the VP selection to "balance out the ticket" but refused to be on the same ticket as Barr. Instead, she endorsed Steve Kubby. However, after Barr appeared on stage to urge the delegates to vote Root for VP to respect his wishes for the kind of campaign he wished to run, Root had a relatively easy time securing the VP slot, winning it on the 2nd ballot.

The reformers ended up routing the radicals at the 2008 LP Convention. The 2006 "reformist" platform was little modified. The LP elected 2 former Republicans to head up the LP presidential ticket. If Bill Redpath gets re-elected to LNC Chair, it will be a clean sweep for the "reformers." After the way Barr singled out Shane Cory for praise during his victory speech, it wouldn't surprise if Cory ends up being rehired by the LNC.

I'm sure many radicals will bemoan that this is the end of the LP, pointing to how the likes of Buchanan hijacking of the Reform party in 2000 led to it's demise. But, the Reform Party was always built around the cult of personality. However, libertarianism, at heart, is a moral and political philosophy that stretches back to the enlightenment. Even if the Barr experiment turns out to be a disaster, the party will survive, the movement will live on, unscathed. The pragmatic political fact is the GOP is in tatters. The libertarian-conservative axis has been torn assunder in the GOP. Former self-described conservatives are going to be looking at or joining the party. The fact is at the debate, Bob Barr more or less towed the libertarian line. He's for ending the drug war, pardoning non-violent offenders, non-interventionist foreign policy, restoring civil liberties, reaching out to the LBGT community on issues of marriage. I'm willing to cut him some slack on the odious aspects of his previous congressional record. The fact is when it comes to the Drug War, it's going to take a "Nixon to China" by the likes of a Bob Barr to remove it from the third rail and to get the rest of the 2 major party chickenshits to actually say aloud what they say in private.

General Election Implications

Given the fact of a Barr/Root ticket, let's look pragmatically how this can play out. Pragmatically speaking, Barr/Root is probably the worst-case 3rd Party scenerio for Mccain, in terms of potentially siphoning off otherwise reliable republican voters. Both Barr and Root can get access to MSM coverage, specifically to the likes of Fox News, Fox Business Channel, and other financial networks like CSNBC. Barr/Root are going to attack Mccain's general election strategy that heavily relies on "Global Warming" to differentiate Mccain from Bush and to attract independent voters. The hidden flaw in the McCain strategy is that "Global Warming" is an issue that can potentially compel a certain republican voting block to defect from Mccain. Mccain is relying on towing the line on supreme court justices and being an uber-hawk on National Security to keep the republican base in line. It may work in terms of the Theocons and the wingnuts, but there is a class of republican voter, the economic/business conservative that has become fatigued by the iraq War, fatigued by the WOT and having to take their shoes off at Airport TSA checkpoints. This class of GOP voter may think Obama is a socialist, but they also think that "global warming" is the ultimate socialist agenda. Mccain may have been showered with praise by talking head journalists about his "centrist strategy," but the unintended consequence of that strategy is to also shatter the "lesser of two evils" argument that would have kept this class of voter in the GOP fold this election cycle. If you want to classify this voting block, it's the Fred Thompson voting block. These voters may be actually be libertarian on issues like abortion and medical marijuana, highly anti-clinton, and pro-business. They would never think of wasting a vote on some unknown libertarian candidate but they will take a second look at a former republican who once lead the Clinton impeachment who now expresses his disgust with the big government GOP on the Fox network. These republicans think the best way to win the WOT a this point is to aggressively drill for domestic oil and to eliminate regulations on refineries and Nuclear power. Mccain sounds like a Democrat, but a Bob Barr is singing their tune. Bob Barr's previous anti-libertarian positions on Drugs neither particularly bothers them nor Barr's recent conversion to drug legalization neither bothers them that much either. To them, the McCain/Feingold law that is the ultimate civil liberties sin, because it prevents corporations from donating enough money to the cause to counteract the liberal media bias for Gore's Global warming scam.

This class of republican voter exists and the ability of Barr/Root to get on the likes of Fox News to appeal them is a threat to McCain. If Barr/Root can cobble together a coalition of the Paul vote with a segment of defecting Thompson voters, it's likely to have a potentially significant impact on the General Election. The Obama camp is relying on a non-traditional democratic electoral map strategy for victory, a strategy, frankly, that is counting on McCain's inability to fully rally the full compliment of economic conservatives and libertarians in traditionally republican swing states.