The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (May 21, 2008)

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21 May 2008 01:49 pm

Could Barr Hurt Obama?

A reader thinks so:

Michael Goldfarb is right when he says that Barr might take away votes from Obama (to an extent). I am a big Ron Paul fan but defected and voted for Obama in the Georgia primary after Paul bombed in New Hampshire (where all his fans said he was supposed to win). I will NEVER EVER vote for McCain or the Republicans, at least for a few more elections. I would rather protest against the party and their wayward ways by voting for Obama, but many of my meetup friends are pretty adamant about writing in Ron Paul or anything other than Obama b/c most of them are radical libertarian-types who will never compromise, but will instead vote libertarian or Constitution party. I still vacillate in my heart between Barr & Obama (each have areas I love and want to see enacted). It's very difficult to decide and I change my support from week to week.

The conflicts that any libertarian-conservative feels in backing Obama in part to punish what the Bush Republicans have done at home and abroad are real enough.

It is indeed depressing to know that Obama backed the farm bill, will raise my taxes even more, has no intention of tackling entitlement spending, etc. And Barr may become an attractive proposition for Obamacons for these reasons. McCain's fiscal policy is, alas, no more likely to reduce the debt and will almost certainly increase it more than Obama over four years. He is also beholden to many of the forces on the far right that dismay so many of us small-government, individual freedom types. But I'm not an ideologue, and maybe an Obama presidency would galvanize reform on the right in ways impossible under McCain.

We have months to weigh these issues. For me, however, the defeat of Giulaini's neofascist tendencies, Romney's callow theoconservatism and Huckabee's Christianist schtick has been a huge gain. And the defeat of the Clintons an even bigger one. I'm not complaining about the conflicts ahead. They are wonderful conflicts to be weighing given what we were contemplating six months ago.

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