Barr the door !

I got an e-mail from my bro this morning in which he raised the question: Would Republicans really be dumb enough to vote for Bob Barr in numbers great enough to affect the outcome of the election ?

This is a matter worth additional contemplation, so I began by trying to reconstruct the circumstances of the 2000 election in my mind. In that one, Nader was running as the Green Party candidate, and he was selling the idea that Gore wasn't liberal enough, that the Repubs and the Dems were two sides of the same coin. His appeal was to liberals whose dedication to principle outweighed practical political considerations.

On election day, Gore lost New Hampshire by about 7200 votes; Nader had gotten 22,200. In Florida, as we all remember, W won by 537 lousy votes; Nader had gotten over 97,000. We'll never know how things would've worked out if Gore had gotten half of Nader's vote in either state, but the country would've been spared the W debacle.

By Democratic standards, Clinton had been a moderate. The ultralibs figured his VP would just be more of the same, so nearly three million of them voted for the Green Party.

By Republican standards, Top Gun is a liberal. Maybe there are a few million ultraconservatives who will look past the race or gender issues and decide that as a practical matter, there ain't much difference between Top Gun and whichever Dem ends up with the nomination. Being rightwingers, the fear of Obama (or Mrs. Clinton) will probably keep them on the reservation, but you never know. After all, Ron Paul is still getting votes in the Republican primaries.