So the former Republican congressman Bob Barr is going to run for president as a libertarian.
Hmmm. Well, as the editors of National Review point out, it's strange.
Here's a guy who, in all his years in congress, was a conventional conservative.
But now, suddenly he's developed a big-time libertarian streak.
As NR points out:
"The American Civil Liberties Union hired him as a consultant after 9/11 and he’s been expanding on a libertarian streak he had in Congress — and shedding his otherwise orthodox right-wing views — ever since. The point of a candidacy like Barr’s is at least to highlight and defend a worldview. But Barr has never been a particularly effective spokesman for his views, even views that were long-held. The new Barr is a non-interventionist anti-government purist committed to a thoroughgoing civil libertarianism. In Congress, he voted for the Iraq war, an early version of the prescription-drug program, and the Patriot Act. As the Cato Institute’s Daniel Griswold has pointed out, he voted with protectionists to secure the interests of cotton farmers and the textile industry in his district. The old Barr was a scourge of illegal drugs. He was a member of the Speaker’s Task Force for a Drug-Free America and authored the Barr amendment, which blocked implementation of a voter initiative to legalize medical marijuana in the District of Columbia. Last year, he signed on with the Marijuana Policy Project to work to repeal his own handiwork, explaining that the expansion of governmental powers after 9/11 had transformed his view on the war on drugs."
Well, maybe he just changed his mind, you say.
Yeah. Maybe. Or, maybe he changed his views in order to better stick out from the crowd.
Sure helps one run as a third-party candidate for president, doesn't it?
