Raising the Barr or the Paul Proxy

According to FITS news, Bob Barr will announce his candidacy for President for the Libertarian ticket and will receive the endorsement of Ron Paul this weekend.

It may seem quite unseemly for a Republican Congressman to not back the party nominee, but based on the GOP’s treatment of Lincoln Chafee, I guess we can expect the GOP to dump several millions of dollars into keeping Paul in Congress.

A Barr candidacy is problematic to McCain. Barr stands to inherit much of Ron Paul’s supporter base which while it didn’t win Paul many votes, it was a cash cow. It’s not inconceivable that a Bob Barr campaign could raise $20 million or more, which is a princely sum for a libertarian candidate.

Barr would represent a proxy for Ron Paul, a much improved one. Barr lines up closely to Paul ideologically, is younger and doesn’t have Paul’s penchant for rabbit trails on nebulous topics such as the federal reservie, and is a far more solid communicator. How dangerous could Barr be to a McCain campaign?

A Rasmussen Poll from January indicated that in a four way match up between Obama, McCain, Paul, and Bloomberg, Paul would net 11% of the Vote. In February, 19% of Texas said they would support a conservative third party over Obama or McCain.

 Now, this might be slightly lower now as both these polls were taken during the heat of GOP primary campaigns, but given conservative angst/disatisfaction about McCain, it wouldn’t be surprising for Barr to pull in 5-6% and there’s at least a slight chance of him getting into double digits. This is potentially devestating to McCain as much of this would come out of GOP support. Add to this, the likely Constitution Party nomination of Alan Keyes or Judge Roy Moore, and McCain could have an insurmountable task in 2008.

Many Republicans will complain, but Chuck Muth argues, “But they have only themselves to blame. They’re the ones who nominated McCain. “