After the excitement, the oddity: Al Gore‘s trip to the Netroots Nation this morning came with a certain superstar swooning from the progressives. There was more a dash of bafflement when Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, turned up as an attendee. He quickly became surrounded by a gaggle of reporters/bloggers/vloggers on the fourth floor, most of whom were kind of baffled to why he’d turned out.
Since the Libertarians are slicing into the GOP quite seriously, and dragging some progressives along as well, why not? “We’re polling in double digits in some states, six percent nationally,” explained Barr. He put a chunk of this down to the increased youth vote (who seemingly are breaking every direction except GOP), but also the fact that the Libertarian Party is acting like a real party. Take, for example, the Libertarian Party of Texas trying to mimic the 50 State Strategy with their own “run everywhere” approach.
However, party unity could be a thorny issue. Since Barr’s started saying nice things about Gore and suggested the government bail-outs of mortgage lenders may not be wholly evil, he’s started taking some flack from some name small-l libertarians.
This article appears in July 18 • 2008.
