"Not a single Republican who has spoken with me to try and convince me not to seek the Libertarian nomination has disagreed with my reasons for considering a run."
Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia yesterday gave his official announcement that he will run for the Presidency on the Libertarian ticket.
The 59-year-old Barr served as a Republican Congressman from 1995 to 2003.
Barr is following in the footsteps of former 2008 Republican Presidential hopeful Ron Paul, who ran on the Republican ticket while espousing views that were clearly Libertarian or what some chose to call Constitutionalist, winning himself a rabidly devoted following and inspiring a shockingly successful online campaign finance program.
However, with his views marginalized by the mainstream media and a general public that still remains too unfamiliar with Libertarian views on the whole in a nation that has gone directly against its first President George Washington's advice not to ever fall into a two-party political system, Paul's campaign fell far short of the mark despite despite the passions it ignited in some.
Barr quit the Republican party in 2006 because, he says, it has come to too closely resemble the Democratic party that it is supposed to be in opposition to. He is running for the Presidency on the belief that McCain, Clinton, and Obama are all failing to confront most of the authentic issues facing America, foremostly a need to drastically strip back the federal government and taxation while returning to the true mandates and principles framed in the United States Constitution, including liberty and its accompanying self-reliance.
Barr has stated that he has been approached by any number of Republican politicians trying to persuade him not to run for the Presidency. However, he says, even some of those involved in the dissuasion tactics have conceded to him behind closed doors that they do see the need for someone to run on a platform of "genuinely conservative" values.
"In the month since we formed our exploratory committee, not a single Republican who has spoken with me to try and convince me not to seek the Libertarian nomination has disagreed with my reasons for considering a run,"
states Barr.
While Barr has previously called Ron Paul the new "gold standard for being a Conservative" when Paul was still in the running, the public take on "Paulites" turning to back Barr tends to be quite negative.
One of the worst knocks against Barr in the minds of a great many Libertarians as well as some Conservatives and self-described "nationalists" is the fact that
he is a member of and consultant for the American Civil Liberties Union,
an organization that is despised by most of those who are not on the American Left.
The Libertarians often described themselves as "the real Republican Party".
