In a statement today, the Barr campaign manages to attack Ron Paul yet again (while somehow finding an excuse to praise President Bush for his"leadership" on 9/11). They say that Ron Paul's meeting yesterday was all about promoting himself, and yet it was also supposedly about"scatter[ing] the votes for the liberty agenda to the four winds." Bah. Barr would be very lucky to get 1/4 of Paul's supporters to vote for him. The Barr campaign release also attacks non-voters.

And then there's more praise for Bush: Barr says,"The Bush administration deserves credit for having done much to disable al Qaeda as an effective terrorist organization." What? Al Qaeda is bigger and badder than ever, thanks to the war on terror. As the CIA's former Bin Laden Unit chief Michael Scheuer has argued consistently, both wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan – have played into Osama's hands and empowered al Qaeda. Seven years after 9/11, libertarians should not continue the mistake made by many in endorsing any aspect of the war on terror. Any credit to Bush is too much credit.
This is really amazing. The same campaign that was willing to praise Jesse Helms, Al Gore and now George Bush, a campaign that has flip-flopped on global warming, gay marriage, the drug war and other issues, is now attacking the most popular libertarian activist movement in modern history, and attacking Ron Paul the person for caring more about himself than spreading the message of freedom – perhaps the most bizarre accusation one could make.

When Barr first got the nomination, I predicted he would not break 700,000 votes, despite hysterically optimistic estimates of millions of votes. Now, I would be somewhat surprised if he got more votes than Michael Badnarik.