| | Sarah Palin is the frontrunner and likely to remain so. NM Gov. Gary Johnson might make a good VP candidate. The other names offered (Glenn Beck, et a..) are other likely second-slot choices. The race is long, now, actually four years to nomination. So, anyone who runs must be able to bring enough of their own power and resources to the presidential campaign. Glenn Beck might do that as a VP candidate, but he lacks the political infrastructure. I mention him only as the most popular and best known of the other names tossed out. Despite having lived in New Mexico, I had to look up Gary Johnson.
TSI's reservations about Sarah Palin are cogent for us, and presumably also for the many libertarians who might consider (almost) any LP candidate as far preferable.
But Barr wasn't just any Republican: he led the G.O.P. in a number of causes that are completely anathema to rank-and-file libertarians. A faithful social conservative throughout his tenure in the House, he helped quash Washington, D.C.'s right to vote on medical marijuana, upbraided the Pentagon for letting soldiers practice Wiccan beliefs, and led early attempts at preventing gays from marrying. Not exactly the stuff of libertarian dreams. In fact, one of the biggest political victories of the modern Libertarian Party was to unseat Bob Barr in 2002; they poured money into an anti-Barr campaign, ran attack ads and called him the "worst drug warrior in Congress". Another strike against Barr: he's a former CIA official and a former federal prosecutor.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1808384,00.html
I forget who I voted for last time, maybe Obama... But certainly if it were a choice between Sarah Palin and Bob Barr, it would be a tough choice and I would probably vote Republican, rather than waste the vote on a loser who does not deserve to win.
Sarah Palin has a host of problems, religion being only the most glaring, but consider, for instance, Richard Nixon. Nixon created detente with China, delivering military secrets to them. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. He also froze wages and prices and imposed "emergency" import quotas. Nixon severed the last tie of the US dollar to gold. During Watergate, he asked Henry Kissinger to kneel and pray with him. None of that would win hearts and minds here. On the other hand, in October 1967, he wrote "Asia After Vietnam" for Foreign Affairs (here). Clearly, the man was deeper than most who care care to know.
So, what about Sarah Palin? Does she have any depth? Ted Keer once touted her thinking style based on her reply in an interview in which she spoke far and wide on several points at once before coming back to answer the question. Keer was impressed with her mental acuity, but to me, that kind of talking sounds neurotic.
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