Bob Barr to run for president as a Libertarian
The former GOP congressman from Georgia accuses the government of irresponsible spending. He says McCain can't call himself a true conservative. Clinton and Obama campaign in West Virginia.
WASHINGTON -- Bob Barr, a former congressman from Georgia and a former Republican, today announced his candidacy for president as a Libertarian who would rein in federal spending and foreign wars.
"The government has run amok fiscally," he said at a press conference. Saying that during the first quarter of this year the private sector was losing millions of jobs while the federal government was "hiring with enthusiasm," Barr added, "As the American people see their standard of living falling, the standard of government keeps going up."
Expected to win the nomination of the Libertarian Party when it holds its convention in Denver over the Memorial Day weekend, Barr, 59, criticized Republican John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, for not being a true conservative.
"There's not a great deal of substance there in terms of a commitment to cutting the size of government," Barr said He said no one who had authored the McCain-Feingold campaign reforms that cap individual donations could call himself a conservative, "at least with a straight face."
Barr also lashed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying that if Iran threatens Israel's existence, the United States should "obliterate Iran." Calling the New York senator's statement "tremendously dire," Barr called the possibility of Iran possessing nuclear weapons "remote" and said he has seen "no evidence that indicates that is an imminent likelihood."
Saying both the Republican and Democratic Parties have "bought into a system of running a charity called the United States of America," Barr blasted programs that use public funds to educate the children of illegal immigrants and maintain foreign military bases "that have no more efficacy in the 21st century."
"The federal government needs to get away from the notion that simply because we have all this money in the Treasury -- or we can borrow more money -- that we can provide all these services," he said. "That is not responsible government."
Political commentators debated the impact of Barr's entry, with some arguing that, like Ralph Nader in 2000, who pulled votes away from Democrat Al Gore, Barr could pull enough votes away from Republican McCain in 2008 to give the Democrats the election.
Barr confirmed that he was asked by McCain supporters not to run for fear he would pull votes from the GOP, but he defended his decision by saying that "American voters deserve better than simply the lesser of two evils."
