This critique of Bob Barr's run as a libertarian completely misses the point:
Despite the fact that both [Democratic and Republican party] nominees are broadly committed to maintaining much of the status quo, there are enough real differences on policy that third party critiques that focus on the "duopoly" will be much less effective this time. Disgruntled progressives don't want a repeat of 2000, and disaffected conservatives have to bear in the mind that any strong showing for a third party candidate backed by them will be used as a scapegoat for any McCain defeat. The paradox for the antiwar right challenger remains: win enough votes, and you may actually pull antiwar support from the Democrat, thus electing the Republican against whom you are rebelling; win just enough votes that make the difference and throws the election to Obama, and McCain's defeat will be pinned on the antiwar right rather than his own militarism and pro-amnesty views. The latter will serve two purposes: it allows the interventionists to save face and fight another day (another reason why the 2008 outcome will probably not affect the strength of interventionists in the GOP), and it frees mainstream conservatives of any blame for their previous intransigence against McCain. If the purpose of the protest candidacy is simply to provide an alternative and a voice for disaffected conservatives and libertarians, none of that matters. However, if it is supposed to accomplish something more significant, I am not sure how it does that.
Where to begin?
First, there is absolutely no way that anti-war voters on the left are going to use a libertarian candidate as a vehicle for a protest vote. I mean, sure, if you look hard enough you'll be able to find a few deeply confused voters who do so, but if you look hard enough in a nation of 300+ million you can find just about anything. But a libertarian candidate who draws enough people on the left to give McCain the win? That's not going to happen. No way, no how.
Second, Barr's campaign is not likely to be defined as an anti-war campaign. Like Ron Paul, his opposition to the war comes from his underlying philosophy of how government should operate. He isn't a libertarian because he opposes the war; he opposes the war because he is libertarian. And that's a critical difference, because like Paul, Barr will frame the war as just one issue of many that illustrate how badly the conservative movement has lost its way.
Finally, and most critically, there is the final part of the quote that I highlighted in bold. Larison writes as if these two things are mutually exclusive, but they are not. A protest vote in and of itself can accomplish a great deal if it forces the party it is protesting to react. Throughout our history, third party challenges have been most effective when they have drawn enough support away from one party that they simply cannot be ignored. And that, I would argue, is precisely what Barr hopes to do here.
UPDATE: On second though, it wasn't Larison who missed the point. Patrick who quoted him out of context, making him seem as if he had missed the point. Having reread the article in full, I now see that Larison's conclusions are much closer to mine than I first thought:
In fact, I think giving in to this pressure will be a mistake, because before there will ever be any chance of building additional competitive national parties it is imperative to reject the assumptions that support the two-party system. That is why it is important to back third party candidates especially when a successful showing could lead to the election of an undesirable candidate (and this year any remotely strong showing is going to be deemed the "spoiler" in what will probably end up being a reasonably close race between two undesirable candidates). We already know that there is essentially nothing to be gained within either of the two parties over the long term, as years and years of experience have taught us, so this is not a question of gradualism vs. a desire for more rapid change. This will be a matter of backing someone who actually represents us, and refusing to be unrepresented. To persist in backing a major party candidate when neither one represents your interests is to ensure your continuing lack of representation.
So why am I not more enthused at the prospect of a conservative running as the Libertarian nominee? Because I have the sneaking suspicion that enough disaffected conservatives will fall for one or the other of the objections mentioned above and they will opt to back candidates who will probably not do much at all on the very single issues that were the reason for supporting them in the first place. The fear of "irrelevance" or playing a "spoiler" role may overwhelm the desire for real representation, but that fear needs to be resisted. The way to make the antiwar right irrelevant is if we back a candidate that is either pro-war or not on the right.
Closer, but still not the same. Here's the thing... No matter how much I or anyone else might wish otherwise, so long as we have the constitutional structure we have now, we are never, EVER going to have a competitive third party. It simply will not and cannot happen. On its own, the winner-take-all, first-past-the-post structure of both our congressional districts and Electoral College system virtually make this impossible. Beyond that, the legal advantages the two major parties have built for themselves with our campaign finance and communication laws, turns that virtual impossibility into an actual one. If you want to make room for a third party, you have to start by changing the system. Party building activities are going to be useless until you do that.
And that's why third parties, even at the most successful, can never be anything more than a power vehicle for protest that forces either one or both of the major parties to change. I do not like this reality, but that doesn't make it any less real.
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