Narrowing down to Baldwin vs. Barr

I've previously compared Baldwin, Barr, McCain, and Obama. What happens when you just compare the two B's?

Profatus veritas performed such a comparison, from the libertarian perspective.

Baldwin is worse than Barr on:

Immigration (advocates punitive measures at the federal level for those who hire undocumented immigrant workers)

China (too adversarial)
Tariffs (very protectionist rhetoric; favors not so protectionist 10% uniform tariff as primary means of federal revenue gathering)
Veteran healthcare (panders to warhawk nation-worshippers)
Federal involvement in abortion (favors federal definition of life as beginning at conception, which paves the way for expansion of federal government intervention in state-level policymaking)

Baldwin is better than Barr on:

Income tax (abolition + low uniform tariff vs. national sales tax + abolition)
Social Security (abolition vs. "system of private accounts")
Sound money (abolition of Fed vs. "reconsidering the Fed")
US involvement in the UN (total withdrawal vs. "[t]he U.S. should push to roll back the UN's functions and slash America's financial contribution")

However, P.V. concluded:

Both Barr and Baldwin are more libertarian than the socialist Obama, national socialist McCain, green socialist McKinney, or pop-foreign intervention socialist Nader.

Mary Starrett also compared the two candidates, and her analysis was posted at...well, it was posted at a site with a Constitution Party advertisement. So how do you think Libertarian candidate Bob Barr fared?

Barr is in favor of an interventionist foreign policy, arguing for intervention in Iran and South America, among other countries. Barr voted for the Iraq war. He praised Bush because "the surge is working." Chuck Baldwin believes, as our Founders did, that we should be a friend to all and avoid ‘foreign entanglements’. Baldwin has stated that if elected he would see to it that those who have been sent to fight the illegal, unconstitutional and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would receive orders to return home immediately.

Barr voted for the Patriot Act, and favored reauthorization of that liberty-robbing set of laws. Chuck Baldwin has always stood against the Patriot Act as an unconstitutional power grab by the executive branch.

Barr favors a national sales tax. Chuck Baldwin contends that does not reform our tax system, it merely re-orders the heavy-handed manner the IRS controls the illegal and unfair robbing of Peter to subsidize Paul.

He’s held an advisory position with the ACLU- a group which has worked tirelessly to push anti- Christian and anti- free speech agendas.

(It should be noted that ACLU members consider themselves the TRUE guardians of the Constitution.)

And there's someone else who is pro-Baldwin - some guy named Ron Paul:

The Libertarian Party Candidate admonished me for “remaining neutral” in the presidential race and not stating whom I will vote for in November. It’s true; I have done exactly that due to my respect and friendship and support from both the Constitution and Libertarian Party members. I remain a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and I’m a ten-term Republican Congressman. It is not against the law to participate in more then one political party. Chuck Baldwin has been a friend and was an active supporter in the presidential campaign.

I continue to wish the Libertarian and Constitution Parties well. The more votes they get, the better. I have attended Libertarian Party conventions frequently over the years.

In some states, one can be on the ballots of two parties, as they can in New York. This is good and attacks the monopoly control of politics by Republicans and Democrats. We need more states to permit this option. This will be a good project for the Campaign for Liberty, along with the alliance we are building to change the process.

I’ve thought about the unsolicited advice from the Libertarian Party candidate, and he has convinced me to reject my neutral stance in the November election. I’m supporting Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate.

So who supports Bob Barr over Chuck Baldwin? The ideologue that is convinced that neither will win:

For us libertarians, Bob Barr is only a pragmatic vote to take the election away from McCain in order to help the Ron Paul Revolution rebuild the GOP from within. It's really that simple! All these hate articles on the www.nolanchart.com about Bob Barr and his evil past and flip-flopping politics is really irrelevant because he is not going to win anyway. There is nobody else for a libertarian to vote for besides Chuck Baldwin. And Chuck Baldwin will not be on the ballot in a lot of states. They could also write-in "Ron Paul" but a lot of states don't count those votes either. So Bob Barr is the only choice a libertarian has. The fact that he cannot win should be a good enough reason to not be too concerned about his non-libertarian political past. They should only be concerned about what his message is presently, which is lite-libertarianism that non-libertarians will be more receptive to until they get used to and understand libertarian philosophy.

This person, orwell1984, found support from Liberty Maven:

Bob Barr frames Ron Paul’s message in a pragmatic way: No “New World Order” rhetoric, No “North American Union” rhetoric, No “Globalist Elite” rhetoric, No “abolish the Federal Reserve now” call. The purist wing of the Ron Paul movement looks at this as a negative. I view it as a positive. Using this rhetoric has the power to immediately turn people away from listening to anything else you are saying. How can you spread a message when your target audience is not listening?...

Additionally, the purist Ron Paul faithful also have a candidate to support, if they believe as I do that writing in Ron Paul on the ballot is personally satisfying but does little to help spread his message. Chuck Baldwin is that candidate. Having two candidates certainly splits the votes between the Ron Paul movement. I support Barr because he has more potential than Baldwin to reach those that perceive Ron Paul as too extreme. Barr can bring them gently into the freedom fold.

To me, supporting Baldwin does little to help spread the reach of the liberty message. I will ignore the fact that he is not likely to receive the media attention Barr will.

It should be mentioned that both of the above posts were written several months before Ron Paul endorsed Not Bob Barr.

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