Bob Barr Democrats

It looks like Barack Obama has won the Democratic nomination. Congratulations to him. My guess is that he is going to be the next President. Not because he’s so great. Rather because George Bush has ruined the party that Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, Dick Armey, and others tried to build.

Obama has a big challenge ahead, namely that white, blue collar voters in the industrial Midwest don’t seem to be inclined to vote for him. The big question for Bob Barr is how he turns these “Hillary Democrats” into Barr voters.

One thing that Barr should propose is to bring our troops home to save our manufacturing base. The U.S. spends countless billions of dollars every year stationing troops in Japan and South Korea. These countries respond by doing everything they can to put GM, Ford, and Chrysler out of business. They are able to compete effectively because their total tax burden is significantly smaller than ours, in part because we are subsidizing their military defense. We need to end the huge defense subsidy that American taxpayers are shelling out to over to 130 countries around the world and then use the savings to cut taxes to help make us more competitive.

We know why McCain won't propose this – he is admittedly clueless about the economy and he is too vested in his antiquated Cold War view of the world to make any real change. I do find it very odd that Obama won't talk about this either. Perhaps his elitist disposition makes him too tone deaf to the plight of blue collar Americans to care.

This gives Barr an opportunity to win over a lot of folks who voted for Hillary in the primary, while upholding our American libertarian values at the same time.