"G.E." (whoever you are), do the math. Root had 138 on the second ballot, and Gravel/Phillies/Kubby totaled 139, while Barr was 26 votes ahead of Ruwart and 50 votes ahead of Root. From that moment on, Barr was only going to be stopped if Root could somehow get 50 more of those 139 Gravel/Phillies/Kubby votes than Barr got -- or if Ruwart threw her support to Root. But Root in fact got fewer of those G/P/K votes than Barr did, and ENM herself wrote at the time that Root would never get enough Gravel votes to get into the final ballot against Ruwart.
It's all well and good to now say "anybody but Barr", but I don't want to hear it from Dr. Ruwart or anybody in her campaign team.
Less, can you please quote the "smear" you say Root committed? Surely that incident taught us to fairly characterize the words of our fellow Libertarians and to back them up with accurate quotes.
I'm not worried so much about November as about the message and positions that Barr ticket emits between now and then. I'm enough of an ideologue to say damn the vote totals as long as the message is mainstream libertarianism. Root sends that message loud and clear, but Barr's version of it is somewhat muffled and and obfuscated. Unless he puts something much closer to Root's message through the wonderful MSM megaphone he comes with, I won't see his campaign as a test case for the strategy I want the LP to try. Even though I voted for Kubby on all the V.P. ballots, my favorite thing about our ticket is that it grooms Root for 2012.
