John, I don't think we disagree very much. I've sharply criticized Ron Paul for his Campaign For Protest Voting, and for not having the courage to distinguish between 1) the LP nominee and 2) a pair of socialists and an unrepentant leader of the Moral Majority. The question isn't what would Barr/Verney have had Paul do. The question is how they reacted to what Paul actually said he was going to do.
Barr should have taken his turn at the microphone and made as strong a pitch for the Ron Paul vote as Chuck Baldwin did. I fear the real problem here was the awareness of Barr/Verney that, in terms of both priorities and philosophy, Ron Paul and his fans are closer to Baldwin's CP than to the LP. I especially fear that Barr wants the LP's message to be more similar to the CP's, and that he didn't want to appear to be a Baldwin Lite. Baldwin said plainly that he wouldn't be running if Paul were, and that makes Barr's VP offer look pretty tepid (instead of just insulting). My top complaint with the Barr campaign remains that he's done very little to position the LP as something other than CP Lite.
So now, when exit polls show that Ron Paul voters broke more for CP than LP, it will be blamed on Barr's snub instead of on the fact that the R3volutionaries include as many right-wingers as libertarians.
