Eva, you can say (correctly) that the Denver delegates would have loved Ron Paul in either slot on our ticket, or you can say that the Barr/Root offer violated the will of the Denver delegates, but you can't say both. At any rate, any vacancy that Root and Barr choose to create is filled by a vote of the LNC, which is elected by ... the Denver delegates.
Donny's post summarizes well what apparently happened. In the pissing match between Barr/Verney and Paul's Baldwinite moles, offering the VP spot to Paul was volley fired in anger, even if it might be useful to fool the modal uninformed Paul fan. The smarter way to do it is like Baldwin, who says he wouldn't have run if Paul were still running. That's actually true of Barr too, but saying it doesn't fit into Verney's playbook.
Barr and Verney thought the Paul event did not fit into their playbook, in which Barr raises $20M, polls high enough to create pressure for 3-way debates, and has a chance of becoming another Ross Perot. Too bad you can't be Ross Perot on a Libertarian budget, or even on a Ron Paul budget. Yes, it was a shame that Ron Paul held an event that was designed merely to increase the Protest vote rather than the Liberty vote. However, that's still a damn poor excuse for not using that stage to politely make the pitch for Liberty. Barr should have stood next to Nader/McKinney/Baldwin and welcomed their advocacy of the libertarian view on these four issues. He should have then encouraged them to see the Libertarian light on the other 23 planks of our platform, and he should have politely disagreed with Ron Paul by saying it's more important to vote FOR Liberty than to merely not vote for the lesser of two evils. THAT would have been real leadership. Instead, Barr and Verney got outplayed by Baldwin and his fans on Ron Paul's staff.
