Sam Wood Reports:

Bob Barr, former GOP congressman from Georgia, is an all-but-announced presidential candidate — as a Libertarian.
The possibility of a run by Barr has sent shudders through the mainstream of the Republican party.
Barr, who will probably not declare his intentions for several days, has already been labeled a “spoiler.”
In an interview with the Inquirer, Barr dismissed those accusations as whining.
“The notion that Republicans see a third-party candidate as spoiling their chances simply illustrates the arrogance of the two-party system,” Barr said. [The full text of the interview is below.]
Republicans may have good cause to worry.
A run by Barr could be to John McCain “what Ralph Nader was to Al Gore — ruinous,” wrote George Will in Newsweek. Some party experts believe Barr could siphon off essential conservative votes from Sen. John McCain, about whom many rightward voters have been less than enthusiastic.
Right-talking radio hosts — Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter — have expressed reservations about McCain or have been downright dismissive.
The American Spectator editorialized last month that “conservatives see the choice of McCain or the Democrats as analogous to picking between being punched in the stomach or kneed in the groin.”
Enter Bob Barr, who rose to prominence during the 1990s as a Republican party pit bull.
He led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton, wrote the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (which said states did not have to recognize gay marriages performed in other states), and was a self-appointed four-star general in the “war on drugs.” All impeccable conservative credentials.
But after losing his House seat in 2002, Barr underwent a conversion of sorts.
Barr shocked many Republicans when he became a paid consultant for the American Civil Liberties Union specializing in privacy issues.
He has renounced the war on drugs.
He’s become a thorn in the side of Bush administration, criticizing what he perceives to be abuses of power and the Patriot Act.
Hipsters will know Barr best from his appearance in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which he eats a piece of cheese “from Kazakhstan” offered by Borat.
In 2006, he joined the Libertarian Party. He spoke with The Inquirer this week about why he’s running.

Inquirer:If you decide to run for president, why?

Barr: To win.

Inquirer: What do you hope to accomplish?
Barr: I want to move the agenda of smaller government and increased individual liberty forward; help the Libertarian party to become a major, consistent player on the national political scene; raise the level of debate; bring the issues of smaller government back to the table, and cut government spending — that’s at the root of all the issues facing the American people. I want to end the artificial control of the economy and end burdensome taxation; take a hard look at cutting cabinet positions; reduce the cost of the occupation of Iraq by beginning the process of removing the security blanket from the Iraqi regime … return respect for habeas corpus; reinstate the rule of law; stop the warrantless surveillance of American citizens; and remedy the abuses of the Patriot Act. …

Inquirer: As a Republican congressman, you were among the most visible and vocally conservative. What caused you to suddenly switch parties two years ago? Did you have a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus experience that led to your conversion?
Barr: What laid the groundwork for my epiphany was the result of six years of the Bush administration.
They claimed to be Republicans and for a smaller government. Instead, with a complicit Republican Congress, they moved to dramatically expand the size, power and scope of the federal government. I concluded that the party I had been associated with for decades was no longer that party I had joined and no longer had an interest in smaller government. They no longer had an interest in increasing individual liberty and showed no signs of changing in my lifetime. I looked for a political venue for what was important for me. The only party out there that advocates and practices moving to smaller government and increased civil liberties was the Libertarian Party. …

Inquirer: Do you believe there may be other Republicans attracted by the Libertarian Party?
Barr: I’m sure there are. There are some libertarian-leaning Republicans in the House; Ron Paul [R., Texas] of course … . Then there’s Chuck Hagel [R., Neb.] on the Senate side, Larry Craig [R., Idaho], John Sununu [R., N.H.], I think there are a number that share a large part of the libertarian philosophy. Whether they’ve ever considered joining, I don’t know. But there are a number in both houses that from my experience care very deeply about the libertarian philosophy and principals.

Inquirer: You’ve made some radical turnabouts from many of your previous positions. Once a foe of any drug use, you recently said the Federal government should butt out. Haven’t you also changed your stance on same-sex marriage? …
Barr: Since 9/11, there has been unprecedented growth in government power and the ascendancy of this notion that, because they are fighting terrorism, the government can do whatever it wants regardless of law. That has forced me to go back and take a look at areas that in prior times I could afford to support because we had a certain amount of freedom in other areas. It’s no longer the case. We have to be much more zealous in protecting ourselves against government power. Once it may have made sense, been even acceptable to allow the government more leeway. With same-sex marriage, it’s a decision states ought to make. That has always been my position. Over the past few years I have testified at the Federal level and state government level against the federal marriage amendment.

Inquirer: What about marijuana laws?
Barr: I believe it’s important to turn that decision back to the states. If California voters decide in a referendum to recommend the use of medical marijuana, it should be respected by the federal government.

Inquirer: Abortion?
Barr: I’m pro-life. I have always been pro-life. I say get the federal government out of it. Leave it up to the states to decide.

Inquirer: Monetary issues?
Barr: I’m focused on what I’m focused on. I would dramatically reduce the size and cost of government, and that will strengthen the value of our currency at home and abroad.

Inquirer: What is wrong with the two-party system?
Barr: The two-party system has become stale and a state-controlled monopoly. I think it has removed an important element of choice for the American voter and led to a dumbing down of political discourse in America. I would like to see the people be able to go into a voting booth and not have to pull the lever for the lesser of two evils.

Inquirer: How do you feel about John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate?
Barr: He’s a candidate. But I don’t think he espouses anything resembling the philosophy of smaller government that I support. Anyone whose signature piece of legislation is destructive of the First Amendment can hardly call themselves a conservative. His view of civil liberties is very much in the Bush administration mold. I have major disagreements with him. His position of a lengthy occupation of Iraq is well known. I would disagree with him there also.

Inquirer: A Zogby poll this week has you outpolling [declared third-party candidate] Ralph Nader. What do you think that signifies?
Barr: I think it indicates that there there is legitimate support for a third party candidate.

Inquirer: What base would a Barr candidacy draw from? Could you match or exceed the support received by Ross Perot during his bid for the White House?
Barr: I think there is a very significant base of support out there. If I choose to be the candidate and the Libertarian nominee I would surpass by far any prior Libertarian nominee and stand a very good chance of outpolling Perot’s ’92 numbers.
The votes would come from a variety of sources: libertarian-leaning Republicans not inclined to vote for McCain and other big-government Republicans.

Others would include civil-libertarian Democrats. But most importantly, the votes would come from the significant number of young people who have become very involved in this election cycle. Many of them are not wedded to the two-party system to the same extent their parents and grandparents have been.

Inquirer: Did you consider yourself a Reagan Republican?
Barr: I was a very strong supporter of Ronald Reagan.

Inquirer: You’ve had years of experience in the federal government. You worked for the CIA, served as a congressman and as U.S. Attorney. What’s the most important lesson you learned during your tenure?
Barr: That the government has a great deal of power. It doesn’t need more power. It has too much power, and that power is frequently abused. The use of government power to effect social change is beyond the intent of the Constitution, the role of Congress and beyond the framework of our constitutional representative democracy.

Inquirer: Pundits have called a Barr candidacy a possible spoiler for Republicans.
Barr:  I’m no more a spoiler for John McCain than John McCain could be a spoiler for me. The notion that Republicans see a third-party candidate as spoiling their chances simply illustrates the arrogance of the two-party system. Republicans and Democrats have come to view themselves as the only ones with a God-given right to choose a president. I want to offer voters something they will not get from the two major parties. If my platform polls well, it will be because the voters contrast it with McCain and whatever Democrat senator wins the nomination. If my platform polls well, its because the agenda I espouse is preferable. By offering a choice, it’s something the other candidates should embrace rather than whine about.

[SHIRTTAIL]Contact staff writer Sam Wood at 215-854-2796 or at samwood@phillynews.com.

Hillary Clinton compares herself to a fairy-tale character

Thomas Fitzgerald reports from Brownsburg, Ind.:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she feels like "Goldilocks" because her advocacy of a gas-tax holiday puts her between her Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, and Republican nominee-to-be John McCain.

"Sen. Obama doesn't want to do it, says it's a gimmick, while Sen. McCain doesn't want to pay for it," Clinton said. "I sometimes feel like the Goldilocks of this campaign: not too much, not too little, just right."

And she took a swipe at Obama, who has been dealing with perceptions he is an elitist in recent weeks, for refusing to do something to help ordinary Americans get some relief from gas prices.

She said she finds it "a little offensive" coming from "someone who doesn't have to worry" about such things. She did not call out Obama by name.

"We need a president who's a fighter again," Clinton said.

Sen. Clinton is wooing working-class voters, a staple of her support, in northern Indiana.

Thomas Fitzgerald reports from Portage, Ind.:

3:10 p.m.

Clinton finished, with a rousing call for a good turnout Tuesday and vowing to fight for working people in the White House. Clinton had a good performance,, feeding off a fired up crowd. Of course, nothing did top the introducer's comparison of Hillary's courage to male gonads.

2:48 p.m.

Clinton says we've got to get out of Iraq, and she does not dismiss out of hand concerns that the U.S. would leave a power vaccum resulting in chaos or even genocidal warfare.

"I can't predict what will happen," she says. "I worry about it. If you're the president and you don't worry, you're not paying attention."

2:36 p.m. Eastern

Clinton doing the populist thing. She will retool trade agreements and crack down on China for its trade practices. She also accuses the oil companies of Enron-like behavior in its ceaseless price increases.

"I think the market is being manipulated," Clinton says. "You can't convince me this has anything to do with supply and demand. I don't believe it."

2:10 p.m. Eastern

Paul Gibson, president of United Steeworkers Local 6787 here, introduced Hillary saying she is the kind of leader with the "testicular fortitude" to make tough decisions.

Taking the stage, Sen. Hillary Clinton said she appreciated the endorsement. "I do think I have fortitude," she said, as the audience laughed and cheered. "Women can have it as well as men."

The senator is due in about a half hour here at the Steelworkers union hall in this town on Lake Michigan.

We're told that up the road in South Bend this morning, Clinton visited a Marathon gas station to "commute" to work with a sheet-metal worker. She didn't pump the gas, he did, but she talked about her "passion" to addres spocketbook concerns. It cost $63.67 to fill up the worker's truck at $3.79 a gallon.

She renewed her call to suspend the federal gas tax this summer to provide a measure of relief to drivers, a plan that Obama opposes as a gimmick. Sen. Clinton would pay for it by imposing a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies instead.

With respect to his former pastor, Barack Obama decided yesterday that it was no longer enough to merely reject and denounce. It had become imperative for Obama to nuke and bury.

He had no choice. Jeremiah Wright had turned into a one-man wrecking crew, and it was starting to look like Obama was just a passive bystander, a hapless witness to his own destruction, lacking the requisite guts to take the guy down. Most importantly, that kind of passivity is hardly the kind of character trait that many Americans want to see in a commander-in-chief. A real leader has to show that he can confront and isolate his adversaries. And Wright had indeed become an adversary.

So, referring to Wright's Monday rant on national television, Obama stated yesterday: "When I say I find (his) comments appalling, I mean it. It contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am. And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign is about I think will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country...I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That's in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding. To insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That's who I am. That's what I believe. That's what this campaign has been about.

"(Monday), we saw a very different vision of America. I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw...There has been great damage (to the Wright-Obama relationship). I do not see the relationship being the same after this."

OK, maybe that wasn't exactly nuke-and-bury, but it was far stronger than anything Obama had previously said. And he had to say it. Polls indicate that Obama has lost ground in both North Carolina and Indiana, both which stage primaries next Tuesday. And while Obama had previously stated that he had not attended church on the Sunday when Wright had blamed America for 9/11, there was no way he could plead obliviousness this time, not with Wright hitting the exact same theme live on CNN.

In recent weeks, most of the commentary (mine included) has focused on whether the Obama-Wright relationship would scare off a lot of white voters. But, based on an encounter I had late yesterday, I now think that, potentially, Obama's problem has much broader resonance.

I'm currently down in southern Mississippi, working on a long-scheduled freelance assignment totally disconnected from politics, but I did run into a Democratic strategist (yes, there are still a few in Mississippi), and naturally the Obama-Wright issue came up in conversation. His concern was Obama, by failing for so long to assail Wright in the strongest possible terms, was starting to look weak.

More specifically, this strategist feared that, in the eyes of swing voters (including the racially enlightened), Obama was starting to look weak; that many voters were perhaps starting to ask themselves whether this new phenom on the political scene was really tough enough to take on the likes of Ahmadinejad when he seemed so reluctant to handle Wright with the ruthlessness that is sometimes required of a chief executive.

So the question now is whether, for many voters, Obama's remarks yesterday come too late...and whether his severing of the relationship appears less principled than poll-driven.

--------

By the way, my road work in Mississippi may well mess with my blogging rhythm for the rest of this week. If new posts show up at odd times, or not at all, you'll know why.

Larry Eichel reports...

Barack Obama is expected to win the primary in North Carolina next Tuesday. But what really matters, of course, is that he has a good time. And this morning, he had a very good time.

He got to play basketball with the University of North Carolina varsity at ths Smith Center, aka the Dean Dome, under the guidance of coach Roy Williams. During the scrimmage, he took two shots and missed them both.

At one point, seeing that Obama was winded, Coach Williams took him out of the game. “The smartest thing you did was backing out of the way of that rebound down there,” Mr. Williams told him after taking him out. "Did you see that?" Obama replied.

When Obama got back in, he was fouled taking a shot. The offending player apologized. Not to worry, Obama said. “The Secret Service won’t do anything to you.”           

Wright's appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. yesterday propelled him back onto the front pages and gave him top billing on the cable news shows. His appearance, comments and egotism came in from criticism from virtually all quarters.

  "I'm sorry, but I've had it with Wright," was the first sentence from Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson who went on to say Wright had somehow come to decide he personified the black church. "In fact, he represents one twig of one branch of a very large tree." That from the main stream left was matched by this from the the main stream right, George Will, who like the rest of the GOP is already salivating:

"He is a demagogue...Wright also is an ongoing fountain of anti-American and, properly understood, anti-black rubbish. His speech yesterday demonstrated that he wants to be a central figure in this presidential campaign. He should be."

And this afternoon, Obama said: "I may not know him as well as I thought."

You can see Obama's comments here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JicZeBkg67A

Here's Robinson's column:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042802102.html

 Here's Will's column:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042802100.html

And here's a piece from the New York Times's Bob Herbert, who put it all very succinctly:

"The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/opinion/29herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Earlier, Wright had appears on Bill Moyer's show on PBS, and spoken to the NAACP in Detroit.

And here is Will Bunch on Obama's press conference Tuesday:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Rejecting_and_denouncing.html

Larry Eichel reports...

We're in North Carolina working on a story for later in the week, and we're at a very well-attended Obama town hall in Wilmington, N.C. It's part of a two-day Obama swing through the state before he returns to Indiana, which is shaping up as the more important of the two May 6 primaries.

At an Obama event, a local non-dignitary usually gets to introduce the candidate. Here, it was a kindergarten teacher. She got so excited that she said that this was, "Sorry, honey," bigger even than her wedding day.

So when Obama took the microphone, he asked for a round of applause for the teacher, and a round of applause for her husband.

He's delivering a slightly retooled stump speech that is a little less about hope and change and a little more about the specific concerns of working people struggling to get by: "Having politicians bickering back and forth doesn't help you. Having us talk about superdelegates doesn't help you...I'm going to spend all my time talking about you."

He tells the crowd: "Lately, my opponents have been trying to make this election about me and not about you." He's also emphasizing his family history and the opportunities he's had, saying "That's why I love this country."

All in all, the emphasis is just a little different, more about bread-and-butter issues and a little more openly patriotic. Not sure how much difference any of that makes. He's in good shape in North Carolina. But it might help a little in Indiana, where the race looks very close.

So, the Rove weighs in on Obama's race/blue collar/ethnic white problem. How to move past it? He has six suggestions, ranging from 1) get a new stump speech so you don't bore the press to 6) give more specifics on what you'd do as president.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134322

Is Rove right? And if not, what should Obama do? Discuss below.