As Alice Longworth might say, another little man on a wedding cake is running for president

Photo via FTISNews

Bob Barr has thrown his moustache into the ring as a Libertarian candidate for president. He says a major element of his campaign will be how the federal government is bringing 1984 into being by harnessing technology with fear of terrorism.

Other than that, he still sounds like a typical right-wing Georgia congressman who needs a party label to run a protest candidacy to the right of John McCain, and the Libertarians were handy and have ballot access in 48 states.

We're still puzzling over his views of individual liberties and federalism. So far as we have seen on one of the litmus tests of that world view, he is much like his former colleague, Congressman Ron Paul. Both believe liberty is paramount, and both believe it should be protected at the federal level only for straight- and mostly white- people.

Witness this exchange between Barr and a Village Voice interviewer, from Barr's campaign website:

VV: The Libertarian Party is supportive of legalizing same-sex marriage, legalizing currently illegal drugs and keeping abortion legal. You were a sponsor of the “Defense of Marriage Act” and you had a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition when you served as a congressman. How do you square those positions with your current involvement in the Libertarian Party?

Bob Barr: Of course, many of the positions that I took in the Congress and that I take now are based on the principle of federalism, which is certainly a libertarian position. It used to be a position reflective of the Republican Party but obviously is not longer a part of the Republican platform. So, for example, regarding the “Defense of Marriage Act,” the fundamental, operative provisions of the “Defense of Marriage Act” say that each state makes up its own mind. I think that’s a fundamentally sound, libertarian-oriented position on federalism. With regard to drug usage similarly, these are issues in my view that ought to be left up to the states, based on the principles of federalism.

What Barr doesn't explain is that as the federal government has hoovered up all the rights of marriage that count the most- something he hasn't so far proposed rolling back and returning to the states- his DOMA largely forecloses states' rights on the issue of marriage.

It's a point he underscored when he testified before Congress on the same-sex marriage constitutional amendment to this effect:

To be clear, I am absolutely not a supporter of granting marriage rights for same-sex couples any sort of legal recognition, which makes my decision to oppose the FMA all the harder. I do not enjoy opposing people who I agree with in substance on matters of process.

Barr is at one with those who want to ban same-sex marriage; he just disagrees with using the federal constitution to do it. And he knows DOMA, combined with other preemptive federal laws like ERISA and immigration law, effectively gut same-sex marriage of any substantial meaning at the state level.

It's all a matter of tactics, in other words. Something the Libertarians, who are gathering in Denver later this month to pick a nominee, might consider. Bob Barr is the same right-wing nutjob he's always been. He just stumbled across the Bill of Rights and thinks he can Trojan Horse his way onto the presidential ballot by cobbling up the Paulines and the civil rights absolutists on the left and his natural constituency of rednecks.