This isn’t the first time someone has accused Sen. John McCain of not being conservative enough, but now former Republican congressman-turned-Libertarian Bob Barr is upping the ante on his critique of McCain’s conservatism by running against him in this year’s presidential election.


The Los Angeles Times:

“The government has run amok fiscally,” he said at a press conference. Saying that during the first quarter of this year the private sector was losing millions of jobs while the federal government was “hiring with enthusiasm,” Barr added, “As the American people see their standard of living falling, the standard of government keeps going up.”

Expected to win the nomination of the Libertarian Party when it holds its convention in Denver over the Memorial Day weekend, Barr, 59, criticized Republican John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, for not being a true conservative.

“There’s not a great deal of substance there in terms of a commitment to cutting the size of government,” Barr said He said no one who had authored the McCain-Feingold campaign reforms that cap individual donations could call himself a conservative, “at least with a straight face.”

Barr also lashed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying that if Iran threatens Israel’s existence, the United States should “obliterate Iran.” Calling the New York senator’s statement “tremendously dire,” Barr called the possibility of Iran possessing nuclear weapons “remote” and said he has seen “no evidence that indicates that is an imminent likelihood.”

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