Wayne Root on Sarah Palin

I was a little hesitant to vote Libertarian this year, not because I’m going with McBama, but because Barr, before going his separate way with the GOP, had been very involved in bills which restricted people’s personal freedoms. Originally he was for the drug war, and thought that Medical Marijuana had no use. He later changed his stance before running for the Libertarian party. Plus on top of that, he is pretty much incredibly boring. He never seems to smile, and his interviews are very cut and dry with no excitement at all.

The Libertarian vice presidential nominee, Wayne Root on the other hand, seems a much more interesting candidate. While he doesn’t have the congressional experience that Barr has, he seems to be more consistent - at least in what I’ve heard. He’s also a gambling maverick, and doesn’t think that online gambling should be banned.

I may just vote for the Barr ticket, not because of Barr, but because of Root. He’s quite a character, as this quote from Slate shows:

Wayne Root says that the Republicans chose Sarah Palin for two reasons. First, the GOP was concerned that the Libertarians would take votes away from McCain and throw Alaska to Obama. (Never mind that the state has voted Republican since prehistoric times.) Second, Root says, Palin is a “female version of my image.” The similarities: “Well, first of all she says she’s a hockey mom; I’m the son of a butcher. We both come from very humble beginnings. We both come from far Western frontier states that believe in no taxes and lots of guns. … We both have big families with a brand-new baby. … And to top it off, if you could think of one attribute that describes me, I think it would be an Energizer Bunny—high-energy, exciting, passionate, gets crowds going crazy. I can get a crowd whipped into a frenzy in five minutes, whereas Sarah Palin does the same thing, she’s the only one on the Republican side who does that. So I think they found a female version of me, except here’s the difference: Underneath the excitement, OK, and underneath the citizen politician, I’m a policy wonk, I’ve studied politics my whole life. Underneath the entertainer exterior, I’m actually an intellectual who went to Columbia University and can tell you an awful lot about political history in this country. Sarah Palin is none of those things. She’s from the University of Idaho, she’s a … beauty pageant participant. … [U]nderneath the exterior there’s gotta be some substance, and I’m not sure they found it with Palin. But I know they found it with me.”