By Eric Pianin

washingtonpost.com Staff Writer

Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, offered a scathing critique of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today and predicted he would garner substantial conservative
Republican support in a handful of battleground states critical to
McCain in his campaign against Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

Barr, a one-time conservative Republican House member from Georgia who broke with the Bush administration and many of his former
congressional colleagues, blasted McCain for his support of the war in
Iraq, his energy policies and his stand on reducing government
spending.
"With regard to domestic policy, Sen. McCain really has put forward
nothing that would indicate he believes in dramatically shrinking the
size and cost of the government," Barr said during an interview on
washingtonpost.com's "PostTalk"
program. "He does talk a great game about doing away with earmarks, but
that really does not get near to the heart of the matter of the massive
federal spending, the massive federal debt and the deficits we're
running."
Barr is hoping to become the beneficiary of much of the support and
some of the campaign funds generated by Libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) during his surprisingly vigorous bid this year for the
Republican presidential nomination. Barr said "we really do" see an
opportunity to match or exceed Paul's performance in Pennsylvania,
North Carolina, Indiana and West Virginia, where Paul picked up between
eight percent and 15 percent of the Republican primary vote.
No Libertarian Party candidate has ever won more than a million
votes nationwide in a presidential general election, but Barr believes
he could improve on that with strong showings in the West, Southwest,
and a handful of southern and Northeastern states.
"We see this (potential) not just in Ron Paul's very significant
vote-getting capability in those states and those areas, but also in
Sen. (Hillary) Clinton's ability to dramatically take votes against
Senator Obama in the Democrat primaries," he said. "These are states
with a lot of Second Amendment enthusiasts and blue-collar Democrats
who are much more likely to adopt a Bob Barr message of strong support
for civil liberties, smaller government and so forth."
Barr, 59, for years was a conservative Republican foot soldier in
the House who strongly supported the war in Iraq, was a booster of the
Patriot Act that strengthened the government's domestic surveillance
powers, backed measures to ban gay marriage and voted to block the use
of marijuana for medical purposes.
But since renouncing the GOP and embracing the anti-government
tenets of the Libertarian party a couple years ago, Barr has
flip-flopped repeatedly and now strongly opposes the war, condemns the
Patriot Act as a violation of civil liberties, criticizes efforts to
restrict gay rights, and even favors the legalization of marijuana for
medical purposes.
Barr said that "the tremendous growth" of federal government powers
since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "has so dramatically shrunk
the sphere of personal liberty in this country ... that it has really
caused myself and many other Americans ... to take a much harder look
at government power than we did in the past."