In late August 2008, just before senator Barack Obama's (D-IL) big speech, the two Reason editors Tim Cavanaugh and Matt Welch attended a small fundraiser for Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root. The chatty Vegas sports bettor, memorably profiled by David Weigel two months back in Reason magazine, was in a mind to talk about a fellow classmate of his at Columbia University back in the early 1980s, a guy by the name of Barack Obama. Root is no fan of the Democratic nominee: "A vote for Obama is four years of Karl Marx, and no one should be happy about that," he told the two libertarian journalists and a few genial young libertarian activists over cocktails. "He's a communist! I don't care what anybody says. The guy's a communist... And his mother was a card-carrying communist, and he says she's the most important person in his entire life; he learned everything from her." But the thing Root really wanted to talk about was Obama's grades. Specifically, he was willing to bet a million dollars that he earned a better grade point average at Columbia University than his old classmate, and that the only reason Barack Obama went on to Harvard Law School was the color of his skin. The following excerpts from that conversation were published as an interview in the September 2008 issue of Reason magazine. Matt Welch: So tell us what we should know about Barack Obama that we don't? Wayne Allyn Root: I think the most d ...
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In late August 2008, just before senator Barack Obama's (D-IL) big speech, the two Reason editors Tim Cavanaugh and Matt Welch attended a small fundraiser for Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root. The chatty Vegas sports bettor, memorably profiled by David Weigel two months back in Reason magazine, was in a mind to talk about a fellow classmate of his at Columbia University back in the early 1980s, a guy by the name of Barack Obama. Root is no fan of the Democratic nominee: "A vote for Obama is four years of Karl Marx, and no one should be happy about that," he told the two libertarian journalists and a few genial young libertarian activists over cocktails. "He's a communist! I don't care what anybody says. The guy's a communist... And his mother was a card-carrying communist, and he says she's the most important person in his entire life; he learned everything from her." But the thing Root really wanted to talk about was Obama's grades. Specifically, he was willing to bet a million dollars that he earned a better grade point average at Columbia University than his old classmate, and that the only reason Barack Obama went on to Harvard Law School was the color of his skin. The following excerpts from that conversation were published as an interview in the September 2008 issue of Reason magazine. Matt Welch: So tell us what we should know about Barack Obama that we don't? Wayne Allyn Root: I think the most d ...