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"Quite the opposite," says Garris, an elfin man with a curly brown mullet and a polite, serious manner. "The fact that I'm living here makes it kinda hard for him to say, 'Well, I'm not supporting [Antiwar.com] anymore.'"
Hunter has had this kind of relationship with Garris and Raimondo before; he'd give them donations for LROC and their libertarian newsletters. "I'm always, like, the CEO figure in these endeavors," he says.
But, they all agree, the Antiwar.com project is their best yet. Garris says the site gets 300,000 visitors a day – a number that's hard to verify, because the large Web measurement firms like Nielson don't track it. Garris and Raimondo certainly feel like they're making waves. Garris can see in the site's tracking software that some of their readers are coming from White House and other governmental domains. Last quarter, they got $30,000 in donations – solicited over the Internet – from their readers.
One of the site's fans and donors is none other than Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, who is a liberal Democrat. "I like the collection of news stories and columns from all over the world," says Ellsberg. He also liked Raimondo's "flamboyant" column so much that he insisted on meeting him in person.
"He's been a fan of Buchanan right along, and that has a crazy aspect to it," says Ellsberg. "But if I've learned one thing at 72 years old, I've learned that nobody's perfect."
Raimondo's columns are also being read by the dreaded neocons.
"I'm getting 30,000 readers a day – sometimes more," cackles Raimondo. "And the damned Weekly Standard isn't even selling that on the newsstands. So suddenly people are reading me instead of [Standard Editor] Bill Kristol."
David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter who coined the phrase "Axis of Evil," has mentioned the site twice in his column for the conservative journal National Review – once in a piece titled "The Loonies Are Heard," the other in a column titled "Unpatriotic Conservatives." Both characterized Antiwar.com, and Raimondo, as being fringe and crackpot. (Frum declined to be interviewed about his feelings toward Raimondo.)
"The very fact that Frum chooses to talk about Antiwar.com is in itself significant," says Jim Lobe, a columnist for Antiwar.com. "You're talking about the top levels of the neocon network."
This year, a college student interning for Antiwar.com helped put together a university speaking tour for Raimondo. Every room was packed, and though he had some heated run-ins with liberals who seemed "confused about economics," the trip was a roaring success.
"At Berkeley, I was like a GOD," Raimondo says.
Antiwar.com is the best thing that ever happened to [Raimondo]," says the Center for Libertarian Studies' Blumert. "He's floundered ever since I met him; he was always starving, never knew where to get money to buy his next pack of cigarettes, would forget about meals."
Now, thanks to renewed interest in Raimondo's work, a book he wrote in 1993 about the "lost legacy" of the conservative movement is coming back into print. He's been asked to speak at political symposiums. Last March, a column he wrote for Antiwar.com was anthologized in a book on American foreign policy, which paired up pieces from opposing perspectives, in a point/counterpoint format. Included among the contributors were Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, and writers for the respected journal Foreign Policy. Raimondo was paired with Pulitzer Prize-winning Weekly Standard scribe Charles Krauthammer on the issue of "Has President Bush created a new U.S. Foreign Policy Direction?"
All the same, the buzz created by Raimondo, Garris, and Antiwar.com is anything but deafening. Although writer and editor Tom Englehardt, who runs the popular political blog TomDispatch.com, says he reads Antiwar.com every day, Slate.com's William Saletan had never heard of it. Neither had UC Berkeley journalism professor and political columnist Susan Rasky. National Review editor Rich Lowry also claimed ignorance, despite Frum's coverage, as did the Weekly Standard's Kristol.
"I've only logged on to Antiwar.com a few times," writes Salon.com columnist Joe Conason in an e-mail. "I also can't say that I know anyone who reads it regularly, although people sometimes send links to it in email. I would say that I don't think the anti-war movement in general has done much to advance the cause of libertarian conservatism (or vice versa)."
But if there are doubts about the longevity of the Antiwar.com phenomenon, Raimondo hasn't had them. "People know me now," says Raimondo. "I'm a contender."
On the outside wall of the guesthouse, near its front door, is a bronze and dark green metal sign that reads "Randolph Bourne Institute." Bourne, a writer in the early 1900s, is now a libertarian hero because he opposed big government and entry into World War I. The institute named after him represents the highest ambitions of Garris and Raimondo.
In 2001, they incorporated the institute as a nonprofit parent company for Antiwar.com; as Garris describes it, the institute will be an "educational think tank-type thing." It will allow them to apply for grants, so they can break free of Hunter's patronage. They also have big plans for an institute summer school where "young cadre," as Raimondo says, would come to live (in Hunter's house), to lounge around the pool listening to distinguished speakers, and to do assigned reading in the evenings.
The Randolph Bourne Institute feels – on many levels – like a kid's playhouse. When Hunter, Gilmore, Garris, and Raimondo refer to their bookshelves in the downstairs part of the guesthouse as "the library" and talk importantly about having "scope," "outreach," and "symposiums," the institute seems a grown-up fantasy. You can't help but imagine the "young cadre" showing up for summer school and being surprised – and maybe even creeped out – when the imposing-sounding Randolph Bourne Institute turns out to be some rich couple's guesthouse.
