The more ambitious, judicious elements of the Libertarian Party have always longed to be taken seriously during elections. Though bitterly disappointed as a rule, this year their chances of realizing the national-relevancy fantasy are better than at any time since the party's birth.

Rumblings, rantings and ruminations as to the impact that the Libertarians — presently holding their political convention in Denver — could have on the 2008 presidential election have been popping off keyboards all week. The gist is that the LP may very well this year achieve nationally what they've done on multiple occasions at state and local levels around the country: play spoiler and avenging foiler to the political ambitions of an authoritarian-statist Republican who openly sneers at core libertarian values and constitutionally limited government.

This year's war-loving, liberty-hostile offering from the GOP is even more odious than usual. Ironically, though, it is in fact a formerly-odious former Repugnantcon, Bob Barr — himself to this day more authentically "conservative" than McMoreOfSame — who is the ideal Libertarian Party candidate. Poised not only to snuff out the aged Arizona Senator's dictatorial delusions, an energetic Barr candidacy could stimulate the Ron Paul-style audience participation necessary to thrust the Libertarian Party onto the national stage in the 21st Century.

Barr (unlike, say, Dr. Paul) hasn't always been good people, of course. There was a time when one would've been hard pressed to find a more dogged congressional enemy to anti-prohibitionists and advocates of personal freedom than the former U.S. Justice Department drug prosecutor and opportunistic queer basher. Barr was no advocate of noninterventionist foreign policy, either.

But, as the warmongers so joyously love to blather, everything changed after 9/11. Barr, to his eternal intellectual and ideological credit, grew disillusioned and ultimately became outraged by the unseemly affection for abusive, aggressionist government exhibited by most Republicans (and not just a few Libertarians) in the years following his 2003 departure from Congress. Even more impressively, Barr mustered the courage not only to re-examine and rearrange his political priorities, but to join forces with old enemies like the ACLU and the Marijuana Policy Project in common cause in the fight against the Beltway devourers of freedom and privacy.

Bob Barr has become, in a phrase, a "born-again libertarian." (Lifelong libertarians would do well to bear in mind that not everybody gets it right the first time.)

Barr's not without detractors in the LP, sure. He's still an unrepentant social con, and that understandably chafes some left-libertarian classical liberal-types. But they should remember Barr is also a sort of reactionary now virtually unheard of in the Republican Party (outside Ron Paul fan circles): He's an avowed supporter of an individual's right to make peaceful lifestyle decisions free from the threat of government violence should those choices happen to piss off religious bigots and culture-planners.

It's true many Libertarian Party activists tend (often rightfully) to regard social conservatives with a disdain approaching that they reserve for unremorseful communists (especially if said social conservatives are of an activist bent and hail from a Southern state). However, most Libertarians also recognize that being a social conservative on a personal level is not at all incompatible with a big-tent libertarianism of the sort necessary to evolve the party's ability to start putting the fear of Freedom-Gifting God into the hearts of mainstream politicians.

The issue in Denver will be whether the Libertarian Party delegates have the wisdom and maturity to recognize this seminal moment in their party's history. It's time, for now, to put aside bickering and balkanizing arguments over philosophical purity (those can be rekindled after the November election), and embrace the principle that in political campaigns, policymaking and business ventures, results and the bottom line matter at least as much as good intentions.

The time is now for LPers to nominate a candidate with the capacity to unleash an "Operation Chaos" of their own that will not just burn the GOP nominee's candidacy to a husk of smoldering wreckage come election day 2008, but elevate libertarian influence and visibility to heights never before seen in modern politics.