Fueled by their contempt for economic freedom and personal choice, by their disdain for individual rights, constitutionalism, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc., etc., the GOP's fascist-leaning fundamentalist hucksters preaching liberal doses of government-planned penance are ramping up their fatwa against principled libertarians.

This is excellent news for Bob Barr's presidential campaign, and for the Libertarian Party.

It means the Republican Party's new generation of old-school tyranny-seekers— like Bill Clinton's fellow Arkansas goob, Mike Huckabee — are openly attempting to douse any embers of small-government longing still glowing within their partisan ranks that haven't already been micturated upon by the current administration.

It means the slapdash, superficial "center-right" Republican coalition of 80's lore is at long last deader than Reagan's corpse, having now finally given way formally and publicly to the neocon-theocon axis that's in fact ruled the roost all along. It means that whatever authoritarian confederacy McCain succeeds in cobbling together this election cycle, nobody of moderate political aptitude or better will be suggesting the "very heart and soul" of this New Right "conservatism" is anything conceivably libertarian.

And most of all, it ought to be taken as a sign by libertarian true believers of all hues and perspectives, that, for the sake of gaining our cause maximum illumination in the 2008 mainstream gallery of "what's possible," it's time to shoulder up and soldier on with the LP nominee against rightwing progressivism's false prophets of despondency, despair and doom.