Sure, Barr's an A-hole, but I can't help but be delighted by his intra-rightwing thrashing of John McCain:

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: All right, Senator John McCain blasting Russia again today.

My next guest says all this blasting and tough talk is not registering.

With us now is Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr.

So, you find Senator McCain's approach to this bad. Why?

BOB BARR, LIBERTARIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, it's very simplistic. Either that, or he really doesn't have a firm grasp of the geopolitics and the ethnic and demographic problems in that part of the world.

He seems to feel, similar to what George Bush felt a number of years ago, that Putin could be trusted because he had looked into his eyes and saw a man he could trust.

Senator McCain seems to be falling into that same simplistic mode that, if you meet somebody and know them, they're trustworthy, and we're their friend, and we need to support them.

You know, we're not all Georgians. Simply because there is a very serious problem that we ought to be concerned about and we ought to be monitoring very carefully between Russia and Georgia does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that we ought to be becoming involved. And that clearly seems to be the direction in which both this administration and Senator McCain are going.

CAVUTO: All right.

So, Congressman, your view, the official Libertarian view -- and not official, but sort of the accepted Libertarian view -- is just butt out of these kind of foreign conflicts, right?

BARR: Be aware of them. Be concerned. Try and mediate. There certainty are pressures that can be brought. And, you know, it's not that we ought to back away and say we have no interest whatsoever here. But I think it is foolhardy and, again, very simplistic to be jumping into these sorts of disputes. The one in particular here was, at least in the short term, precipitated very clearly by actions by the Georgian president.

The problems that the Republican Party and Senator McCain have in this election cycle are very serious, and they go far deeper than simply Bob Barr. There is no vision, no leadership, no agenda for the American people. That's the problem that the Republicans have. And that's why there's a lot of Libertarian-leaning Republicans and true conservative Republicans that aren't going to vote for Senator McCain. Those are the votes that we intend to get.

As much of a shmuck as Bob Barr is, he is far closer in rhetoric to the classic Republican that McCain, a neocon/panderbear hybrid, pretends to be. Let's face it, the Republicans have mucked up their brand so badly lately that even progressives like myself are becoming wistful about the way republicans used to paint themselves (e.g. anti-spending, non-interventionists, pro-Fourth Amendment, etc.).