The Libertarian Party on Sunday picked former Georgia Republican Rep. Bob Barr to be its presidential candidate. “I certainly have no intention of being a spoiler,” he said today. As Dana Milbank recently reported, Barr does note hide his disdain for John McCain:

Barr took issue with McCain’s Iran policy. “I’m not going to go around making up songs about such a serious matter as going to war with a sovereign nation, as Senator McCain did,” the former congressman said, tut-tutting McCain’s “Barbara Ann/Bomb Iran” episode.

He quarreled with McCain’s Iraq policy. “These troops need to be brought home,” he offered.

He ridiculed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which, he said, means McCain “cannot ever lay legitimate claim, at least with a straight face, to…being labeled as a conservative.”

He put down McCain’s plan to do away with pet-project earmarks, claiming it “would make barely a drop in the bucket with regard to the national debt, the deficit.”

And he disparaged McCain’s fiscal policy, saying “there are some legitimate questions that have been raised over whether Senator McCain is simply a Johnny-come-lately to the modest tax cuts.”

Steve Benen suggests that Barr might attract the support of Ron Paul and “be able to put a few percentage points together in some competitive states.”

Former congressman Bob Barr (R-GA), a well-known and outspoken conservative, is, as he puts it, “hardly a card-carrying member of the gay-rights lobby.” He authored the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which declared that states did not need to recognize legal same-sex marriages from other states. In 1996, he argued that homosexual relations were “bizarre”:

“The homosexual agenda calls for taking these so-called marriage licenses to the mainland and the other 50 states, the other 49 states, and trying to force these other states, the citizens of these other states, to accept their bizarre view of marriage.” [CBS This Morning, 12/4/96]

Yet even Barr recognizes the damage the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy has had on our overstretched military. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed today, Barr declares his opposition to the policy and encourages other conservatives to call for its repeal:

As a conservative Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2003, I was hardly a card-carrying member of the gay-rights lobby. I opposed then, and continue to oppose, same-sex marriage, or the designation of gays as a constitutionally protected minority class. Service in the armed forces is another matter. The bottom line here is that, with nearly a decade and a half of the hybrid “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to guide us, I have become deeply impressed with the growing weight of credible military opinion which concludes that allowing gays to serve openly in the military does not pose insurmountable problems for the good order and discipline of the services. [...]

Because the military can’t fill its slots, it has lowered its standards, extended tours of duty and increased rotations, further hurting morale and readiness. Conservatives are supposed to favor meritocracy — rewarding ability — especially in the armed forces. Instead, the military is firing badly needed, capable troops simply because they’re gay, and replacing them with a hodge podge that includes ex-cons, drug abusers and high-school dropouts.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is weakening our national security. Since the policy was instituted, at least 11,000 servicemembers, hundreds of whom had key speciality skills such as training in Arabic, have left the military. Currently in the midst of a readiness crisis, the military could attract as many as 41,000 new recruits if gays could serve openly.

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– Jordan Grossman

domestic spying program: “Well, the fact of the matter is that the Constitution is the Constitution, and I took an oath to abide by — and the president did — if you have any government official who deliberately orders that federal law be violated despite the best of motives, that certainly ought to be of concern to us.”