Many folks don't even know who Bob Barr is, much less that he is running for president as the Libertarian nominee. The question is whether enough people will come to know the former Republican congressman by November to allow Barr's candidacy to really matter.

In many ways it's in Barr's hands whether he ends up becoming a material factor.

The former Georgia congressman, who led the fight to impeach and remove Bill Clinton from office in the late 1990s, will undoubtedly have a hard time raising enough money to have a legitimate shot at winning more than the typical one-to-two percent level that Libertarian candidates usually receive in presidential contests.

And if Barr is running simply to get free airtime on TV networks, or to have another 15 minutes of fame, then he can hang it up -- he will indeed be irrelevant.

Right now he's fighting to get his name on the Oklahoma ballot. That's one of the few states that make it hard for even the Libertarians to sneak in as a third party. Trouble is, his ballot fight is earning no press. If Barr wastes more than a modest sum in this effort, he may end up not even being a footnote in the history of the 2008 presidential race.

But Barr does have some things going for him. If he takes advantage of them, he could yet toss a huge monkey wrench into the contest.

One thing that many political pundits have yet to grasp is the presence of a small but powerful group of voters who consider themselves conservatives, but who believe President Bush and his administration have betrayed them. They also refuse to embrace John McCain, either because they view him as too liberal or, alternatively, as more Bush-like than they can stomach.

This voting bloc feels that Congress and the president blinked on meaty immigration reform; that they allowed U.S. monetary policy to centrifugally scatter willy-nilly in all directions; and that they have trashed basic constitutional liberties in the pursuit of phantom foreign enemies.

Many of them voted for Ron Paul, who admittedly did not meet the electoral expectations of his followers in the presidential nomination process. Or did he? Continued...