Posted on 12/28/2011 8:43:14 AM PST by markomalley
Gary Johnson officially announced on Wednesday that he is leaving the Republican party in order to run as a third party Libertarian candidate for president.
The expected announcement was reported earlier this month, although Johnson's campaign was not prepared to make the move at the time.
"Frankly, I have been deeply disappointed by the treatment I received in the Republican nomination process," Johnson said in a statement released by his presidential campaign. He named GOP candidates Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, saying they have "no national name identification" yet are allowed to participate in debates.
Johnson's campaign has complained in the past when the candidate failed to meet the requirements to participate in televised GOP debates.
Johnson acknowledged in his announcement that he is not the only self-avowed Libertarian in the race. "While Ron Paul is a good man and a libertarian who I proudly endorsed for president in 2008, there is no guarantee he will be the Republican nominee," he said. "If I earn the Libertarian nomination, I will be on the ballot in all 50 states. I will not be held hostage to a system rigged for the wealthiest and best-known candidates in a handful of states who happen to have early primaries. And most important, we will offer a political “home” for millions of Americans who are not finding one in the current political establishment or its candidates."
Paul was the Libertarian candidate for President in 1988 but is running for the GOP nomination this cycle. The Libertarian candidate has achieved achieved 50-state ballot access several times in past presidential elections.
Probably will drain enough votes in New Mexico to assure that Obama carries the state. So could be critical in a very close election.
I am pretty sure this guy’s name has one too many r’s.
Don Johnson was running for President?
Think he’ll peel enough of the “smoke-taxpayer-funded-dope” votes away from RuPaul?
He is the flea trekking up the elephant’s leg with rape on his mind.
I knew a Gary Johnson in grade school He sneezed all over Bettye Olivas’ neck one day in arithmetic. Is this the same guy?
A drama queen, attention whore that no one cared about.
His main thing as a candidate; was promoting a pro homosexual agenda.
He was in one debate and was an embarrassment. His best line was one he stole from Rush Limbaugh. Other than that he was a stammering mess. He did make everyone else look good though.
Looks like Cut and Run waited too long. Now after he is eliminated from the Republican race he is going to have to run again.
It’s because nobody likes you, Gary.
Libertarians have long failed for two reasons. The first is that they allow their resources to be depleted by presidential candidates, and the second is an unfocused agenda.
Focusing an agenda is not hard, nor does it compromise your core beliefs, but it makes you attractive and crystal clear to voters, who truly like these qualities in candidates.
You start by listing your top 100 agenda items, by consensus of party members. Certainly there will be more, but these are what most of your members care about.
Then you poll the public about these 100, to find the top 10 most popular of your ideas. And this gives you a list of just 10 things you want that the public also wants.
So these 10 things are your campaign platform. Those who passionately believe in some of the other 90 need to understand that what they want hasn’t been forgotten, just “back burnered” for the time being.
And this is not easy. But it is the biggest failing of third parties to try and give all their members everything they want all at once, and now. So they must be persuaded that to bide their time and get what they want is better than to demand it all now and get nothing.
Remember the Contract With America? It used this kind of clear, short and sweet formula, and it was a huge hit with voters.
Importantly, the Libertarian party could have a powerful middle ground between the Republicans and Democrats. Because most of what government is far less controversial, and if they truly don’t care about a pending piece of legislation, they can “auction off” their vote to either party.
The value of doing this is that in return, the parties have to back something the libertarians want.
is this the person who anglicanize his name from his original in over to enhance his political career?
perhaps he will split the kookpaul vote.
Wow, this is...
News?
I, too, have been deeply disappointed by the treatment I have received in the Republican nomination process.
Therefore, I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination to serve as your president for the next four years.
I would, however, accept a draft to become Emperor-for-Life.
Saw him on Greta last night, not sure, so many guest hosts on Fox lineup . . . but he looked almost stoned and his lips had a really strange look. Weird. C’ya Gary!!! He won’t make it as an L candidate either.
Not enough "God words", IMO.
>>Remember the Contract With America? It used this kind of clear, short and sweet formula, and it was a huge hit with voters.<<
I would wager that not one in five Republicans, not all voters, just Republicans, could have told you what was in the Contract With America on election day, 1994.
Clinton, along with screw-ups by the MSM in reporting his actions, lost the Congress that year; Gingrich didn’t win it with his “Contract.” Remember HillaryCare? Remember the “haircut on the tarmac by his flown-in hair stylist? The MSM screwed up and reported on Clinton’s actions as though he could never lose. And then the 1994 election debacle (for the Dems) occurred, literally out of the blue, as far as the MSM was concerned.
Two things then happened:
First, in an effort to explain away their own complicity in what was a historic Dem loss, the MSM cast the “Contract” as the reason for the result, and elevated Gingrich as the new GOP Messiah. (They picked well, because his own base disavowed him within four years.)
Second, the MSM collectively vowed never again to repeat the mistakes of 1994 and report the unvarnished truth about a Democrat President, or, for that matter, about the leading Democrat Presidential candidate.
Fortunately, the internet since then has reduced the MSM’s influence, for they have not changed that 1994 decision, and are still completely in the tank for the Democrat Party, as John McCain and Sarah Palin learned in 2008, and as Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, or ??, will learn in 2012.
Libertarians are every bit as much ivory tower theorists as any marxology drone hidden away in the faculty freak show at your local State U. The difference — and it is an important difference — between libertarians and the leftward denizens of the asylum is that the libertarians begin with a better founding principle. Liberty, understood as personal freedom of choice, has a lot going for it as a lodestar, and it means that libertarians will very frequently be on the right side of the big issues, especially in the grand alliance of convenience against the collectivist and statist left.
Libertarians, however, are tempermentally very much like leftists in their ideological intolerance. They find it difficult to accept the necessity of balancing competing objectives because they are convinced the truth lies in One Big Idea, rigorously applied. And since reasonable people can and do find different applications of even “simple” principles to be persuasive, libertarians (like leftists) are prone to factionalism, as “one big idea” becomes “one big idea AS DEFINED BY ME,” and everyone else is a heretic. They then become ritual purity freaks and marginalize themselves in electoral settings.
Leftists of course resolve this tension by abandoning any real commitment to consensual government and resorting to increasingly authoritarian measures. Libertarians, to their credit, are precluded by first principles from adopting this course, which is why they remain ineffectual as an organized force.
Sorry...got carried away with that response...even forgot it was on the Johnson thread...*s*
Still true about the Contract though. All the hype about it was after the election, not before. Your point, though, that a third party needs to focus on a few big issues is well made.
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