Skip to main content

The Daily Beast: Why Ron Paul won't support Gary Johnson

First they pose the question,
Why won’t Ron Paul back Gary Johnson? On a campaign conference call today, campaign spokesperson Jesse Benton said that Paul would not back Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson under any circumstances.  This was the most definitive language used by Benton on a call laced with caveats.  Benton said that Paul was “not likely” to endorse Romney and was “extremely unlikely” to back any third party candidate. But, when it came to Gary Johnson, the answer was a quick and simple no.
And then they answer it:
Johnson may be the most ideologically similar candidate to Paul but there are major differences between the former New Mexico governor and the longtime Texas congressman. Johnson is far more rooted in modern libertarianism than Paul, who is many ways a candidate of what his biographer, Brian Doherty, calls the “Old Right.”  While Johnson is pro gay marriage and pro-drug reform, Paul is still wedded to bugaboos about gold money and combines his laissez-faire economic approach with a streak of social conservatism.
                The differences though aren’t just ideological. Johnson has abandoned the GOP as hopelessly wedded to big government conservativism and the Christian Right after his failed run in the Republican Presidential primary. In contrast, Paul is playing “a long game” to try to remake the Republican Party in his image.  On the call today, Benton stated that one of the major efforts of Paul delegates in Tampa would be to change the Republican Party rules to make it easier for “liberty-oriented” candidates in 2016. (He declined though “to get into the weeds” about what those changes would be.) 
So that's the answer to any folks who thought there was going to be some hedging about the difference between "endorse" and "support."

Comments

Walter D said…
The differences between Gary Johnson (was Republican, now Libertarian), and Ron Paul (was
Libertarian, now Republican) are minute compared to their ideological similarities.

Ron Paul supporters are being set adrift; get in your lifeboats and row wherever you want.

They want direction from their man, they will do what he recommends.

Why not row your lifeboats towards that ship that is on all state ballots, with a candidate with similar, if not identical views.

"Similar but not identical" is a better choice than "totally different and not even close".

"Ron Paul may be playing, 'a long game' to try to remake the Republican party in his image".

In the "short game", without his direction, he is throwing two million plus votes into
the brine.
September 5, 2012 at 8:46 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw
18 comments
Read more

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
Post a Comment
Read more

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici
Post a Comment
Read more