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View Full Version : Gary Johnson Nominated Libertarian Candidate for President ......



MMC
05-29-2016, 07:10 PM
The Libertarians have a Candidate. Good for 1% again, huh? :grin:


Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson has been nominated (http://townhall.com/news/politics-elections/2016/05/29/libertarians-to-pick-nominee-to-challenge-trump-democrat-n2170319)the Libertarian Party candidate for president. He was also the party’s candidate for president during the 2012 election.


Johnson got about 1 percent of the popular vote in 2012.
But the party is hoping for a strong showing in November because of the deep unpopularity polls show for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.....snip~

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2016/05/29/gary-johnson-nominated-libertarian-candidate-for-president-n2170350

It looks like his running mate will be Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld. This will not hurt Repubs. It will hurt Hillary more. What say ye?

Mister D
05-29-2016, 07:25 PM
Not sure it's as politically pointless or useless as I believed earlier. It's definitely irrelevant in the short term. I don't think these candidates will attract anyone away from the GOP or the Democrats at least not in appreciable numbers. I think libertarians should have more of a cultural focus for now. They need to be changing hearts and minds. They need to get people think differently about politics. In my experience, libertarians tend to be a lot more 'intellectual' than either progressives or conservatives whose appeals are typically not to the intellect but to party/ideological loyalty and emotion. That's a handicap in some ways and an advantage in others. Anyway, it's important for there to be visible libertarians candidates. My two cents

MMC
05-29-2016, 07:41 PM
Not sure it's as politically pointless or useless as I believed earlier. It's definitely irrelevant in the short term. I don't think these candidates will attract anyone away from the GOP or the Democrats at least not in appreciable numbers. I think libertarians should have more of a cultural focus for now. They need to be changing hearts and minds. They need to get people think differently about politics. In my experience, libertarians tend to be a lot more 'intellectual' than either progressives or conservatives whose appeals are typically not to the intellect but to party/ideological loyalty and emotion. That's a handicap in some ways and an advantage in others. Anyway, it's important for there to be visible libertarians candidates. My two cents


Its who he has as his VP. They already polled it once and Johnson took away from Clinton.


The key to a Clinton landslide is turning red voters blue. And once it became clear that conservatives didn’t have the guts to put forward a #NeverTrump protest candidate, “Republicans for Hillary” was beginning to have a bit of a ring to it. But there’s another possibility: A plausible moderate-right candidate could emerge as a genuine alternative.

Take, for example, former Massachusetts Republican Governor Bill Weld, whose history with Clinton goes back decades. Weld is exactly the type of GOP moderate Clinton has reportedly been wooing as Trump edged closer to the nomination. He endorsed Obama in 2008. He compares Trump’s rhetoric to Nazism. And there are plenty of Republicans like him this year, particularly in the Northeast. Not too many years ago, you could imagine considerable appeal for Clinton among Weld-ian Republicans. But thanks to her primary run, a combination of issues—Sanders pushing her left on economic issues, her unsatisfactory answers on the email scandal—has made that a tougher sell.

And now, instead of endorsing Clinton, Weld has agreed to join Gary Johnson on a potential Libertarian Party ticket, which suddenly looks like a very friendly home for old-fashioned country-club Republicans. It’s not a stretch to imagine Weld’s friend and fellow former Massachusetts Republican Governor Romney, who is clearly disgusted with Trump, could endorse Johnson-Weld. Disgruntled Republican funders loath to back Trump—another demographic being wooed by Clinton—could follow.

Sure, the votes the Libertarian Party siphons off will be primarily those of Republicans. That’s likely to pad Clinton’s lead in some already blue states she doesn’t need to worry about, such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. However, the disaffected GOP voters it pulls away from Clinton are potentially critical for her in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and perhaps even Maine, where third-party candidates have a considerable disruptive history. And in the event that, say, John Kasich were to endorse Johnson-Weld, even Ohio could suddenly get shaken up. Sure, that one is a long shot, but even without a big-name endorsement, there’s evidence that a plausible GOP alternative hurts Clinton more than Trump this year. A new Zogby poll of Ohio voters shows that in a four-way race including Johnson (pulling 6 percent) and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (3 percent), Clinton takes the bigger hit, and her lead in the state decreases.

We’ve seen this movie before: It was 1980, and independent candidate John Anderson pulled lots of votes in what we think of as blue states—15 percent in Massachusetts, 13 percent in New Hampshire, 11 percent in Colorado and Washington, 10 percent in Oregon and Maine. Anderson had been a Republican, but the votes he siphoned off would have gone more to Jimmy Carter than to Ronald Reagan—by 49 percent to 37 percent, according to exit polls. Every one of those states went for Reagan. In Maine, the margin was just 3 percentage points.

The emergence of a plausible moderate alternative also threatens to derail a larger piece of Democratic strategy: Clinton hoped to trot out aisle-crossing Republicans to boost her bipartisan credentials. Now, many Republican leaders will have a choice between Trump or Johnson, and not be forced to choose Clinton. Meanwhile, the other big constituency of anti-Trump Republicans—religious conservatives—has given up on finding its own protest candidate. Unlike establishment moderates, these Republicans would never go for Clinton—and will mostly end up boosting Trump’s numbers in states such as Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. If Clinton loses in November, her supporters are going to be kicking themselves for not locking in moderate Republicans sooner......snip~




Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-hillary-clinton-campaign-loses-defeated-donald-trump-213924#ixzz4A5v6mD17
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Chris
05-29-2016, 08:02 PM
LP is doing better than ever, polling at around 10%, getting on the news, CNN & Fox, on ballots in all states, but won't be invited to national debates unless Johnson wins his lawsuit against duopoly control of it. It gets out the Libertarian message.

texan
05-29-2016, 10:01 PM
It took 2 ballots.................I saw him answer a question in a debate that made him sound like a comedian.........Just looks silly and acts like it.

Green Arrow
05-29-2016, 10:37 PM
It took 2 ballots.................I saw him answer a question in a debate that made him sound like a comedian.........Just looks silly and acts like it.

So what? He was a great governor.

texan
05-29-2016, 10:55 PM
I am not from New Mexico so I don't know what kind of governor he was for them so I will take your word for his performance.

He acted goofy........I saw him in an interview on TV last week and he was underwhelming as well. I will keep an open mind and see if he is great as you say.

waltky
05-29-2016, 11:24 PM
Is that the same Gary Johnson...

... dat was on Laugh-in?

Beevee
05-30-2016, 07:23 AM
It took 2 ballots.................I saw him answer a question in a debate that made him sound like a comedian.........Just looks silly and acts like it.

You are comparing him to Trump then?

Common Sense
05-30-2016, 08:14 AM
In other Libertarian Party news...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d45x4OpMoow#t=122

MMC
05-30-2016, 09:07 AM
Libertarian Convention Gets Weird, Candidate for Chairman of Party Does Striptease on Stage .....

As you can imagine, many delegates were very unhappy with the man’s stunt, with one heard saying (https://twitter.com/ByronTau/status/737034873429463040) "At a time when we need to be taken seriously..." and another complaining (https://twitter.com/janestreet/status/737037285976354816), "I do not want the world to think that's what Libertarians are.”.....snip~

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2016/05/30/libertarian-convention-gets-weird-candidate-for-chairman-of-party-does-striptease-on-stage-n2170784


http://politirant.com/Smileys/oldrant/facepalm.gif