Rolling Stone: Meet Gary Johnson, The GOP's Invisible Candidate

H/T Gary Johnson Grassroots Forum

Meet Gary Johnson, the GOP's Invisible Candidate

Gary Johnson is the Rodney Dangerfield of the GOP’s 2012 field. He gets no respect. Despite being a successful former two-term governor of New Mexico who shrank state government by wielding his veto pen with fervor, an entrepreneur who sold the 1,000 person construction business he built from scratch, and an accomplished athlete (who else in the field has summited Everest?) Johnson has struggled to break through – with voters or the press.

The latest insult? CNN – which saw fit to invite Herman Cain, the former CEO of a third-rate pizza chain who has never held elected office, to its debate in New Hampshire the other night – told Johnson to take a hike because he's polling below 2 percent.

That’s a shame, because in an interview with Rolling Stone, Johnson proved himself to be one of the more honest – and certainly more unorthodox – politicians in the running.

Johnson calls himself a "classical liberal," though others might prefer "libertarian." He favors legalizing marijuana (he says he toked up as recently as 2008) and prostitution and supports a woman’s right to choose, liberal immigration reform and an anti-war foreign policy – even as he’s called for draconian spending cuts and for dropping the corporate tax rate to zero as a means to jumpstart jobs creation.

Get Johnson talking and he’ll prove to you that he’s no joke. Perhaps in the next round the august political tastemakers at CNN will see fit to find him a podium – if only to subject him to John King’s incisive "this or that" questioning.

Read the complete interview here.

Cross posted at The Libertarian Patriot and the Left Coast Rebel