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Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Gary Johnson Gains Ground In Latest CNN/ORC Poll
We've always been told that the race for the White House is a marathon, not a sprint so a fast start is not a good indication of where you will finish. Just ask Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton how their 2007 poll numbers worked for them. It's also easy to forget that among the current crop of GOP hopefuls, Herman Cain was peaking as he was nearing double digits in polls a few short months ago while the spring's front-runner, Tim Pawlenty is sitting on the sidelines, a beaten man.
Now we have a new rising (lone) star in Rick Perry who is nearly doubling up contestant number 2, Mitt Romney, in most polls and pulling away from the former Tea Party flavor of the month Michele Bachmann.
But lost in all the hype and hysteria is the one man who knows a little bit about endurance races; the former 2 term NM Governor Gary Johnson who is an accomplished tri-athlete and was all but written off when he tossed his hat in the NM race in 1994. Gov Johnson, who has been excluded from most national polls and has been persona non grata in the last 2 GOP debates, with a pending snub for the Sept 7 NBC-Politico debate, is slowly gaining ground.
In the newly released CNN/ORC poll Gov Johnson comes in at 2%, ahead of establishment candidates Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman while being tied with Herman Cain. It may not seem like much but you need to crawl before you can walk and with the big names slugging it out, Gary Johnson is building momentum. You also need to realize that most Americans haven't even begun to think about the 2012 race with the Iowa Caucus still 5 months away.
With this in mind, the Johnson campaign understands that in order to win in 2012 you need to still be in the race and their strategy to build grassroots support may, in the end, be the winning formula.
Via Memeorandum
Now we have a new rising (lone) star in Rick Perry who is nearly doubling up contestant number 2, Mitt Romney, in most polls and pulling away from the former Tea Party flavor of the month Michele Bachmann.
But lost in all the hype and hysteria is the one man who knows a little bit about endurance races; the former 2 term NM Governor Gary Johnson who is an accomplished tri-athlete and was all but written off when he tossed his hat in the NM race in 1994. Gov Johnson, who has been excluded from most national polls and has been persona non grata in the last 2 GOP debates, with a pending snub for the Sept 7 NBC-Politico debate, is slowly gaining ground.
In the newly released CNN/ORC poll Gov Johnson comes in at 2%, ahead of establishment candidates Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman while being tied with Herman Cain. It may not seem like much but you need to crawl before you can walk and with the big names slugging it out, Gary Johnson is building momentum. You also need to realize that most Americans haven't even begun to think about the 2012 race with the Iowa Caucus still 5 months away.
With this in mind, the Johnson campaign understands that in order to win in 2012 you need to still be in the race and their strategy to build grassroots support may, in the end, be the winning formula.
Via Memeorandum
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The New American - GOP Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson
Usually described as a libertarian, Johnson comes across as more of a pragmatist than an ideologue. Whereas the other Republican candidate he most resembles, Ron Paul, often argues from first principles and invokes the Constitution, Johnson is more likely to discuss a policy in terms of its cost-benefit ratio. Thus, he supports marijuana legalization not so much as a matter of personal liberty but as a matter of putting a stop to wasteful, counterproductive spending. Likewise, his foreign policy, while nearly as noninterventionist as Paul’s, is predicated less on a belief in minding our own business than on the fact that intervention is expensive.
Still, given the chance, Johnson can take stands on principle, such as opposing the Patriot Act and demanding an end to the torture of prisoners. His principles and his record were strong enough to spark a movement within the Libertarian Party to draft him as its candidate for President in 2000; Johnson declined.
Because Johnson tends to view policy decisions through the prism of costs versus benefits, his positions on fiscal and economic issues are among his strongest. Says his website: “The U.S. is borrowing or printing more than 40 cents of every dollar the government spends today. The math is simple: Federal spending must be cut not by millions or billions, but by trillions. And it must be done today.”
Johnson calls for “restrain[ing] spending across the board”: eliminating stimulus programs, earmarks, and subsidies; reforming entitlement programs; repealing ObamaCare and the Medicare prescription drug benefit; ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; and reducing defense spending to what is actually needed to protect the United States.
He also takes a hard line against Federal Reserve monetary manipulation, calling for an audit and congressional oversight of the Fed and for getting the Fed “out of the business of printing money and buying debt through quantitative easing.” However, he stops short of demanding the abolition of the Fed.
On foreign policy Johnson sounds a strong noninterventionist note: “All military activities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, now, Libya should end, our troops returned home, and the focus of our foreign policy reoriented toward the protection of U.S. citizens and interests.” Here the Constitution even gets a mention as Johnson alludes to its mandate that Congress declare war before the President may deploy troops. He also suggests a rethinking of Cold War-era troop deployments, including NATO, where the United States still shoulders much of the burden for other nations’ defenses. He opposes torture, says “individuals incarcerated unjustly by the U.S. should have the ability to seek compensation through the courts,” and maintains that detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere “must be given due process via the courts or military tribunals, and must not be held indefinitely without regard to those fundamental processes.”
Read the rest here
Still, given the chance, Johnson can take stands on principle, such as opposing the Patriot Act and demanding an end to the torture of prisoners. His principles and his record were strong enough to spark a movement within the Libertarian Party to draft him as its candidate for President in 2000; Johnson declined.
Because Johnson tends to view policy decisions through the prism of costs versus benefits, his positions on fiscal and economic issues are among his strongest. Says his website: “The U.S. is borrowing or printing more than 40 cents of every dollar the government spends today. The math is simple: Federal spending must be cut not by millions or billions, but by trillions. And it must be done today.”
Johnson calls for “restrain[ing] spending across the board”: eliminating stimulus programs, earmarks, and subsidies; reforming entitlement programs; repealing ObamaCare and the Medicare prescription drug benefit; ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; and reducing defense spending to what is actually needed to protect the United States.
He also takes a hard line against Federal Reserve monetary manipulation, calling for an audit and congressional oversight of the Fed and for getting the Fed “out of the business of printing money and buying debt through quantitative easing.” However, he stops short of demanding the abolition of the Fed.
On foreign policy Johnson sounds a strong noninterventionist note: “All military activities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, now, Libya should end, our troops returned home, and the focus of our foreign policy reoriented toward the protection of U.S. citizens and interests.” Here the Constitution even gets a mention as Johnson alludes to its mandate that Congress declare war before the President may deploy troops. He also suggests a rethinking of Cold War-era troop deployments, including NATO, where the United States still shoulders much of the burden for other nations’ defenses. He opposes torture, says “individuals incarcerated unjustly by the U.S. should have the ability to seek compensation through the courts,” and maintains that detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere “must be given due process via the courts or military tribunals, and must not be held indefinitely without regard to those fundamental processes.”
Read the rest here
Monday, August 1, 2011
Meet Gary Johnson, The Most Libertarian Candidate Ever To Seek The US Presidency
The UK Telegraph
I’m tired of hearing about the supposed dearth of talent in the Republican Party. What about Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, Chris Christie or Scott Walker?
And here’s someone you might not yet know about, a sea-green incorruptible who is surely the most anti-government candidate ever to have sought the GOP presidential nomination: Gary Johnson, twice governor of New Mexico.
Gary Johnson’s philosophy is easily summarized. He thinks the state is far too big. He wants to balance the federal budget – not 20 years from now, but immediately – and has identified the requisite spending cuts. He understands that an adventurist foreign policy, as well as being expensive, diminishes domestic liberty: that there is a contradiction, in Russell Kirk’s phrase, between an American Republic and an American Empire. Accordingly, he was against the attacks on Iraq and Libya and, though he supported the overthrow of the Taliban, he opposed the elaboration and prolongation of the US mission in Afghanistan.
Gary Johnson is a libertarian on social issues, grasping that the American constitution rests tacitly on tolerance, privacy and equality before the law (see above clip). He was unusual among Republicans in strenuously resisting the various erosions of civil liberties carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation. He sees the “war on drugs” as a misapplication of state power. In short, he believes in personal freedom, states’ rights and the US Constitution.
Alright, you might be saying, so he’s a libertarian. So are thousands of Ayn Rand-reading students around the world. No one holding these views ever gets elected to anything important.
That’s where you’d be wrong. Gary Johnson was elected on precisely such a manifesto in the swing state of New Mexico, and promptly set about putting his beliefs into practice. He took the view that there should be as few laws as possible, and vetoed more legislation during his term than the other 49 state governors put together. He cut taxes 14 times and never raised them once. Result? A budget surplus and an economic boom. During Gary Johnson’s gubernatorial term, 1,200 state jobs were axed, but 20,000 private sector jobs were created. And here’s the best bit: he was handsomely re-elected, despite a two-to-one Democrat majority.
The fragility of the US economy is perhaps the gravest threat to world prosperity. Heaven knows the White House needs someone who can balance the books. Well, my American friends, if you’re looking for a president with the gimcrack charisma of a Blair or a Clinton, stick to the incumbent. But if you’re looking for someone who has shown that he can cut government spending, ecce homo.
I’m tired of hearing about the supposed dearth of talent in the Republican Party. What about Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, Chris Christie or Scott Walker?
And here’s someone you might not yet know about, a sea-green incorruptible who is surely the most anti-government candidate ever to have sought the GOP presidential nomination: Gary Johnson, twice governor of New Mexico.
Gary Johnson’s philosophy is easily summarized. He thinks the state is far too big. He wants to balance the federal budget – not 20 years from now, but immediately – and has identified the requisite spending cuts. He understands that an adventurist foreign policy, as well as being expensive, diminishes domestic liberty: that there is a contradiction, in Russell Kirk’s phrase, between an American Republic and an American Empire. Accordingly, he was against the attacks on Iraq and Libya and, though he supported the overthrow of the Taliban, he opposed the elaboration and prolongation of the US mission in Afghanistan.
Gary Johnson is a libertarian on social issues, grasping that the American constitution rests tacitly on tolerance, privacy and equality before the law (see above clip). He was unusual among Republicans in strenuously resisting the various erosions of civil liberties carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation. He sees the “war on drugs” as a misapplication of state power. In short, he believes in personal freedom, states’ rights and the US Constitution.
Alright, you might be saying, so he’s a libertarian. So are thousands of Ayn Rand-reading students around the world. No one holding these views ever gets elected to anything important.
That’s where you’d be wrong. Gary Johnson was elected on precisely such a manifesto in the swing state of New Mexico, and promptly set about putting his beliefs into practice. He took the view that there should be as few laws as possible, and vetoed more legislation during his term than the other 49 state governors put together. He cut taxes 14 times and never raised them once. Result? A budget surplus and an economic boom. During Gary Johnson’s gubernatorial term, 1,200 state jobs were axed, but 20,000 private sector jobs were created. And here’s the best bit: he was handsomely re-elected, despite a two-to-one Democrat majority.
The fragility of the US economy is perhaps the gravest threat to world prosperity. Heaven knows the White House needs someone who can balance the books. Well, my American friends, if you’re looking for a president with the gimcrack charisma of a Blair or a Clinton, stick to the incumbent. But if you’re looking for someone who has shown that he can cut government spending, ecce homo.
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