Johnson doesn’t believe in public schools.
There are a lot of things he advocates I disagree with. A lot.
My point was they didn’t sound like crazy people and were advocating positions that I think should appeal to many GOP voters. And I would trust them in the WH more than any Republican I can think of as President.
I know I’ll be voting for HRC in November but don’t you agree it would be wonderful if Trump came in 3rd behind these guys?
Johnson turned off a lot of conservatives who were looking for a port in a storm by saying things like that he’d nominate Supreme Court justices like Merrick Garland, and that he sees “religious freedom, as a category, as just being a black hole.” (I’m not saying he’s wrong on either of those things, just that he’s narrowing his market a lot. A goldbug pot dealer who doesn’t like public schools, thinks Merrick Garland is the ideal Supreme Court justice, and thinks extremist Christians should stop being so precious is going to turn off a bunch of people.)
Google Trends has him at half the level of interest as Bernie Sanders (as Sanders currently is, not at his peak). But, notably, even compared to Trump, Johnson’s line isn’t flat and so far it’s been steadily rising since April.
At the moment, he’s hardly known by anyone and if this ends up his peak, he won’t even get mentioned in retrospectives on this election. He certainly hasn’t made it yet.
But, 4 years ago, in July, his Google Trend was 20X less than it is this year. And, 4 years ago, between July and November, his trend went up by 13X. If we get a similar curve this year, that would put him over Trump’s current search ranking by November.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=gary%20johnson,donald%20trump,bernie%20sanders
Yeah Mises and Hayek were crackpots. More anti-capitalist claptrap.
If Johnson makes it into the Whitehouse, it will be because the Republican party decides to back him.
If he ends up a popular president after four years, it’s more likely that the Republican party will shift to match him more than that the Libertarian party will suddenly become the hotness among the electorate. So, if he wants to run for a second term and the Libertarian party doesn’t want to back him because he snubbed almost all of their ideas, all he has to do is run as a Republican. Or if, for whatever reason, the Libertarian party does become popular because of him, all of the new members will be because of him and view him as defining the movement. His base will be happy with what he’s doing.
If he ends up an unpopular president, what support he does or doesn’t have in the Libertarian party is irrelevant.
Basically, in all cases, he has the freedom to ignore his crazy supporters. They aren’t going to get him the election no matter what.
How many states allow the Libertarians on the ballot without having to go through pretzel bending to get there?
Recall that Ron Paul is a Republican. There is plenty of crazy within the Republican Party that will be strengthened.
True, Johnson could resign from the Libertarian Party, just like most Greens switch to the Democratic Party once they secure elective office. But he will need a constituency. And part of the constituency will be crazy. It will be a trickier juggling act than you imply. That said, nice analysis and I agree more than I disagree with it. Johnson will have to toss red meat to rabid dogs, and some of his supporters will shout betrayal. But there’s a needle that he can thread provided he doesn’t dabble in monetary crackpottery. Because reality bites back.
In other news, I continue to be amused by the implication that I am anti-capitalist. Generally speaking, skeptics of cryptobiology don’t oppose the life sciences. UFO skeptics don’t have much problem with aeronautics. Psychic skeptics have little against neurology. All of this is notwithstanding Newton’s dabbling in alchemy and Conan Doyle’s belief in fairies.
The Libertarians are on the ballot in all 50 states. The only party besides the big 2 that managed that this year.
Google Trends is not people voting for you. Polling isn’t either but in both the four-way and the three-way he’s been traveling in 6 to 9 point range (RCP rolling average) for over 5 weeks.
There may be disaffected party voters looking at him, but they apparently are not thrilled with what they have seen.
Responding to your last sentence that I bolded, I imagine a good part of disaffected GOP voters may well not be voting for him simply because they don’t think he has a chance. Many of them may feel that sticking with Trump is the better way to keep HRC out of the White House.
I alluded to this earlier, but after watching the town hall on CNN last night I think the Libertarians would have had a chance to draw in more independents and disaffected GOP voters by putting Weld at the top of the ticket. I get he doesn’t have the bonafides with the Lib party faithful like Johnson, but listening to him speak reminded me why this died-in-the-wool Democrat has always had a soft spot for him. 'Tis a pity the crazies were allowed to chase away all the moderate, intelligent leaders in the Republican party.
Two of the Trump supporters on my Facebook list have posted links to this #15for15 moneybomb page to try to get Gary Johnson into the debates. I’d say some of the Trump voters are moving over. Two isn’t many, but I’ve only got 28 “friends” so it may mean something. They can’t bear to vote for Hillary, but Trump has lost some appeal, and they’re looking for alternatives.
So this morning I was reading the Wikipedia article on Johnson’s political positions, and so many contradictions.
Opposes payroll taxes, but thinks illegal aliens should be given work visas so they can pay payroll taxes.
Supports states’ rights and the states being “50 individual laboratories” for practically everything, but thinks there should be a federal law (and not a court ruling) legalizing same sex marriage.
Supports a woman’s right to choose but wants to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Opposes any and all gun control, but believes in original intent court rulings, so one wonders if that means that the writers of the Constitution would support private possession of bazookas and nuclear weapons.
Believes in keeping Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but thinks the federal government should just give block grants to the states to run them (which means terminate them and keep the money).
To be fair, I could give a similar list of contradictions for every politician. They just might not seem like it to the party faithful, due to our having been inundated with them as the norm for so long.
I’d venture to guess that Johnson could explain his reasoning better than your average Democrat or Republican.
It looks like Johnson bypassed Sanders on Google Trends. Previously (two days ago) he was at 16% of Bernie’s peak, now he’s at 21%.
You have made a true statement.
Similarly, zero Google Trend is people NOT voting for you.
Well it’s not people interested in finding out more about you by googling you. Which is arguably a good proxy for public interest. But some people do vote without ever googling a name.
I have to admit I’ve never played with Google Trend before and it is interesting. Trump currently leads with a score of 83 whatevers, oddly enough many originating in Russia. Clinton next with less than a fifth as many, 16. Then Johnson at 3. It looks like Bernie peaked at 22; Johnson briefly peaked to 6 and since dropped. Using first and last names together as search terms to compare.
Not seeing any groundswell even of people wanting to find out more. Trump rules the Google Trends game.
Has Johnson ever laid out his plan to get a Congress filled (almost) entirely with two parties that would have no incentive to work with him and would actually have their own separate but parallel incentives to work against him to ensure that the presidency returned to their own party four years from now?
We’ve already seen for the past few years how a Republican controlled Congress has stymied much of Obama’s goals and agenda even absent a veto-overriding majority. Without any base of party support in Congress, it seems the only way Johnson would be able to achieve anything outside of executive agreements/orders would to assemble some sort of coalition government-type cabinet made up of members of both parties. But this would inevitably lead to watering down if not abandoning any of his goals that weren’t shared by a majority of either Democrats or Republicans already.
Yeah it’s just a metric of how many people are talking about you, pro or con. One person talks, a person who overhears it goes to look it up to get better context. Google bumps the ranking.
The metric itself has no unit. Whatever the top point of the most talked about thing is, is 100. Add and remove criteria and 100 changes accordingly.
I’d imagine that he’d mostly turn to Republicans, particularly if they back him for the election. But he’d probably court whichever party was in the lead for whatever issues he happened to agree with them on.
And, of course, if there’s one thing that Johnson knows how to wield, it’s the veto stick. For Johnson, getting policy implemented is probably less of a concern than seeing that policy isn’t implemented, so I imagine that he’d be pretty happy even if the Legislature doesn’t agree with him on any issues.
In a sense, if you like Obama’s policies and the world as it is now, a Johnson presidency might largely be a continuation for the sheer reason that nothing will be allowed to change.
That depends on whether his presence generates hostility or apathy. Republicans hate Democrats. Democrats hate Republicans. Do Republicans hate Libertarians? Do Democrats hate Libertarians? If the answer is “it depends on what the LP President does”, then Johnson will be able to rely on ad hoc coalitions for various priorities, assuming he bothers to pursue a legislative agenda at all, which he doesn’t have to do. All the President has to do is run the federal government, approve or disapprove laws Congress chooses to pass, and conduct foreign policy. a President can be very successful without getting a single law he wants passed, or a total failure despite getting most of what he wants.
But if Gary Johnson did get elected somehow, I expect he’d have an opportunity to choose his allies depending on what he wanted to get done most. If he wants to cut spending, then obviously he’d woo the Tea Partiers and Paul Ryan.