My second and last political post of this campaign.
Several people have asked for my personal thoughts about the Libertarian Candidate Gary Earl Johnson. In the last post I alluded to those thoughts and want to be a bit clearer. I don’t think Mr. Johnson is “crazy” … other than the fact that he’s trying to run against a very partisan establishment … and doing it for something like the third time.
Mr. Johnson was a fairly effective governor of New Mexico. He was ruthless regarding spending and quite successfully turned a deficit-spending state into a budget surplus state. He wielded the veto stamp during his two terms as governor more times than every other governor in the United States combined during the same period, or pretty close to that. In addition, New Mexico gives the governor “line item veto” authority and he liberally applied his red pen to all spending bills.
The unfortunate part, in my very humble opinion, is that he ignored the opportunity to do much of any kind of strategic investment for New Mexico’s future. Some of the money would have been much better spent looking forward than just savagely axing it. Surpluses are fleeting, but strategic investments pay dividends for the long term. He’s running his campaign on the same idea … simply don’t spend money. The better approach, again in my opinion, is a more balanced approach to whacking several government agencies that have no business doing the business they are in, but at the same time doing something about our fragile infrastructure and our lagging technological innovation.
Third party candidates historically have only been spoilers, throwing the election to the person that the majority of voters didn’t want. Recent examples are Ross Perot and George Wallace. I’ve seen the damage that both of them inflicted on the country and that’s another reason I can’t support Mr. Johnson.
The RNC leadership, tragically, just declared that they will continue to ride The Donald horse, regardless. The only alternative is for thinking Republicans to get behind a write-in campaign for someone who can garner enough votes to throw the election to the House of Representatives. Forty-eight of the fifty states have a “winner take all” situation in that whichever candidate gets at least majority + one of the vote gets the entire electoral collage for that state. A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency. It doesn’t take very many states where the majority vote for one specific person rather than the two “annointed” candidates to prevent any one candidate from garnering the 270 votes needed. It needs to be someone that both the female and male voters can support. I can think of several people who fit this bill, including men and women. But, there is hardly any time left. I’m going to write in a candidate. I haven’t decided who that will be and even when I do, I won’t be talking about it. I’ve now written all I’m going to write on this subject.