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Gary Johnson’s Third Con Job
Jim Geraghty has long sounded the alarm about politicians who run campaigns not to win but as book tours. They mess up primaries, in particular, by creating noise that makes picking the right candidate harder and slows the unifying of the party before the general, while contributing nothing of value. At best, they offer an idea that the public can enjoy (although it’s much easier to find a memorable idea, like Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan, than an idea that has gone on to have an impact).
What is unusual about Johnson’s campaign, and unlike his last two efforts, is that he’s finally come out and said it. In an interview on Scott Steigler’s Stig show, he said “By ‘fully expect to win’ – I’ve won, because – is winning receiving more votes? Maybe that won’t be the case.” Then later “Winning? I’ve won, really. I’m sitting here with you. You wouldn’t have had me on any other way, right?” Stig says “If that’s your qualifier, we need to raise your standards.” Johnson responds “Does winning mean you get more votes?” Stig explains that “Winning does mean you get more votes. You can’t influence anything if you don’t, right?” And Johnson says “Well, maybe that’s not the case. That’s kind of what I’ve dedicated my life to, is talking about these issues as they should be talked about… You can argue that I didn’t stand a chance in either one of those [presidential] races.”
So there are two outcomes to the race; the first is that Johnson gets media time, donations, and such. The second is that some kind of message is put out. What is the message that Johnson wants to put out in the world? His primary message is that he’d cut spending, but not on anything in New Mexico. So, specifically, he’d focus cuts on military spending, but he’d not cut the military in New Mexico. Indeed, he’d increase New Mexican military spending, because the environment is well suited to military stuff. He attacks Sen. Heinrich for failing to maximize defense spending in New Mexico. Likewise, he’s a fan of federal spending on scientific research, because it takes place in New Mexico, but doesn’t pretend to have a principled position defending it.
His secondary messages are that he’d oppose military interventions, and promote pot. His actual record includes support for the invasion of Afghanistan, for intervention in Yemen, in Uganda when Kony was in the news, and against ISIS in Iraq, while his calls for US support for Russian attacks on ISIS in Syria led to his most memorable moment in 2016. Even a week after being asked about Aleppo, a Russian backed atrocity that did not involve ISIS, he still sought to change the subject to ISIS. In other words, if you broadly agree with Johnson about the policies you most want, you already have a Senator who agrees with you: look through the hyperbole and Martin Heinrich is a security moderate who favors pot legalization, is comfortable with federal spending, and would prefer that it took place in New Mexico than elsewhere.
The big differences are that Heinrich is honest and informed. When Heinrich tells you something, it’s likely going to be based in reports from the news or other forms of thoughtful research. When Johnson explains that he opposes Libyan intervention because ISIS has taken all the weapons from the rebels and now runs Libya, you are left wondering if he’s getting that from the fringe blogs that were spouting the Russian line or if it’s just something he made up. Unless Johnson really believes it’s plausible that he’ll get federal spending cuts everywhere except New Mexico, he’s not taking more radical positions on his central issues than Heinrich, just less informed ones that sound more radical.
So, again, listen to the interview. Notice that when he talks about the impact he can make, it’s about getting himself into the media, not about promoting a particular idea. Even when he fantasizes about being a senator, it’s about “I hope I’m mentioned every Sunday morning amongst the talking heads as to where Johnson’s at on this. And the country can look to Johnson as to what should or shouldn’t take place.” It’s not about a passion for education reform or some other way of helping people. Because Johnson’s campaign is a scam in the same sort of way that various fake Tea Party groups were scams, or the Ben Carson or Chris Dodd campaigns were; they sucker good people out of their money, drive idealistic kids to volunteer their time, and increase the rifts between Americans, all in the name of ego and cash.
Published in General
When pot is inevitably legalized Federally, the Libertarian party’s entire reason for existence will essentially cease… particularly given that their motivation level is going to go way down for some reason.
For shame, Mendel. If someone said to you that criticism of Trump today was invalid because Clinton was awful, you’d not give them the time of day, at least not by affirming them. I agree that Trump has some serious flaws; maybe 90% of Ricochet would, too. Does that mean, to you, that there is no politician who is legitimate to criticize? This isn’t a standard that you apply to any other kind of post that I’m aware.
Johnson’s flaws are deeper and he lacks the positives that Trump supporters and Trump moderates counterbalance it with, but that’s really irrelevant. You’re not just employing a caricature of the pro-Trump arguments, you go beyond them when you compare 2018 Johnson with 2015 Trump.
There is one possible saving grace. If you’ve had a brain fart and believed that I was campaigning for Trump in 2015, you’d at least be exposing hypocrisy. Rather, I outlined some of Trump’s flaws in 2015 and traveled extensively to persuade more people of them. I’m more than capable of recognizing the existence of multiple bad politicians at once (hey, I don’t like Sen. Hirono or the Reps. King either!), as I’m certain you are.
Compare Johnson’s flaws with Heinrich’s and Rich’s and we’ll have some useful conversation. “Trump’s bad, so we shouldn’t pay attention to the news” is not a line that can be reasonably debated, though.
You can’t organize a political party on (1) smoking pot and (2) anarchy. Any true believers are incapable of organizing or being organized.
When the Dems say Hillary is the legit president, since she had more votes than Trump, they fail to realize that a popular vote would have a runoff between the DNC and GOP and the right-wing voters outnumber the left-wingers. Hillary’s friends don’t understand that a plurality is not a majority. If you look at races around country, the Libertarians are significantly helping the Dems. Read more.
Gary Johnson is responsible for the BEST political debate line in the history of political debates when in 2012 he said, “My next door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this administration.”
As a New Mexico resident, I’ll be voting for him.
Well, I certainly won’t be voting for Heinrich.
Right. If you look at the opening and closing lines of the post, I explicitly acknowledge that he’s not unique in having ulterior motives, merely unique in being as open about them and unusual in being as lacking in public spiritedness. Did you even read the piece?
Right. Did you read before commenting? I explicitly state that having a message is a relatively legitimate reason to abuse the electoral system. Also, fwiw, I disagree about Sanders. He couldn’t have won without some serious good fortune, but the possibility of Clinton suffering a real scandal was non-trivial.
This is an excellent argument against changing the process to prevent Johnson from doing what he does. It does not appear to be an argument against criticizing people who hamper our war efforts with misinformation. Our political process suffers when people (including Johnson, but not limited to Johnson) pollute the airwaves with absurd enemy propaganda. We ought not to ban them from doing so, but if you feel like it is inappropriate to defend the truth when she is assaulted, I’m genuinely mystified by what you think Ricochet is for.
I agree that we ought to accept the system we have and deal with awful candidates. So far as I can tell, that is what I am doing. I don’t think that for any other candidate you’d suggest that, for example, cutting spending everywhere except their home state was a policy worth defending.
I guess that’s one reason for voting for the guy. Do you have a second reason?
Do you have issues with Rich? It seems to me that Heinrich is one of the better Dems in the Senate, but that Rich would be one of the better Republicans, and I know which I prefer.
I honestly haven’t learned anything about Rich. (He doesn’t even have a Wiki page, that I can tell.)
Doesn’t really matter how I vote, Heinrich is going to win.
In fairness to the LP, and particularly to Johnson, most of their candidates don’t run as anarchists. Johnson, in particular, is keen to expand many areas of government, often proposing absurdly large expansions. There are lots of criticisms of the man, but he’s not an anarchist.
Well, probably. Today’s poll puts the race at 40/ 28/ 22 Heinrich/ Rich/ Johnson. There’s probably a maybe 3% chance that Rich will win, which is pretty far from being a zero chance. Johnson managed to get his zero budget partisan polls (claiming that Johnson is easily beating Rich) into the media for weeks and has dwarfed Rich on advertising, with the result that Johnson is pulling a lot more votes from Rich today than he will in the general; the academics I’ve talked to think that a 10% result is closer to what he’ll land.
Rich is an underdog, but mostly because of name recognition; his approval rating among people who know him is pretty good and there’s a debate tonight and polls coming out making it clear that Rich is the leading anti-Heinrich candidate. With a lot of the independents appearing to be Republican leaning (like I say, name recognition is the key barrier that Rich faces), it seems likely that the result will be a good deal closer than it currently polls.
He’s definitely lacking name recognition. I haven’t seen a single lawn sign for him, but I’ve seen a lot of Johnson crap all over town.
I’m in CT this weekend, so I’ll be missing the debate. Actually, that’s not fair. There’s no way I would watch a debate involving Heinrich or any other Democrat, so being 2,000 miles away is not relevant.
Yeah. The last poll to ask had Rich at 35% name recognition and Johnson at 85%. The only reason Rich was beating Johnson was because the 85% who knew Johnson overwhelmingly disapproved of him (massive negatives among Democrats, large negatives among Republicans, and negative even among independents), the 35% mostly liked Rich (not Democrats, but Republicans and Independents and overall), and a fair number were content to vote R.
For campaign billboards and such, money is an enormous help. Most of Rich’s money is from NM, and New Mexicans have less cash than anyone outside Mississippi. Johnson’s got an incredible money machine.
Good for him, ’cause his ego takes a lot of feeding.
Didn’t Jesus heal ten of them?
I’ve got nothing to say about the libertarian party but I’m inspired by the idea of running for president as a way to sell books! Of course I’d have to write one…
You did. Sell that one. :)
You know, there’s a Senate seat that’s going to get some attention your way next time. Not only might you sell some books, but you’re way more salubrious than the rest of the possible primary candidates.
You have to be a whole lot more of an extravert than I am to run for office in real life.
Trump should have endorsed Gary Johnson when the Democrat Party secretary of state reinstated straight-party ticket voting which Johnson’s signature had previously outlawed. A 5-0 panel of judges apparently overturned this.
No Republican is going to win in New Mexico. Unless you are Pete Domenici or are one of the 12 men who have walked on the moon forget about it! (However, I guess Governor Susana Martinez might have a shot.) The last previous other Republican to serve a full term was elected in the 1920s which almost 100 years ago.
I think the last New Mexico Republican to run for senate was U.S. Marine Colonel Allen Weh (Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Bronze Star with V device, Purple Heart with two gold stars, Meritorious Service Medal with gold star, 5 Air Medals) who lost by over 10 points.
Besides Trump surprisingly gets along with Rand Paul rather well. Better to have someone who is halfway conservative like Gary Johnson at least.
Why would he do that? Who would benefit, aside from Johnson and his campaign staff?
During my lifetime (1977), there have been five New Mexico Senators. It’s true that with the exception of two of those, they have all been Democrats. 60% Democratic is not really a very strong statistical argument. You’ll find the same in the House. A couple of decades ago all three Congressional districts were Republican, and since then we’ve had roughly a similar amount of time with the 2-1 majority going to either side. We have had governors going back and forth for decades (Martinez (R), Richardson (D), Johnson (R), King (D), Carruthers (R).
Udall is very popular, to be sure. Heinrich is less popular; he won his last election by 6 points, which is hardly a landslide.
On what issue is Johnson to the right of Paul?
Just as a random selection; Paul has never proposed expanding social security. He has never proposed massive new government jobs programs. He has generally voted for entitlement reform. The Federal government has been grown significantly less under Paul than New Mexico did when Johnson was in government.
Johnson is pro choice. Paul is pro life. Johnson believes opposes every form of religious liberty. Paul is a keen supporter of religious liberty. Johnson believes that the Mexican border is locktight and no drugs are smuggled across it. Paul isn’t a total moron. I have my problems with Paul, to be sure, but he’s far more interested in learning about policy and both far more libertarian and far more conservative than Johnson.
The irony.
Thought sure this thread would devolve into a James v Fred slugfest. There’s still time…
(Hey James. Long time. If you’re ever back in Cleveland…)
Not that anyone is going to listen, but I have a very strong opinion on this. The LP should focus on national marketing and local candidates. Let the Republican Liberty Caucus figure out how to play with the big boys.
Part of the problem is there are just too many types of libertarianism and they all hate each other. Another part is, some people involved are actually pretty stupid.
Tom Woods interviewed a guy about this with respect to his LP presidential candidacy. It was one of the most depressing things I have ever heard. The guy was very sharp, but there’s no way to know how true it all was. He had some great ideas on his own separate from the controversies and accusations he was positing.
The LP should just be a national marketing organization and a label for local candidates. They are never going to make it work out in the traditional sense of party politics.
FWIW, for those that are interested, Michael Malice interviewed Tom Woods who is a Mises fellow and Matt Welch from Reason Magazine together. Then they went on each other shows. I think if the Reason guys can get along with the Mises guys somewhat, it’ll be a big help. Forget CATO. There may be other factors I’m not aware of.
The new guy that is running the LP is very good organizationally, but he hates the Mises Caucus.