Gary Johnson's Seventy-Five Percent
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
This is the summer of Gary Johnson. The former New
Mexico governor who has been steadily drifting left
over his career is now doing his best to make
Hillary Clinton into President Hillary Clinton.
Back
in 1999, Johnson rejected overtures from the
Libertarian Party for a presidential run. “I'm a
Republican, and I'm not going to run for
President.'”
Both parts of that statement proved to be lies.
Libertarian and non-libertarian supporters see a
principled politician in Gary Johnson. But Johnson
has always been a political chameleon, shifting his
colors to win elections.
Gary Johnson is now desperately courting Bernie
Sanders voters. Johnson told CNN that, “We think
that about 75% of what we’ve got to say really ties
with Bernie Sanders supporters.” At CNN’s Town Hall,
he claimed it was 70 percent. On C-SPAN, he claimed
it was 73 percent. How many Socialists are there in
the Libertarian Party? Apparently it’s all in the
numbers.
Whatever the number is though, it’s probably true
because Gary Johnson excels at reinventing the
percentages of his principles to fit the political
needs of the moment.
Johnson is best known for his support for pot
legalization, but few people remember that it came
after he won a second term by vowing to be tougher
on crime than anyone else. The libertarian hero was
originally in favor trying 13-year olds as adults.
But the modern Gary Johnson is against three strikes
laws and backs Black Lives Matter. It’s a long way
from running as the guy who would try 13-year olds
as adults and make sure that every convict would
serve “every lousy second” of his sentence to
endorsing a racist hate group that protests “mass
incarceration” and “police genocide.”
But Gary Johnson has always been evolving with an
eye on the next phase of his career. His “evolution”
was most obvious during his lame duck second term.
It really picked up as he began working on a
national career. His pathetic attempt to dress up as
Bernie Sanders is the final phase of that career.
Johnson explains his leftward tilt by claiming
stupidity. His eyes are now “open” to racial
discrimination. As governor of New Mexico, he was
“naïve” and didn’t think the government made
mistakes with the death penalty. Johnson is always
discovering new things, like discrimination or
mistaken convictions, with childlike enthusiasm to
explain why he abandoned his prior politics.
But the truth is that Gary Johnson panders. He has
always pandered. He’s pandered on abortion, on crime
and on education spending.
The libertarian hero touts a track record of cutting
spending. But Johnson didn’t become popular by
cutting spending, but by making a show of appearing
to. Under him, state budgets rose from $4.3 billion
to $7.2 billion. New Mexico went from a debt of $1.8
billion to a debt of $4.6 billion.
Those aren’t quite Obama numbers, but they certainly
aren’t libertarian numbers.
While Gary Johnson made a show of vetoing bills, the
actual money went on flowing. This is a familiar
tactic practiced by certain Republicans who claim to
be fiscal conservatives, throwing loud tantrums for
public consumption while the money train keeps on
running. And that’s what Johnson was doing.
Johnson’s pandering is often erratic. He was for
NAFTA and then was briefly against it. He signaled
opposition to TPP before coming out for it. After
rejecting conservative ideas, Johnson is still stuck
with the contradictions between libertarianism and
the Bernie Sanders supporters whom he is trying to
court.
And he’s discovering that he can’t truly court both
at the same time. Johnson is pandering to too many
different demographics. And when in doubt he panders
to the left rather than to libertarians.
It’s why Gary Johnson actually went to the left of
Obama on gay marriage. Johnson complained that Obama
wasn’t doing enough to force all states to assent to
gay marriage.
"Instead of insisting on equality as a US
Constitutional guarantee, the President has thrown
this question back to the states. When the smoke
clears, Gay Americans will realize the President's
words have gained them nothing today and that
millions of Americans in most states will continue
to be denied true marriage equality. I guess the
President is still more worried about losing Ohio,
Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia than he is in
doing the right thing,” Johnson bleated.
It said something about Gary Johnson’s libertarian
credentials that he felt that Obama wasn’t violating
the rights of states, not to mention freedom of
religion, hard enough.
Asked about the difference between gay marriage and
polygamy, Gary Johnson could not give a coherent
answer. But that’s because Johnson has no
principles, only populist gimmicks.
He isn’t a libertarian. He has no notion of ideas.
He just happens to excel at getting attention with
publicity stunts.
Meanwhile William Weld, Johnson’s VP, seemed on
board mainly to make his number one appear
libertarian by comparison. Weld believes that, “The
problem with handguns is probably even worse than
the problem of the AR-15”.
Responding to a question about Black Lives Matter,
Weld said that, “We have to get them in to education
and just concentrate the power of the government,
trying to make sure that there are jobs available
for them. It's a national emergency and when there's
a national emergency, the government has to respond.
Libertarian or no libertarian.”
No libertarian is the correct answer. Weld is
neither a Republican nor a libertarian. He’s a
liberal who isn’t left-wing enough for actual
liberals. The same is true of Gary Johnson.
Gary Johnson isn’t a third party alternative.
Instead he’s latching on to dissatisfaction in both
parties while clumsily trying to pretend that he has
some sort of consistent principles.
And those kinds of tactics are not new.
There are independent politicians who genuinely
offer an alternative viewpoint. There are others who
are just opportunists. One of the better recent
examples is Lincoln Chafee.
What Gary Johnson wants most of all is to seem cool.
It’s his Achilles heel. It’s why he backed legal
pot, gay marriage and now Black Lives Matter.
Even on the best of days no one would mistake him
for an intellectual. But on most days, he wants the
popularity that came easily to Bernie Sanders once
he was embraced by the left. And so Johnson
emphasizes how much he in common he has with Sanders
hoping that the mindless flocks of Bernie supporters
will stream to his campaign.
They won’t.
The only possible successful outcome of a Johnson
campaign is President Hillary Clinton. Johnson is
clearly comfortable with that. If he has 70 or 73 or
75 percent in common with Bernie Sanders, how much
does he have in common with Hillary Clinton?