Gary Johnson doesn't deserve conservatives' support
A final word about the Libertarian Party and their YUGE convention mistake in not selecting Austin Petersen...
TheResurgent: Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson made an appearance yesterday on “Meet the Press,” and viewers frankly might be forgiven for thinking that the spacey Johnson was high on some of the very marijuana from which he has previously profited. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of last night’s revelation that constitutional lawyer and National Review columnist David French will not be accepting Bill Kristol’s plea to seek the presidency, Johnson and his running mate Bill Weld will probably get a second look from many avowed #NeverTrump-ers.
Johnson, like most people I bump into at the local grocery store—and probably also like that proverbial flaming bag of dog feces—indeed almost certainly represents a superior vote to either of the brutally corrupt, positively immoral jokesters that the two major political parties are set to nominate. But to cast a vote—and especially a more symbolic vote for a third-party option whose path to success would depend on sending the election to the U.S. House of Representatives, pursuant to the Twelfth Amendment, for the first time since 1824—is to cast a moral judgment, and as an ex-Cruz supporting #NeverTrump constitutional conservative, I will not be voting for Gary Johnson this November. There are at least four reasons why.
For brevity's sake, here's a more summurized versions of those reasons:
- Gary Johnson’s Foreign Policy is Clueless and/or Terrifying.
"[On World War I,] Johnson could have made a great critique of liberal internationalism with direct relevance for today. As for not entering World War II after Pearl Harbor? ‘I don’t know’ is pretty lame, unless you wish to develop the critique that we provoked Japan and/or pursued the imprudent war aim of unconditional surrender. That case is not very persuasive, but it isn’t frivolous." ~ Steven Hayward, PowerLine
- Johnson and Weld are Socially Liberal Republicans, not Principled Libertarians.
"In many ways, the culture of contemporary Libertarianism already feels inhospitable to conservative Americans—and I mean ‘conservative’ in its purest form. Contemporary Libertarianism often has an urban and secular sensibility that radiates disdain for religious Americans and traditionalists. Johnson, in fact, embraces non-libertarian ideas just to appeal to people who share this disdain…
As I’ve argued before, one day evangelicals will have to come to terms with public policy that allows others to engage in activities they find morally disagreeable. But asking them to support a party whose candidate advocates forcing them to do things they find morally disagreeable is another thing entirely. By doing exactly that, Johnson and Weld…have made it impossible for many social conservatives to consider their party. It’s needlessly antagonistic—or, more likely, purposefully adversarial." ~ David Harsanyi, TheFederalist
- The Right to Life Issue.
Gary Johnson has proffered a jurisprudential belief in the legal wrongness of Roe v. Wade, but he and Bill Weld are still themselves vehement pro-choicers. The Libertarian Party had a chance to nominate (nominally) pro-life candidate Austin Petersen, but they went instead with Johnson, who touts the modern Democratic Party’s usual “pro-choice up until viability” party line.
I’m frankly not sure what it is about eschewing the harm principle for an entire class of human beings that makes these pro-choice libertarians think they are in the right and virtually every notable elected libertarian of the past few decades—from pro-lifers Ron and Rand Paul to Justin Amash to Thomas Massie—in the wrong...
- Complete Tone-Deafness on Illegal Immigration.
CNN: Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson said Monday he ‘absolutely’ stands by his preferred running mate’s comment comparing Donald Trump’s immigration plan to Nazi Germany…
‘I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna when I hear (Trump’s plan), honest,’ Weld told the [New York] Times.
The 1938 pogrom against European Jewry occurred when anti-semitic mobs burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish-owned stores and killed scores of Jews, but not in Warsaw, as stated by Weld…
‘It reminds me of Anne Frank hiding in her attic waiting for the Nazi sirens to pass by and evokes the memory—not the memory, I was not alive, but the notion of Kristallnacht,’ [Weld] said.
So, I'll be joining Mr. Hammer in saying that 'I’m out on the Libertarian Party.' However, while I'm on board with a Ted Cruz write-in campaign, I'd also give the Constitution Party more consideration than this writer alots. After all, this sole principled party still has the only principled nominee in this race.
