Skip to main content

How to differentiate Gary Johnson from Obama and Romney

The San Francisco Examiner has an intriguing article up regarding the "mirror" attacks going back and forth between President Obama and Governor Romney.
Romeny and Obama: separated by
what they have in common?

Essentially, they are both accusing each other of exactly the same things.

What I found interesting, however, was what happens when you enter Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson into the equation.

So what I did was to take the SF Examiner's examples, and then add Gary Johnson in my own words (in BLUE).

Here goes:
Gary Johnson actually
sweats (and he was in
GQ, too).
"Out of touch" with ordinary Americans.
Obama: Cloistered in the White House. Hangs out with celebrities, acting "cool." Doesn't understand the real world because "he spent too much time at Harvard," according to Romney, who earned two Harvard degrees himself.
Romney: Grew up wealthy, with a governor for a father. Worth $200 million or more. He's the kind of guy who had a Swiss bank account and wants a car elevator for his beach house, the Democrats note.
Johnson:  the son of a school teacher who made his money by starting "Big J" Construction.  Fitness nut.  Rides a bike, runs triathalons, climbed Mount Everest.

Or this:
Bad for the middle class.
Obama: Failed to deliver on his promises to help Americans "struggling to find good jobs and make ends meet," the Romney camp says. Median household income is down, unemployment up since he took office.
Gary Johnson:  on a day when
he wasn't scheduled to be in GQ.
Romney: Wants to reduce taxes on the wealthy while devastating Medicare and cutting education, health care and other programs the middle class need, Democrats charge. Obama says that amounts to "social Darwinism."

Johnson:  Job creation rate of 11.6% per year as Governor of New Mexico; increased spending on education while leaving the State with a budget surplus.





Then there's this:
Suspiciously secretive.
Obama: Believing his microphone off, assured the Russian president he would have "more flexibility" after Election Day. Obama will reveal "his true positions only after the election is over," Romney says. Republicans predict he would tack left on the environment, spending, gay rights and other issues.
Gary Johnson: I inhaled. Don't
tell anybody.
Romney: Told campaign donors of plans to cut or eliminate the housing and education agencies as well as others — ideas he hasn't disclosed publicly. "What's Mitt hiding?" Democrats ask, demanding more about his personal tax returns and investments, too.
Johnson:  Told everybody in the country he used to smoke dope.  Also told everybody in the country he applied for a concealed carry license.

And, then again, this:
If you think terminal cancer patients
shouldn't get to smoke pot, then
I guess Gary is too radical.


Too extreme.
Obama: Hopes to create "a European-style social welfare state," Romney says, and "put free enterprise on trial." Endorsing Romney, Newt Gingrich called Obama "the most radical, leftist president in American history."
Romney: Referred to himself as "severely conservative." He's "extreme on women's issues," Democrats contend. Obama places him to the right of Reagan and suggests he's akin to Barry Goldwater.
Johnson:  Advocates for marijuana legalization (over 50% of American public agrees with him); getting the hell out of Afghanistan soonest (69% of Americans agree); and for marriage equality (53% of Americans agree).  Yep, the man is just too damn radical.


And this:

Unable to fix the economy.
Obama: Can't get the jobless rate below 8 percent. He "delayed the recovery and made it anemic," according to Romney, who says Obama lacks the private sector experience necessary to understand the economy.
Romney: As a venture capitalist, laid off workers and shipped jobs to Mexico, the Obama campaign says. Also created Massachusetts jobs more slowly than other governors of the time, Democrats note.
Johnson:  Inherited a deficit, left office with a surplus.  Highest job creation rate among contemporary governors.

And, finally, this:

Nobody Obama nor Romney
dares to say this, even though
69% of us want it.

Not up to foreign policy. 
Obama: Too weak to stand up to China or Russia or to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, and too eager to apologize for the United States, Romney charges.
Romney: Likely to stumble into another misguided war, according to Vice President Joe Biden. Wouldn't have had the guts to send Navy SEALs into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden, the Obama campaign suggests.
Johnson:  Actually goes with the evidence about Iran and nuclear weapons.  Promises to get out of Afghanistan.  Willing to consider humanitarian interventions but thinks that both Obama and Romney are far too interventionist.  Only candidate to propose cutting the military back to 2003 levels.
 These mirror dances would be more fun if the MSM actually ever included Johnson into the mix.

Comments

CFroh said…
Outstanding post, Delaware Libertarian! This took effort and should be shared widely. By the way, at the Libertarian Convention I met your state's LP Chair, Will McVay, and a couple other delegates. It would be awesome for Delaware to give its votes to Johnson this Fall!
Mr. Froh,

Thanks for the comment. Please share as widely as you can, and visit often. I am trying to put out a steady stream of solid Gary Johnson material every day, specifically with an eye toward doing two things: (a) generating more hits on key terms on search engines; and (b) to provide some of the grassroots-type material that I know the national campaign doesn't have time or resources to put out.

Help me pass the word to other state coordinators that The Delaware Libertarian will be in this for the long haul, and will be a dependable source of news regarding the Johnson/Gray campaign.

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...