AS THE likely presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson has a lot to be modest about; and he is. “Everybody I meet seems to like me,” says the two-term former Republican governor of New Mexico. “But I’m a Libertarian, so doesn’t that denote there are some loose screws out there?” He leaves the question hanging.
Tiny, electorally trifling and obsessed with guns and weed, cherished emblems of its 11,000 members’ freedom, the party has never mattered in national politics. It is by some measures America’s third-biggest—yet not flattered by that comparison. In 2012 Mitt Romney crashed to defeat with 61m votes; Mr Johnson, who ran for the Libertarians after failing to be noticed in the Republican primaries, won 1.3m. Yet he could be about to improve on that.
Mr Johnson and his running-mate, Bill Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, are expected to emerge from the Libertarians’ convention in Orlando on 30th May with the party’s ticket. If so, he could feasibly launch the biggest third-party run since Ralph Nader won almost 3% of the vote for the Green Party in 2000—including 100,000 votes in Florida that...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1TGF6BC
EmoticonEmoticon