re: #24 OrionXP

I attended CPAC in 2010 and worked the Campaign for Liberty (who managed to get me in free) table. C4L’s main selling point were three anti-Abraham Lincoln books. That subject outnumbered books on the Federal Reserve, the War on Terror or Alexander Hamilton. The next year, blatant white supremacists came out unapologetically. This is not coincidence.

Given that, I could see myself voting for Gary Johnson. Johnson is a West Coast guy, and while the West Coast isn’t a racist free zone (is anywhere?), the bigotry is not reminiscent of a brutal historical institution like Jim Crow, slavery, segregation or the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson is absolutely on the right side of immigration, seeing immigrants from Latin America not as a bain on our existence but as a boon to our economy and cultural fabric, as is he a firm opponent of the war on drugs. The worst complaints about him that I’ve heard have been typical liberal gripes about his spending policies (he would advocate a drastic cut in many programs) but he doesn’t have the creepy Confederate flirtations of Paul and his sons.

Please look into Gary Johnson more closely. New Mexico is not “west coast”, but that doesn’t matter. New Mexico may or may not have fewer bigots than other areas, but that doesn’t matter. Look at Johnson himself. He voted for Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party for president in 2008. So even if Johnson is not a racist, he doesn’t mind voting for one. For president. Against Barack Obama. The Constitution Party is also extremely anti-choice. I don’t know whether that reflects Gary Johnson’s position, but again, he’s willing to vote for that, and help them gain ballot access.

Here’s a more recent development. Johnson is in the top five on that list, and I would be hard pressed to choose which of the others is the most disgusting person of the bunch. If you don’t know them, do some research. (I’m sure you’ve heard of Tom Tancredo.) These are Gary Johnson’s people. Maybe not “creepy Confederate flirtations”, but certainly nothing more pleasant than that. Maybe worse, if only because it’s gone beyond “flirtations”.