Former Republican governor of New Mexico and current Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson says voter discontent with the leading candidates of both major political parties should excite third-party supporters.
“If this isn’t an opportunity for the Libertarian nominee — and I hope to be the Libertarian nominee — there will never be an opportunity, in my opinion,” Johnson said during a recent interview.
Johnson, who won more than one million votes as the Libertarian candidate in the 2012 presidential election, said he’s hearing from thousands of voters turned off by Donald Trump’s bombastic rhetoric and Hillary Clinton’s lifelong political career.
Many of those voters, Johnson noted, are people who used to write Libertarianism off as a fringe political philosophy but are hearing far crazier things from today’s mainstream candidates than they ever have from Libertarians.
Johnson said of Trump: “I never said anything as crazy as I’m going to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, I never said anything as crazy as I’m going to build a fence across the border, never said anything as crazy as I’m going to kill the families of Islamic terrorists – who’s going to arbitrate over that?”
“He’s going to force the military to bring back waterboarding, and worse, torture, to detainees,” Johnson said. “Trump: ‘I’m free market!’ In the next sentence: ‘I’m going to force Apple to make their iPhones and their iPads in the United States.’ I’ve never said anything in my political career as dumb as any of those things.”
As for Clinton, the former governor said: “How do you get any more establishment than the Clintons and Democrat politics? You can’t. Is anything going to change with Hillary? No, nothing’s going to change.”
Johnson said that the Libertarian Party will have ballot access in all 50 states when the general election occurs and he is currently suing the Presidential Debate Commission in an effort to force the group to include the Libertarian nominee in the general election debates.
“There’s no way that a third party wins the presidency without being in the presidential debates,” Johnson said.
The post If Libertarians can’t gain popularity this year, they never will appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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