Tag: Gary Johnson

“Why Would a Liberal Vote for Gary Johnson?” is a very good question, a question that echoes why I don’t identify as libertarian anymore. A question whose answers echo the reasons why I don’t support most of the candidates that the Libertarian Party fields. The LP is just GOP lite these days, not some wild and woolly reactionary anarchist cohort. If you believe Donald Trump, whose website is a laundry-list of libertarian wish-fulfillment, you might even say he was a libertarian candidate. Just don’t listen to the words coming out of his mouth though. If you do you’ll notice a jarring disconnect between what he says and what his website says.

Here’s the list of reasons why a liberal would not support Gary Johnson from the Mother Jones article:

*He supports TPP.
*He supports fracking.
*He opposes any federal policies that would make college more affordable or reduce student debt. In fact, he wants to abolish student loans entirely.
*He thinks Citizens United is great.
*He doesn’t want to raise the minimum wage. At all.
*He favors a balanced-budget amendment and has previously suggested that he would slash federal spending 43 percent in order to balance the budget. This would require massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and social welfare programs of all kinds.
*He opposes net neutrality.
*He wants to increase the Social Security retirement age to 75 and he’s open to privatization.
*He opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare.
*He opposes practically all forms of gun control.
*He opposes any kind of paid maternity or medical leave.
*He supported the Keystone XL pipeline.
*He opposes any government action to address climate change.
*He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero.
*He appears to believe that we should reduce financial regulation. All we need to do is allow big banks to fail and everything will be OK.
*He wants to remove the Fed’s mandate to maximize employment and has spoken favorably of returning to the gold standard.
*He wants to block-grant Medicare and turn it over to the states.
*He wants to repeal the 16th Amendment and eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent FairTax that exempts the poor. This is equivalent to a 39 percent sales tax, and it would almost certainly represent a large tax cut for the rich.

Mother Jones

It is an excellent reference list of things that the average liberal disagrees with average libertarians about. I could add more things to the list that I would quibble about, but we can start with this list and work from there.