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Don’t commit, don’t tease?
Gary Johnson is so superior to what the Libertarians have been nominating in recent cycles.
It’s an opportune moment for a libertarian ticket to offer a serious, forceful critique of drug policy, for beyond fortuitous changes in public opinion, there’s an incumbent with broken promises and a lackluster record on the issue; and a Republican challenger who is even more of a drug warrior in his avowed positions and such a teetotaller personally that he eschews even caffeine.
Are Johnson and Gray the right team to make this critique? Whatever their shortcomings, they’re ideal in this respect: one is an extreme athlete and health nut; the other is a veteran, former prosecutor, and judge who used to be a drug warrior and switched sides based on what he saw in his own courtroom. Can they succeed in injecting the issue into the general election campaign?
The thing about these guys is they are serious guys. It is a two-term governor and a judge. They are not stoners in rags and tie dye saying “legalize it, man!” They speak not for Cheech and Chong, but rather for the millions of us who might not be drug users but who recognize what a terrible and destructive thing U.S. drug policy is and want a conversation about how to fix it. And that is progress.
I’ll say it again and again and again: Despite all of the partisan rhetoric to the contrary, 100 years from now historians will call this the “Bush Obama Era,” and school kids will have a hard time separating the two.
(via carpelibertatem)
Johnson/Colbert!
Breaking news: The president is a politician.
QFT
Geoffrey Dunn says watch out she’s still plotting:
Pay close attention: Palin’s rhetoric between now and Tampa will continue to be critical of both Romney and Obama; it will continue to push for a contested primary; and it will continue to signal Palin’s willingness to accept the nomination of a brokered convention. Palin knows that Romney will never pack her star power with the base — and that neither Rick Santorum nor Newt Gingrich will either.
In the aftermath of Santorum’s sweep of Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday, a brokered GOP convention is a very real possibility. The Republican Party has become a fractured mosaic of fringe constituencies — from Tea Partiers to evangelical anti-abortion activists, from libertarians who support Ron Paul to white supremacists who despise the fact that there is a black man in the White House. It is an unruly lot. The days of a GOP elite framing the presidential selection process are over. Charisma trumps experience; celebrity trumps substance; and, perhaps most disturbingly, anger trumps reason. Mama grizzlies, especially those who have been wounded, don’t go down easy.
On the issue of the individual mandate, Santorum has, I think, a potential winner. Maybe this will be resolved by the Supreme Court and render the politics of this moot. But until then, Santorum’s opposition to an individual mandate is a clear red line between him and Romney, resonates with the Tea Party, and obscures Santorum’s own contempt for freedom when it leads to activities he regards as sins. If framed within an argument about government’s more general over-reach because of the Great Recession, it’s powerful way to rally the base. And God knows Romney has got nothing to counter it with.
And remember the other primary candidate who opposed the individual mandate? He’s now president.
(Repeated not to endorse Santorum, but because I think he is on to something in terms of explaining what is going on there.
