. . . a brand new future!
Well, maybe. Americans have so far shown a bit too much old-brand loyalty.
Click on over to Townhall.com, and then come back here. We’ve quite a good show:
A real-life politician has admitted to having been wrong, even going so far as to dismiss his own previous comment as “stupid.”
He wasn’t abject about it — didn’t “apologize.” He simply explained how and why he had erred.
This . . . from a presidential contender.
No, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton, she of many errors and untruths. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders, whose love of Big, Intrusive Government is an error in and of itself. And it wasn’t Trump, known hyperbolist.
The erring politician? Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico.
Johnson, who is currently running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, told Reason last year that banning the burqa would be a reasonable step in protecting the rights of women. Here in America.
Sound sort of Trumpian?
Earlier this month, Johnson retracted his statement. Last week on Fox Business Network’s Kennedy, he explained why prohibiting the face-veil wouldn’t work.
“We need to differentiate between religious freedom, which is [sic] Islam, and Sharia law, which is politics,” he said — and I add a “sic” there because he is obviously driving at this point: religious freedom means we cannot prohibit the religion of Islam, but Sharia law amounts to a religious intrusion into the legal and political realm. And thus must be opposed as “contrary to the U. S. Constitution.”
The reason Johnson had earlier floated the banning of the Islamic face-veil was to save women from Islamofascist enforcement of Sharia’s mandate to go around in public only when completely covered.
“We cannot allow Sharia Law to, in any way, be a part of our lives.”
I’m with him. Let’s hold tight to both religious and political freedom. And how refreshing for a politician to admit an error.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Presidential candidate John McAfee is an adventurer. Best known for founding the first successful anti-computer virus company, he has also been shot at in tropical jungles, by men trained by U. S. forces, with American-bought guns. This range of experience makes him the most interesting presidential hopeful, bar none.
His big issue is cyber-security. He thinks Americans have placed themselves in a too-precarious position. As he sees it, the war on terror has served as a grand distraction from the real threat, a prime example of doing foreign policy and national security completely upside-down wrong.
He has a point.
But he’s neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and not long ago he realized that his own Cyber Party didn’t have the oomph to get him on the ballot in enough states.
So he has announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party nomination.
Why? He’s obviously not a libertarian in any strict capital-L sense. But the septuagenarian insists that he has been a libertarian at heart since before the word entered common use.
This is what the Libertarians get for their most obvious success: obtaining and keeping ballot status in more states for more election cycles than any other “minor party.”
Think of the Libertarian Party as the host, and one-time Republicans like former Congressman Bob Barr and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson — and now McAfee — as viruses, aiming to commandeer the host’s operating system.
Of course, one might also view the LP as a virus attempting to do the same to the federal government.
Shall we root for the viruses, for once?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Reid Wilson, at the Washington Post, regales us with seven U.S. senatorial races where Libertarian Party candidates could swing elections, and thus control of the Senate. Last weekend at Townhall, I exhorted readers to work for transpartisan reforms “like term limits . . . and other measures aimed at greater representation, [such as] establishing ranked choice voting.”
The two articles are not unrelated.
Conservatives and libertarians are often united in wanting to replace progressive Democrats with small-government contenders. But they are not united in how to do this. Many libertarians balk at voting for hardline social conservative candidates like Rick Santorum and middle-of-the-road statists like John McCain.
So the Libertarian Party runs candidates that have in recent elections gained traction with voters — enough to pull independent voters away from Republicans and sometimes enabling Democrats to win.
Republican entreaties to libertarians (“you’re killing us out here!”) appear to be no more effective than libertarian entreaties to Republicans (“want our support? try taking your limited government stances seriously!”).
What to do? Republican partisans should support Instant Runoff Voting, which would
This would allow for better expression of voter preference, solving the “wasted vote” problem and ceasing to make the “best the enemy of the good.”
Alternately, Republicans could continue their course, trying to limit ballot access, thereby alienating more of the electorate and ensuring that Libertarian votes can’t also be Republican votes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Who was the first woman to receive an Electoral College vote?
Not the one you are probably thinking of — Geraldine Anne Ferraro (1935-2011).
The answer is: Theodora Nathan, listed on the ballots of Colorado and Washington State in 1972 as Tonie Nathan. She ran as the first Vice Presidential candidate for the fledgling Libertarian Party. She didn’t receive many votes — the party had barely been formed. But she got that one Electoral College vote because a Virginia state elector, Roger MacBride, was so disgusted by President Nixon and his wage and price controls (everybody has a tipping point) that he went renegade.
I bring this up because of sad news: Tonie Nathan died yesterday, age 91.
I knew her, having served with her on the Libertarian National Committee back in the 1980s. (See a recent picture of her, with former party chair Alicia Clark and me, at the 2012 Libertarian National Convention.) Tonie was a dynamo: sharp, kind, hard-working, organized, a people person committed to making a difference.
Her run to unseat Senator Bob Packwood (R-Oregon) in 1980 was memorable for the three televised debates with her major party opponents. In the first of them, all the major papers dubbed her the winner, one of which headlined her as having “skewered” her opponents.
Odd fact: She received eleven times more votes in her senatorial race than in her “nationwide” campaign.
I’ve noticed fewer debates with Libertarian candidates in them, since. I think it might be the result of fear of a Nathanesque “skewering.”
Her place in history should be more widely acknowledged.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Incumbents write the laws — sometimes to rig the game in their favor.
Everybody knows about the conflict-of-interest iniquities of gerrymandering; increasing numbers of people are learning that “campaign finance reform” also increases incumbent advantages.
But one of the most obvious ways incumbents can limit challengers is to limit challenger parties. That’s on the agenda of the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature. The Senate just passed SB 193, a bill that rewrites the rules for “minor parties.” The House now considers.
Ohio’s law governing minor parties does need re-tooling, arguably, having been struck down as unconstitutional . . . way back in 2006. The Green Party and Libertarian Party were qualified parties then and, with legislators busy causing trouble elsewhere, they have remained on the ballot since.
“Obviously, if you are in one of those minor parties,” Republican Senator Bill Seitz said, “you probably would like that current, lawless state of affairs to continue because you get to stay on the ballot without demonstrating any modicum of support.”
Probably. Most folks do like to have the candidates they want to vote for listed right there on the official ballot. Why shouldn’t they?
Last election for governor, four percent of the people voted for the Green (1.5) and Libertarian (2.4) candidates.
I say, “Protect the Four Percent!”
As far as modicums go, how about a modicum of justice?
The ACLU testified that the new rules are onerous, draconian. Even worse, throwing people off the ballot at this stage in an election cycle and requiring 56,000 petition signatures to get back on is not fair or right or legal — a violation of due process.
Are Republicans really so afraid of an alternative to Governor Kasich next year?
I can’t imagine why.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.