Reason Magazine: Nick Gillespie Interviewing Gary Johnson at FreedomFest in 2012

Source:FreeState Now

If the 2012 presidential election was purely about ideology and who I prefer and who is best qualified to be President of the United States, then Gary Johnson would be my first choice followed by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. And if I had to guess I'm not the only Liberal Democrat who believes this. Unless you are a Bible Belt Democrat and you are mostly a Democrat because of family history, it's very hard to imagine any Democrat voting for Mitt Romney for president. But what I think Liberals like about Gary Johnson, is that he actually cares about things that Democrats have claimed to be in favor of the last fifty years. As it relates to Social Issues.

And that Liberals have hated the War on Drugs for the last forty years and we believe in all of these constitutional rights, that we believe that President Obama has weakened. As it relates to the Patriot Act, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, etc. We've hated the way the Obama Administration has applied the War on Drugs. With all of the marijuana crackdowns, even though we've intended to agree with President Obama on foreign policy and at least what he is trying to do with the economy. And if he had those strong positions as it related to social issues, I don't believe the President would have any issues with the Democratic Party, at least with Liberals.

But with Gary Johnson you get those strong liberal values, to go along with truly believing in fiscal responsibility. He's not Ron Paul who wants to eliminate most of the Federal Government, but someone who really believes in deficit reduction and has a balanced approach. That puts everything on the table and a lot of that has to do with reforming the Federal Government. By having state and local governments do more to managed the safety net on their own. And lets see what they can do with them.

Governor Johnson is not talking about eliminating these social insurance programs. Which is what you would get with Representative Ron Paul, or gutting these programs. Which is what you would get with Representative Paul Ryan. But decentralizing them and reforming them to make them work better. Which would make them more cost-effective and that by itself would mean we would spend less on them. Because they would be more efficient. As well as in defense where we would get out of nations that can afford to defend themselves.

But unfortunately for me and as well as for Governor Johnson, he doesn't have an ice cubes chance in Hell of winning the presidential election. He won't have the name ID or ballot access that's needed to win the presidential election and defeating Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and the Tea Party. These things are more important than having Gary Johnson as our President. Which is why I can't vote for Gary in 2012. To have a Gary Johnson, a Social Liberal/Left-Libertarian or Liberal Libertarian as President of the United States, you have to have universal polling and ballot access. So someone other than the Democratic or Republican presidential nominees, can make a real run for president in this country.