Gary Johnson: The Invisible Man Running for President
Technocrati, September 10, 2011 at 6:13 am
The 2012 race for the GOP nomination has been raging lately. With the entrance of Rick Perry, many media outlets are becoming increasingly excited over the novelty of a new candidate. What about the novelty of unique ideas?
Governor Gary Johnson has been running for President since April 21st. He was in the first Republican debate on May 5th, which included notables like Representative Ron Paul, CEO of Godfather's Pizza Herman Cain, Former Senator Rick Santorum, and Governor Tim Pawlenty. Since that debate, however, Gary Johnson has been left behind.
We saw what looked like a complete shutout of Ron Paul from media attention in August after the Ames straw poll, which was fairly blatant, since he was in a virtual dead heat with the victor, Representative Bachmann, who has since fallen behind him in multiple state polls. The block on Gary Johnson is often seen as acceptable by media outlets based on his poll numbers. While it is true he is polling only around 3%, that is the equivalent of Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, both of whom were invited to the Politico debate on September 7th.
The primary goal (in two uses of the word) for Johnson's campaign is to stick to New Hampshire. If he makes an impact there, his campaign hopes that it will spread to Iowa, South Carolina, and continue to expand his name recognition and support nationally. It worked for Reagan and Clinton (Bill, not Hill), but it failed for Rudy Giuliani in the last primary season.
Gary Johnson has a unique combination of stances. According to his campaign website, he supports gay marriage, he believes the prohibition of marijuana is unnecessary, he promises to propose a balanced budget every year (which would reflect the fact that he had a surplus of over 1 billion dollars his final year as governor in New Mexico), he opposes the unnecessary and costly wars that the United States has involved itself in, and he supports the Fair Tax, which is a flat tax on consumption without loopholes. These views seem to be very unique to the two-term Republican governor.
So the question is, why is Gary Johnson, a four-time competitor in the invitation-only Iron Man Challenge and a man who climbed Mt. Everest with a broken leg, not given any attention by the major media outlets? Regardless of his stances, he sure makes an interesting story.
Also by Luke Stanek:
Gary Johnson: Outlier to the GOP, or the Future of the GOP?
Phi Beta Iota: What we find interesting is how blatantly the Republican Party is manipulating the debates by excluding “non-establishment” mavericks; at the same time that the Democratic Party appears to be “frozen” in contemplating any candidate other than the incumbent–we'd certainly like to see Hillary Clinton run, now that it is obvious to one and all that “Hope We Can Believe In” was a total fraud.
