Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Pipe Dreamer - Molly Ball - The Atlantic

Pipe Dreamer - Molly Ball - The Atlantic:

October 2012 - "Attracting attention may be the chief challenge facing Johnson, a popular 1990s-era governor of New Mexico who now finds himself a political after­thought. He ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, but was excluded from almost all the debates, and dropped out before the Iowa caucuses.... Having since left the GOP for the Libertarian Party ... Johnson hopes to fashion a new voting bloc. He is more socially liberal than Obama, more fiscally conservative than Mitt Romney, and less interventionist than either on foreign affairs. He believes that combination leaves him well-positioned to unite liberals disappointed with Obama, conservatives distrustful of Romney, and the eccentric youth movement galvanized by Ron Paul....

"Johnson’s belief in his quixotic project has precedent: his experience backing drug legalization. He has been a vocal advocate since 1999, when, early in his second term as governor, he declared the drug war an expensive failure. Though New Mexico was by then accustomed to his unorthodox leadership style—he vetoed hundreds of spending bills and periodically left town to participate in grueling Ironman triathlons—his announcement came as a shock, and his approval rating quickly plummeted 30 points. By the time he left office in 2003, though, it had largely rebounded. His old supporters hadn’t come around; rather, he’d gained different ones—young people and liberals who had come to see him in a newly progressive light."

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