http://www.nationalreview.com/node/435704/print ‘Never Gary Johnson’: He’s Not Conservative and Not Even All That Libertarian
Write in a name if you must, but don’t be misled by the label ‘Libertarian.’
By James Spiller — May 23, 2016
What to do? The awfulness of Donald Trump and the awfulness of Hillary Clinton can make conservative Republicans feel helpless. We shouldn’t. We still have the power to do tremendous good — or harm. Whoever wins, we have lost this presidential election, but we may still end up with most of the governorships and control of most state legislatures. If we lose Congress, we’ll likely get it back in the midterm. The triumphant return of conservatism at the presidential level has been postponed, but not permanently. Trump supporters might say we have nothing to lose, but we do — this is still the greatest country on earth. One way to help lose American conservatism would be to support Gary Johnson, the Libertarian party’s presumptive nominee for president.
There are many responses to that assertion. The most common is “What’s the worst he would do, leave us alone?” The assumption is that someone whose label is “Libertarian” has libertarian values and would promote them in office. In the case of Johnson, that notion is absurd.
When Johnson took the tiller in New Mexico in 1995, the budget stood at $4.397 billion. When he left in 2003, it had grown to $7.721, an increase of 7.29 percent a year. Of the eleven governors who filed to run for president this year (two Democrats, Johnson, and eight Republicans), only one had a worse record on spending growth. In New Mexico, Bill Richardson, Johnson’s Democratic successor, clocked in a little better than he did, but Richardson’s successor, Susana Martinez, has shown what a fiscal conservative looks like: New Mexico currently spends less than it did when she took office. It’s not just at a state level that being more fiscally conservative than Johnson is a bipartisan achievement. Federal spending during the time Johnson was in office grew at an average annual rate of 4.49 percent. Late Clinton and early Bush weren’t as successful in their efforts to fight spending cuts as they might have been, but Johnson makes them look like Coolidge, and federal spending since then has grown at an average annual rate of 4.56 percent.
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