Thomas Lucente: Live free: Vote for Gary Johnson Lima Ohio

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Posted: Sunday, October 14, 2012 12:00 am | Updated: 3:57 pm, Sun Oct 14, 2012.
By THOMAS J. LUCENTE Jr. tlucente@limanews.com 419-993-2095
Posted on October 14, 2012
by Thomas Lucente

Anyone paying attention to the presidential campaign has to admit the former governor is the best candidate in the race.
When the two-term governor left office, his state was only one of four in the nation with a balanced budget. He created more than 20,000 jobs and he reduced the state’s workforce by 1,200 government jobs without firing anyone.

Yet, despite his obvious qualifications, the media won’t cover him and he wasn’t allowed to participate in the debates.

Yet, if Gary Johnson had a R after his name instead of an L, the Libertarian Party candidate would probably be leading the race right now.
That little letter after his name is truly the only thing standing between him and the White House.
This is the problem with our electoral system today.
The R’s and the D’s have run the government for so long that they have written the rules to exclude candidates who belong to other clubs. Simply getting on the ballot is more difficult if you don’t belong to one of the two evil parties.
For example, in Pennsylvania, the Republican and Democratic party candidates only have to turn in 2,000 signatures. Other parties, such as Johnson’s Libertarian Party, have to turn in about 10 times as many this year. In past years, because of the way the law is written, that number has been as high as 30 times more signatures.
Then, after the minor-party candidate turns in his or her signatures, one of the evil parties will challenge the signatures and sue the candidate to keep him or her off the ballot. That is exactly what happened this year with Johnson. The Republican party has gone to court to challenge the signatures. Of the 49,000 signatures turned in, the GOP challenged 44,000 of them.

The reason for the court challenge is to push the minor-party candidate out. Very few minor parties actually have the financial resources to fight against the legal challenge. And even if they do fight the challenge, that is money they can no longer spend on campaigning.
In other words, the GOP and the Dems use their huge war chests to keep a candidate off the ballot.
How is that fair? Where is the justice in that?
The two parties are using legal thuggery to silence a voice and to keep a choice from the people.
It’s time to bring an end to this monopoly. As much as the two major parties argue in public, they have formed an unholy alliance to battle against giving the people an alternative choice.

Don’t be their victims.

Cast a responsible ballot for the candidate best suited to the position. That, of course, would be Johnson. His track record as governor of New Mexico puts former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney’s record to shame. And it is far superior to Obama’s record as president.
Indeed, Johnson’s experience is far more extensive than Obama’s was when he became president. Johnson was a successful governor, Obama was a community organizer.

I hear two arguments against voting for Johnson. Both are faulty.
The first is that a vote for Johnson is a wasted vote because he won’t win. I could say the same for Obama. Obama is going to lose so a vote for him is a wasted vote.
Seriously, I can see no sillier argument for not voting for someone.
Besides, Johnson is likely to be on the ballot in all 50 states. As, I said before, the only thing standing between him and the White House is that L after his name. And this silly argument plays right into that mentality.
The D’s and R’s work hard to convince you that you are wasting your vote when you vote for Johnson or some other third-party candidate.
Don’t be fooled. The only truly wasted vote is not voting for your conscience.

The other argument is equally silly. It goes something like this: “This election is too important and I don’t want to risk Obama winning because I voted for Johnson,” or some such nonsense.
But isn’t that the case in every election? Did I not hear that same argument four years ago?
Don’t be an automaton. Vote your conscience. Vote for Gary Johnson. Be Libertarian for one election and you won’t regret it. And if you don’t like it, you can always go back to voting for big government and perpetual war in 2016.

Live free.
 
LOL.

Will Donald Duck get more votes than Gary "Who" Johnson, or will Mickey Mouse edge both of them out?
 
one of the rare times that liberals and conservatives unite together is fighting the common enemy of their hold on power......Libertarians. obviously they are terrified to go to such lengths with their insults and criticism.
 
Yeah, Gary "Who" is such a mammoth threat to the two-party system.

Obama and Romney are quaking in their boots, aren't they?
 
It's a great thing if 15-20% of R's vote for Who's Johnson. Get behind him neocons and show your party your disgust for their mormon flip-flopper.
 
LOL. Johnson will get around .4% of the vote in Ohio. And I'd say they'll be pretty evenly split across party lines, or people who wouldn't normally vote at all.

I guess fucking up Romney's chances is really all Johnson can hope for, though.
 
LOL. Johnson will get around .4% of the vote in Ohio. And I'd say they'll be pretty evenly split across party lines, or people who wouldn't normally vote at all. I guess fucking up Romney's chances is really all Johnson can hope for, though.

Who?
 
In this OP, Mr. Lucente neatly sums up all of the greatness that is Gary Johnson, in three sentences of the first paragraph. The remainder of the OP is devoted to a whine-fest and plea to throw your vote away on the idiot candidate. This is a man who never garnered over 4% of the GOP vote when he was running as a Republican and representing himself to the American people as a Republican candidate. The news media hasn't covered him because he is insignificant. Donald Trump has more media appeal, and incidentally, had a larger percentage of Republican support than Gary Johnson.

Lucente concludes with two arguments he proclaims as "faulty" but both arguments are true and not in dispute. Johnson will not win, and a vote for him doesn't help defeat Obama. In spite of the fact that he fails to debunk either argument, he proclaims them as "silly." The only thing "silly" here, is the expectation this candidacy will be any factor at all in the elections. Lucente says, "Vote your conscience!" But my conscience says I should vote for one of the two men who will actually win the election, and any other vote is a waste of my time and effort to go vote. In that sense, I think I can agree with Lucente, and I do plan to vote my conscience.

Now, we can whine and moan about Johnson not being included in the debates, but this is always the case after the primaries, the GOP and Democrat candidates face off, so that America can decide between the two men who will actually compete for the job. Johnson was included in the GOP debate field, and had ample opportunity to make his case to the American voters on the national stage, side-by-side with the other GOP candidates. You know, back when Johnson was a Republican? However, the people spoke, and Johnson wasn't their man. It wasn't because the GOP bosses didn't like Johnson, it wasn't because the system was rigged against him, it wasn't because the media shut him out, it was because the American voters in the GOP primaries simply did not vote for the man.

A lot of GOP voters out there, liked Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum, but they didn't vote for them either, at least not as much as they voted for Mitt Romney, and thus, Romney won the nomination. It might be added, in the aforementioned cases, these candidates ALL received more votes than Gary Johnson. There are literally a myriad of reasons for this, and it does us no good to rehash them all again, the bottom line is, the primaries are over and the GOP picked Mitt Romney to run against Obama.

The concept of allowing people 18 and over to vote, is that we are allowing the adults to vote, not children. Adults differentiate themselves from children mostly by their behavior and maturity. This means accepting facts of life and moving on, not stomping ones feet and demanding to have their way. The fact that Johnson finished almost dead last in a field of 9 GOP candidates, indicates maybe he is just not ready to run for president on a national level. He may be a nice guy with great ideas, but that could be said about Herman Cain or Ron Paul, or really, any of the other candidates who weren't the nominee of the GOP. I'm sure Johnson was a great governor, but again, there are a ton of great governors out there who weren't nominated, look at Rick Perry. No one had a better record at creating jobs in his state, than Perry, but he also didn't win. Our nation's history is FULL of well-qualified great people who simply never won the primaries and got to run for president. Most of them were adults about that, accepted the fact, and moved on with life.

My observations of Gary Johnson's supporters reveal a level of immaturity and petulance, bordering on contempt for our very system of electing presidents. I'm not concerned with him influencing the outcome of the election, and certainly not worried he will pull votes from Mitt Romney. If anything, he may actually pull some votes from Obama, because it seems to be the same pollyanna thinking which may have supported "Hope and Change" in 2008, not level-headed mature thinking of adults who understand what this election means. I've not been a huge fan of Mitt Romney, but as this election cycle has progressed, I have become more and more comfortable with Romney, and believe he will make a good president. He's grown on me, while Gary Johnson has repulsed me... maybe it has to do with people like Lucente calling me "silly" and "faulty" in my arguments, without any justification? Or maybe it's the petulant immaturity and gaul of this candidacy, to run as a third party after losing the GOP primary rather badly? Whatever the case, I certainly won't be voting for Johnson.

But... knock yourself out, pinheads!
 
Yes Dixie, voting for a candidate you support is immature. The whole point of electing someone is vote for what you DON'T support.

Conservatives hate Obama more than they agree with anything Romney claims to stand for, don't they?
 
The reason why Johnson didn't garner more votes isn't lack of media exposure, as many have claimed, but a larger underlying problem that you are all used to seeing presented by the Trinity at this time: the people are proles.
 
The reason why Johnson didn't garner more votes isn't lack of media exposure, as many have claimed, but a larger underlying problem that you are all used to seeing presented by the Trinity at this time: the people are proles.

The people are patricians.

20-something 47% loser takers are proles, especially those who work for the government.

Couldn't you get a job that doesn't take taxpayer money?
 
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