It looks like Gary Johnson is probably going to announce his withdrawal from the GOP nomination race tomorrow, and his entry into the Libertarian Party nomination race.
From a libertarian perspective, I think that’s a good thing, because I do think it’s important that there be a “liberty voice” speaking throughout the General Election campaign, and I doubt that voice will be a GOP nominated Ron Paul.
Here’s the deal, as I see it:
1) First, take a look at this graph (an updated version, with a few more candidates, of an earlier one):

These are the standings of the current candidates for President in the GOP (RealClearPolitics poll averaging). Now, it’s clear that Gingrich, Romney, and Paul are the “big dogs”. But it’s also clear that outside of Iowa, Ron Paul has a lot of ground to gain if he’s to hope for a first place finish in any of the other early states (which is not to say that a first place finish in those states is absolutely necessary to win the nomination—mathematically, we could come up with all sorts of configurations whereby he could be positioned well for the nomination if he were consistently winning strong 2nd place finishes, with Romney and Gingrich alternating for 1st place). Still, it’s hard to claim a mandate for the heart and soul of the Party if you can’t WIN at least some of those states.
2) Which gets us to the next issue. One has to assume that Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and Huntsman—if they can’t pull out finishes any higher than 4th place in any of the early states—will end up leaving the game by early February. How many supporters of those candidates will move toward Paul for the next round of primaries? Maybe a few Huntsman folks, but I’d venture a guess to say that virtually no Santorum folks will move, very few Bachmann and Perry supporters.
3) As the primary field starts to thin, the next step for those remaining is all about positioning to pick up supporters looking for a new candidate. And I haven’t seen anything (I’m willing to be educated) which would lead me to believe that Ron Paul is exceptionally well positioned to pick up significant supporters from anyone else in the field (with the possible exception of Jon Huntsman, whose foreign policy is closer to Paul’s, and who seems to have some libertarian leanings in some areas).
4) Which is why Ron Paul supporters should have welcomed Gary Johnson’s inclusion in the field with open arms (rather than suggesting that he ought to “wait, and endorse Ron Paul”). They should have been complaining as loud when Johnson was being excluded from debates as they would have if Paul had been. Because, to my way of thinking, while Ron Paul and Gary Johnson have a philosophical appeal to many of the same people, they would have had a stylistic/temperamental appeal to different subsets of the Republican population, and had Johnson caught even a hint of fire (even a little bit of smoke) the way that Bachmann or Huntsman or Perry or Santorum have, he might have expanded the liberty base just a bit, and whichever one of the candidates (Paul or Johnson) was at a more credible level for continuation, there would have been a logical “default” position for the “other’s” supporters to go. As it stands now, it’s hard to see how Ron Paul can get his national numbers above 15%. What if there were 20-25% of the Republican base that was generally libertarian, but who were just kind of nervous about Ron Paul, but really liked Gary Johnson?
Think about it: Bachmann drops out; does her support go to Ron Paul? But if Gary Johnson had been given a real opportunity to compete, and hadn’t run into Paul people telling him he should “wait his turn”, he might have built a 5-10% base of his own, which could have been added, almost assuredly—even if as a fallback--nearly in total, to Ron Paul’s numbers if Johnson had withdrawn. He even said, early on when asked about this, that if it got to the point where the totals that he and Paul had when combined reached 25-30%, that the two of them would need to sit down and talk.
Interestingly, even though Paul campaign supporters have (from my perspective based on my flights through the internets) appeared very much like “it’s Ron Paul, or no one” and “Ron Paul is the only liberty candidate”, Gary Johnson’s campaign—even as he seems to be moving toward a Libertarian run—is focusing on the message of liberty AND the notion that people ought to be supporting BOTH Paul AND Johnson. Frankly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a campaign that is so focused on promoting liberty, and not the person. Johnson’s campaign is a humble, liberty seeking campaign—not necessarily about HIS candidacy, but about spreading liberty.
I suspect that if Ron Paul were to somehow get the GOP nomination, Johnson would back away from a Libertarian Party run. Indeed, the graphics on his site suggest that he believes that people should support Paul—but that when push comes to shove, if Ron Paul doesn’t get the nomination of the Republican Party, Gary Johnson will be positioned (if he gets the LP nomination), to continue to carry the message into the General Election.
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