With Trump dominating this weekend’s political news cycle in the US, you may have missed some of the weird convergences between the Green and Libertarian candidates.
Gary “What is Aleppo?” Johnson alluded to a moral equivalency between Assad and Clinton’s foreign policy prescriptions. From the NY Times:
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, drew a parallel on Wednesday between the Syrian government’s targeting of noncombatants in that nation’s civil war and the accidental bombing of civilians by United States-backed forces.
Attacking Hillary Clinton over what he criticized as her overly interventionist instincts, Mr. Johnson pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians killed by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, as well as civilian deaths caused by the American-backed coalition, and said Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, bore at least partial responsibility.
But when pressed four times on whether he saw a moral equivalence between deaths caused by the United States, directly or indirectly, and mass killings of civilians by Mr. Assad and his allies, Mr. Johnson made clear that he did.
“Well no, of course not — we’re so much better than all that,” Mr. Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, said sarcastically. “We’re so much better when in Afghanistan, we bomb the hospital and 60 people are killed in the hospital.”
One would think his muddled foreign policy would generate support from libertarian mainstays like Ron Paul. Unfortunately for Johnson, Paul had more positive things to say about Gary’s Green Party rival, Jill Stein.
Ron Paul, whose 1988 Libertarian presidential bid and two Republican bids made him the “liberty movement’s” best-known figure, told MSNBC today that he couldn’t support Gary Johnson for president and saw reasons to back the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
“If you tend to lean toward progressivism, you can lean toward the Green Party,” Paul said. “She’s probably the best on foreign policy.”
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Paul hinted at his problem with that in the MSNBC interview. “He doesn’t come across with a crisp Libertarian message,” said Paul of Johnson. “I’m voting for the nonaggression principle.”
With Trump dragging the Republican Party further into the gutter, and both major third party campaigns advocating a similar foreign policy, its understandable that some Republicans have come out in favor of Clinton (even if rank and file voters have yet to budge in large numbers).
