Johnson/Weld donation page surges past its target goal within 3 days of going up - Polidicks

[QUOTE=BlackMageMari;50766167]'If you're Liberal and vote Johnson you're letting Trump win the election, and would prefer having Trump instead of Hillary run the country.' I think we've hit the nail on the head about why third-parties don't win in America, though that might hopefully eventually. First past the post just fucking [I]sucks[/I] and ya'll need to get PR.[/QUOTE] How are you going to have PR in a presidential system? Are you going to chop up Bernie, Trump, and Clinton then assemble a president from Trump's body, Clinton's limbs, and Bernie's head?

[QUOTE=.Isak.;50766329]The Libertarian Party (and by extension, Johnson) are not just "right-wing" economically. They are [i]some of the furthest right[/i] on economics in the developed world.[/quote] I won't argue with you there, though under some strict circumstances I don't see it as a bad thing. Though Gary himself is not as far right as the ideal Libertarian. [quote] I have loads of disagreements with Clinton, but we tend to agree on [i]why[/i] we defend civil rights. Johnson's motivation behind his liberal social policies aren't motivated by any respect for human rights or civil rights, they're motivated [i]solely[/i] by this cancerous idea that any government is too much government.[/quote] Johnson isn't an anarchist so he'd disagree with you on this. That's like saying Clinton will force total government control over everything. You are thinking Johnson is an extremist. [quote] If he existed in the 60s, he'd be the one opposing the Civil Rights Act, exactly like Goldwater did - and he was the father of modern libertarianism. Why? Because [i]forcing the government to stop people from discriminating would be federal overreach[/i]. [/quote] Wrong, [url]http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/29/politics/libertarian-party-debate/[/url] explicitly states here that he would've voted for the civil rights act. and don't forget he was very favorable about the supreme court ruling on gay marriage. [quote]His motivation isn't "there is inequality and injustice in the world and we need to fix it," his motivation is "government is too big get rid of it." He's ideologically opposed to using the government to solve social issues or even economic ones. [/quote] I'd like to see an actual quote on this one, sounds like a run of the mill libertarian mocking when Johnson isn't a pure libertarian. and he supports the EPA so theres that. [quote] That means that, yeah, he thinks the War on Drugs is bad, because it's enormous federal overreach - but he also thinks that the federal government [i]shouldn't get involved in making sure schools are teaching evolution[/i]. [/quote] Ok I'll give you that one, though I don't see it as a big deal when kids can easily get on the internet to disprove creationism. and last time I heard Johnson does support evolution so he's not a creationist. [quote]Everything about Johnson's platform boils down to irrational ideological distrust of the federal government. But state governments, they can handle education. Just not the federal one.[/QUOTE] Distrust in government shouldn't be seen as a bad thing, I mean when you see the shit both sides in congress try to pull you wouldn't trust them either. Point being, people are simply taking Johnson's views and assuming he follows strict libertarian guidelines, when in reality he is just about as libertarian as Bernie was socialist.

[QUOTE=.Isak.;50765751]Which is just mind-boggling for me. I understand Trump, but the idea that left-leaning independents are voting for a pretty staunchly right-wing candidate just confuses me. But then again I overestimate how much people know about economics. Most voters are fucking retarded and think "legal drugs? small government is good too i heard that in school, i'm all in!"[/QUOTE] Doesn't surprise me that much tbh. Many people support Clinton on the grounds that the's not Trump. When another Not Trump comes along it makes sense that he's drawing people from that demographic.

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;50766356]How are you going to have PR in a presidential system? Are you going to chop up Bernie, Trump, and Clinton then assemble a president from Trump's body, Clinton's limbs, and Bernie's head?[/QUOTE] It's not exactly a Presidential system, but the Swiss use something similar called the Directorial system, where there are multiple heads of government.

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;50766356]How are you going to have PR in a presidential system? Are you going to chop up Bernie, Trump, and Clinton then assemble a president from Trump's body, Clinton's limbs, and Bernie's head?[/QUOTE] I'd do away with electing a President directly and instead have a combination of the House and Senate voting for who the President should be, like in Britain. That, or you could do it like our President is elected, just a straight vote. Of course, our president is more of a figurehead while the American President is closer to a Prime Minister or our Taoseach. It would be a radical change I know, but countries like say Ireland are an example of where PR is being used and works well. The only 'real' argument against it is that it practically always leads to coalitions and at times can lead to some instability. However, even places that use FPTP have had hung parliaments, like in 2010/2011 when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had to form a coalition to form a majority government.

[QUOTE=Cyke Lon bee;50765612]Can you justify him wanting to eliminate Department of Education and HUD?[/QUOTE] Eliminating either of those would not be catastrophic. If you're looking at the current US budget with an eye towards cutting as much as possible, both of those are reasonable candidates, for the simple reason that they exist mainly to allocate federal funding to state organizations, which would continue to exist. It [I]is[/I] wasteful to have two layers of regulation like this. I think eliminating them would be the wrong decision but it's based on a good goal, which is a balanced federal budget. Either states will simply raise taxes to make up for the decrease in federal money, or the educational and housing systems will suffer significantly. Probably the latter, in most states, but if there's enough federal tax cuts maybe the states could swing some increases. In truth, I think this is not the place to try to optimize our spending. The entire DoE is less than fifty billion dollars per year - for comparison, interest payments on federal debt totaled $230B last year. Military spending was over $600B. Optimizing military spending by a mere 10% would save more money than completely eliminating the DoE, and there's a lot of room to optimize military spending.

[QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;50765118]If you're Conservative and vote Johnson then you're letting Hillary win the election[/QUOTE] Good.