“Most Interesting Republican You’ve Never Heard Of?” Sounds Like Ron Paul 2.0

Time to play “Guess the possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate.” The person we’re thinking of is building his reputation by taking some positions that might put him at odds with his party’s leaders – opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example. He’s a staunch libertarian who wants to slash government spending and was described by pollster Brian Sanderoff as “not your typical politician.” Care to make your guess?

…And if you chose former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, you’re correct! Oh, what’s that? You guessed Ron Paul? Well, here’s some good news anyway – judging by a recent profile in Salon, your guess wasn’t far off anyway. Author Niall Stanage spends the early paragraphs building up Johnson’s anti-establishment credentials enough that it’s nearly impossible not to be thinking of Paul when his name is finally mentioned explicitly.

Johnson certainly seems to inspire strong opinions. In his home state, they seem mostly positive – he was elected twice as governor, after all, serving the maximum eight years from 1995 to 2003. And Sanderoff, the pollster quoted above praising Johnson as “not your typical politician” (and who also branded him “an energetic guy” who “makes good arguments”), is a New Mexican himself. Stu Rothenberg, a political analyst also quoted in the article, provided a different viewpoint when discussing Johnson’s presidential prospects:

“His chances are zero. I’d say that they are less than zero, if there was such a thing. I’d expect his impact to be nonexistent.”

…Okay then. But on the other hand, Rothenberg is probably right. After all, as Stanage acknowledges, Paul didn’t come anywhere near winning the Republican presidential nomination, and Johnson has a long way to go to get even that popular. And Johnson freely admitting in the Salon piece that he doesn’t go to church won’t help him appeal to his party’s base, though he also said the Tea Party’s basic tenets (as described at a rally he attended) match up nicely with his anti-government-intervention views. Really, how high his popularity can climb (imagine a Paul-Johnson ticket!) probably depends on whether social conservatism or small-government-focused conservatism proves more important leading up to the election.

What’s somewhat strange is that there’s a degree of amazement that Johnson is a Republican. Stanage asked after detailing Johnson’s efforts to legalize marijuana as New Mexico governor, “What is Johnson doing in the Republican Party?” Roger Ebert, who linked to the piece on Twitter, offered up a similar sentiment. But as we’ve mentioned before: Johnson is exactly like Ron Paul. Of course he’s a Republican. It’s just the Milton Friedman style of Republican. (To make matters even more confusing, this could also be branded as “classical liberal”. And to think, all these different names and factions are coming from the party that votes uniformly on issues like the health care bill. Does your head hurt now?)

Maybe Johnson can replicate Paul’s grassroots popularity, maybe he can’t. Though he might not “freshen up the national conversation” through a presidential run as much as Stanage posits (since we’ve seen such a similar thing with Paul already), it’s hard not to agree with Stanage that “those debates with Mitt Romney should be fun to watch.” And if nothing else, he’ll probably get some Daily Show and Colbert interviews out of it.