Free Republic

Because they are only 19, Grace Danby and Courtney Trudeau are preparing to vote in their first presidential election. The Ohio state students who play for the women's club hockey team are part of the millennial generation, loosely defined as 18-34-year-olds, that is predicted to be one of the largest voting blocs in the 2016 election. They also share another trait: they identify as libertarians. "Any of the third parties I would consider would take away votes from Donald Trump," Danby said while also expressing dislike for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "I don't have a lot of time to think...

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson on Tuesday defended his lack of knowledge of world affairs, suggesting on MSNBC that foreign policy expertise, or even an understanding of where international leaders are from, is what leads to military conflict. “You know what? The fact that somebody can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a foreign leader’s geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm’s way,” Johnson told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. The former New Mexico governor has been widely panned for a pair of foreign policy gaffes that have weighed down his long-shot candidacy. First, Johnson responded...

Bumbling Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson wandered onto national television Tuesday to finally admit, with pride, that he does not study trivial things like world leaders and foreign nations. “If that’s a disqualifier, so be it,” Johnson hollered on CNN, echoing a line he coughed up last month after he failed to recognize Syria’s largest city. Johnson — baring bedhead hair and yelling nearly every time he opened his mouth — ostensibly appeared to defend his month of stunning ignorance about world affairs. In recent live TV appearances, Johnson didn’t know what Aleppo is and said “nobody got hurt” in...

Besides Gary Johnson, he means, right? Doesn’t he? Or was Carl Bernstein right that Weld, a Massachusetts centrist, would end up defecting from the ticket and trying to help Clinton down the stretch if he got spooked that a Trump presidency is a real possibility? He’s much more complimentary of Johnson in the clip below than the headline above would suggest, as you’ll see (the key line about Hillary comes near the very end), but it’s odd nonetheless for a candidate in one party to say that no one’s more qualified than a candidate from another. It’s not the only...

In an interview with ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Johnson told host George Stephanopoulos that "we do have to inhabit other planets. The future of the human race is space exploration," as one possible solution for climate change.

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson has pushed back on a rumor that his running mate will quit to prevent a Republican victory in November, telling an audience in Texas that it was best described by an unprintable word. "Occasionally you get a question that is just so out of left field that I answered it with: Bull----," Johnson said at the annual Texas Tribune Festival. Friends of William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts whose ticket has given boosts in fundraising and gravitas, have said for days that Donald Trump's recovery in the polls had given him second thoughts about...

We thought we’d seen the last of third party presidential candidate Gary Johnson after his infamous “Aleppo” flub, but the former New Mexico governor has seemingly managed to outdo himself. Amid arguing he would poll as well as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton if he were allowed at the debates, the Libertarian party candidate bizarrely began sticking his tongue out at the reporter interviewing him seated less than a foot away.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson said he’s glad “no one was hurt” in the string of attacks in three states Saturday, although dozens of people were injured. “Tell me your reaction to these news stories from the past 24 hours, what do you think the government needs to be doing on a day like today?” CNN’s Brian Stelter asked Johnson, referring to explicitly to the New York City bombing, the stabbing at a Minnesota mall and the bombs found near a charity run in New Jersey. “Well, first of all, just grateful nobody got hurt,” Johnson replied.

There had also been an eye-opening moment on the streets of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, when [Johnson and I had] been walking behind a cigarette-wielding Ohioan. As the smoker’s exhaust wafted in our faces, I remarked offhand that—with the advent of e-cigarettes—I thought there was a good libertarian case for banning regular cigarettes. “I do too,” replied the health-obsessed triathlete, recounting his support for anti-smoking efforts in New Mexico.

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein will not be on the presidential debate stage for the first contest sponsored by the Commission on President Debates. Johnson and Stein both fell short of the 15 percent polling threshold required to participate, the commission said in a statement, adding that Trump and Clinton will face off on September 26 and their running mates, Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, will debate on October 4. Johnson in particular was pushing hard for inclusion in the debates, as he’d polled in the double digits across several national surveys, and previously...

Gary Johnson’s hopes of earning an invitation to the Sept. 26 debate are all but extinguished. The door is about to close on Gary Johnson. The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates has set a “mid-September” deadline for Johnson and the other third-party candidates to meet three criteria to qualify for the first debate later this month: “evidence of constitutional eligibility,” “evidence of ballot access” and “indicators of electoral support.” Johnson clearly meets the first two qualifications: A two-term former governor of New Mexico, Johnson is a citizen and older than 35 years of age. And the Johnson campaign said Wednesday...

Their mission: to seek out new life and new civilizations, and leave them alone. Trade with them if they want, but mostly leave them the hell alone.

"What is a leppo?" I’ve made no secret that I have a lot of sympathy for the strict constructionist leanings of many Libertarians. I would argue, much to the chagrin of social conservatives, that they’re right more often than they wrong. The problem is that they simply can’t get their act together as a party. Part of that is because a good chunk of them are really just closet Democrats trying to legalize weed, and part of it is because they don’t have the organization, money, and media clout to get over the metaphorical hump. This year was thought by...

Gary Johnson is a total fraud and a complete idiot. Paul Joseph Watson: Gary Johnson is a Complete Idiothttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW5gQo43ay4

Mr. Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, is relying heavily on the backing of young people and independent voters disillusioned with the two major parties’ nominees. More than 70 percent of his backers are younger than 50, and over three-fifths are political independents, according to a mid-August poll by the Pew Research Center. Over all, Mr. Johnson, who will be on the ballot in all 50 states, has the backing of 10 percent of registered voters, the Pew poll found.

Cornell University College Republicans announced this afternoon that they will endorse Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson for president, in a statement that acknowledged the wide spectrum of conservative beliefs that compose the club. “Our organization does not solely represent the Republican Party,” the statement said, “Our first responsibility is to our members.” Club leadership stressed that Cornell Republicans are “libertarians, moderates, neoconservatives and everyone in between.” In an “unprecedented” election year, campus Republicans say they could not tolerate Donald Trump as their party’s nominee. “Mr. Trump should not be the face of American conservatism,” the club’s statement reads, proceeding to call...

A golden moment from his interview with our Townhall cousin, Guy Benson. Watch him get genuinely pissy at around 4:00 when Guy, very politely, presses him on why the term “illegal” is so troubling. What we’re left with here is a third-party candidate who’s hyper-libertarian on immigration, of all issues, but not so libertarian on, for example, a carbon tax or whether business owners should be forced to cater gay weddings. That’s his pitch to conservatives who have been alienated by Trump: Possibly some new taxes, certainly less religious liberty, and all the amnesty you can eat. There’s no reason...

Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is newly in favor of mandatory vaccination, he says, after learning more about the science of immunization. In 2011, Johnson tweeted “No to mandatory vaccines,” but asked in an interview with VPR Wednesday about his position, Johnson said he now believes that vaccinations should be mandatory.

Public support for Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson currently sits at roughly eight percent in national polling, a little more than half of the level he needs to be included in the fall debates, according to the rules. The former two-term Republican Governor of New Mexico has come under fire from some conservatives for acting as a potential spoiler for Donald Trump -- in fact, Trump is benefitting from Johnson's presence in the race -- while others argue that the advocate for limited government has spent too much time and energy pandering to disgruntled left-wing voters. What is his...

Ron Paul Institute Senior Fellow Adam Dick, in a Wake Up Call Podcast interview posted on Friday, argues that Libertarian Party presidential and vice-presidential nominees Gary Johnson and Bill Weld have drug the term “libertarian” through the mud with their advocacy of anti-libertarian positions on matters ranging from their choices for Supreme Court appointments to PATRIOT Act reauthorization to foreign intervention to the use of terror watch lists to outlaw people possessing guns. Dick addresses the Libertarian presidential ticket during an in-depth discussion of his new book, A Tipping Point for Liberty: Exposing and Defeating Leviathan Government. During Dick’s...