Gary Johnson for President Crowd Surfs

Word is starting to roll out about Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson's Salt Lake City Crowd Surfing Event yesterday.  What started out as a free, public, packed, standing-room-only, Townhall of 200 attendees ninety minutes and one innocent inquiry later may have witnessed the only known POTUS Candidate Crowd Surfing event EVER.

As Gary spoke for the first half hour, you could feel his enthusiasm for liberty and ending government largess in a plethora of areas: war, debt, drugs, marriage, and spying.  He comes across pragmatic in his approach dealing with liberty-oriented solutions and pround of his veto record as the former twice-elected Governor of New Mexico. 

He mentioned one bill he veteod was to force pet shop owners to exercise their pets.  While he personally favors pet exercise, he doesn't want to pay for the pet exercise police.  It is this passion--even insatiability--for reducing spending that caught my attention early on when Gary was in the GOP debates prior to his exit last December to run on the Libertarian Party ticket. 

The balance of the time was spent in answering questions from the public on topics A to Z with a line that never ended. (Excerpt video)

This is an exciting time for Gary as the two monopolistic parties have candidates very similar in ideology.  Whether Gary is the next president or not, with every percentage of vote Gary gains, he wins.  He commented that he was in this commitment through 2016 so while not a formal announcement, you can expect that Gary will not be absent four years from now.

SLC Townhall With Presidential Candidate Gov. Gary Johnson



Don't worry--you won't have to pay $1000 to meet with a candidate on the ballot for President.  In fact, it's free!  How fitting for a candidate who so unabashedly promotes freedom.

For those of you who don't know Gov. Gary Johnson (website) well, let's cover a bit of ground quickly.  Gov. Johnson is a former two-term Republican Governor in the blue state of New Mexico.  As Governor, Gary cut taxes & spending using both veto and line-item veto hundreds of times so the man not only has electability but chutzpah.  Indeed unlike Romney or Obama, he's promised to submit a balanced budget to Congress in his first year!  Awesomeness!!!

Gary's great on protecting our Constitutionally-protected civil liberties, ending the drug war, bringing home the troops from Afghanistan, and not instigating a war with Iran.

With Romney falling in the polls, those who seek to rid our country of the tyranny under Obama should take heed of this rare opportunity.  He's one of only four candidates nationwide that are on enough printed ballots to win the presidency (Green Papers--the four candidates are highlighted in yellow) and yes, he's on the ballot right here in Utah under the Libertarian Party ticket.

The Gary Johnson townhall tomorrow (Tuesday) night 7-9pm at Challenger School off 13th East in Salt Lake, just east of the Bees Stadium.  Facebook lists the public event under "Gov. Gary Johnson - Salt Lake City Townhall".

Gov. Johnson's Plan to Balance the Budget Tomorrow

To his credit, one of the few fair Fox News interviews with GOP Presidential Candidate Gov. Gary Johnson on was broadcast last night on the Sean Hannity Show:

Gov. Johnson hit a nerve with me by focusing on the most important issue facing our nation:  the boldest plan I have heard from any Presidential candidate to balance the budget:

I'm under the belief that we're on the verge of a financial collapse...that's in lieu of the fact that we have $14 Trillion dollars in debt and we have no ability to repay $14 Trillion dollars in debt if we're racking up $1.6 Trillion dollars in deficit spending this year, the year prior, two years prior, and the years looking ahead.  Look, we're not going to pay back $14 Trillion dollars in debt.  So what we have to do is embark on balancing the federal budget tomorrow.

Gov. Johnson next puts forth his common-sense plan on how to balance the budget including entitlement reductions.  The plan was credible given Gov. Johnson's recap earlier in the interview of his competent financial stewardship in balancing the budget in the 2-1 registered Democrat state of New Mexico.

The latter part of the interview focuses on the drug issue Hannity and some other Republicans might take issue with.  Legalizing drugs is such a small ripple compared of the tsunami of debt threatening to destroy the entire nation, I don't worry about Gov. Johnson's views.  Besides, if some Mormon members close to me can overlook Obama's views on abortion despite their belief system that abortion is wrong--because they mistakenly believed that then Sen. Obama (with no fiscal track record) would keep our nation's fiscal house in order--then I certainly could support someone with a controversial issue that has little to do with balancing the budget.  Simply put, there is no candidate I completely agree with on every issue.

And yet as an ardent defender of the 10th Amendment, I find it impossible to justify the federal government's unwarranted regulation of drugs at a national level and feel legalization is an issue left to the states.

My prima donna issue for 2012 is to find the candidate most likely not only to balancing the budget, but in paying down the debt and if you agree, then I would assert you need to consider adding, as I have, Gov. Johnson to your list of preferred Presidential candidates.