Gary Johnson: Mitt is ‘without one molecule of brain’

[DonViejo]

The Libertarian Party nominee tells Salon that Obama's as militaristic as Bush, and Romney's simply "wacky nuts"

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

Gary Johnson served eight years as the Republican governor of New Mexico, where he endeared himself to libertarians by vetoing hundreds of bills that conflicted with his small-government worldview. An avid extreme sports enthusiast, he’s climbed Mount Everest and run Ironman triathlons since leaving office in 2003, while also becoming one of the country’s most outspoken voices against the drug war.

This year, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination, but was shut out of all but one debate. So he left the party and ran for and won the Libertarian Party’s nomination, on whose ticket he is now running the most visible third-party candidacy of the year. He spoke with Salon for the second installment of our Better Know a Lesser-Known Candidate series. This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity.

We’re in debate season. You’re not on the stage, but what might we hear from you if you were?

Well, I would not bomb Iran. I would get out of Afghanistan tomorrow, bring the troops home. I believe that marriage equality is a constitutionally guaranteed right. I would end the drug wars. I would advocate legalizing marijuana now. I would have never signed the Patriot Act. I would have never signed the National Defense Authorization Act allowing for arrests and detainment of you and me as U.S. citizens without being charged. I believe we need to balance the federal budget now and that means a $1.4 trillion reduction in federal spending now. When it comes to jobs, I’m advocating eliminating income tax, corporate tax, abolishing the IRS, and replacing all of that with one federal consumption tax. In this case, I am embracing the FairTax. I think that that’s really the answer when it comes to American jobs. In a zero corporate tax rate environment, if the private sector doesn’t create tens of millions of jobs, then I don’t know what it takes to create tens of millions of jobs.

continue reading;
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/13/gary_johnson_romney_is_without_one_molecule_of_brain/