Maybe... with enough refreshing I can cobble this together...
The article is heavily linked and has some video clips, so it might be better to read it there-
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865659450/Heres-how-Gary-Johnson-feels-about-guns-Black-Lives-Matter-and-purple-politics.html?pg=allHere's how Gary Johnson feels about guns, Black Lives Matter and purple politics
by Herb Scribner
If you’ve at all followed Utah and national politics this summer, chances are you know about Gary Johnson.
For the uninitiated, Johnson is the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee for president who’s been touted as an alternative option for voters uninterested in Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald [Sleezebag].
Johnson has seen his popularity soar in Utah because, as national news outlets have reported, Utahns don’t really favor Clinton or [Sleezebag]. In fact, Clinton and [Sleezebag] are basically tied in recent polls for the often-seen deep red Beehive State, according to The Hill. Some members of the LDS Church, who make up the bulk of Utah’s population, don’t favor [Sleezebag] for his immigration policies, while many other Utahns supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the primary earlier this year.
But Johnson has struck a chord with some Utahns for a few reasons (he currently has earned favor of 26 percent of the vote in Utah, after all). As Vox’s Timothy B. Lee reported, Johnson’s actually more of a Republican candidate for president than [Sleezebag], which may sit well with the deep red state. Johnson’s campaign strategist Ron Nielson is also a Utah Mormon, which is why Johnson’s based his national campaign in Utah, too.
And there’s been rumors that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a member of the LDS Church who helped organize the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, may endorse Johnson and his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, which has comforted a lot of Utahns in supporting him.
Winning Utah, Nielson told the Deseret News, is part of Johnson’s strategy to win the national election.
“I think everyone can agree there’s a big fall-off from the [Sleezebag] wagon in the state of Utah, so I think that opens some big doors,” Nielson told the Deseret News. “And I also think there’s a lot of Bernie supporters who don’t really know if they want to support Clinton, so that creates some space for us. I wouldn’t say it’s the most likely state, that would probably be New Mexico or Colorado, but things change all the time, and Utah is certainly one of the top rung of states and we’ll be making a lot of effort here. Johnson will be here all the time.”
Nielson said if Johnson can win Utah, he may steal some electoral votes from [Sleezebag] and Clinton in the national election, which could block both candidates from receiving the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. Johnson hopes to force the House of Representatives then to vote in the next president (as the U.S. Constitution advises), allowing him to convince politicians to vote for him.
Still, Johnson has some roadblocks ahead of him. Just last week, the Libertarian candidate upset some of the Utah Mormon population for what he said about religious freedom and the LDS Church.
"I mean under the guise of religious freedom, anybody can do anything," Johnson said, according to The Washington Examiner. "Back to Mormonism. Why shouldn't somebody be able to shoot somebody else because their freedom of religion says that God has spoken to them and that they can shoot somebody dead?"
Johnson later apologized for the remarks, both to the national media and to the Deseret News in an exclusive piece in which he clarified his thoughts.
“In part because of this unique history, I believe Utah has found an appropriate balance in a religious freedom law that serves as an example to the rest of the country that non-discrimination and religious freedom are not opposing forces, but can instead go hand in hand,” he said.
Johnson still faces a national roadblock. He currently hovers around 12 percent in national polls, which is below the 15 percent threshold needed for him to compete in the national televised debates (though there’s speculation that the debate commission will allow him into the debates anyway).
CNN has hosted a few Town Hall events for Johnson and Weld (they’ll soon do the same for Green Party candidate Jill Stein). The most recent one occurred Wednesday night, and we’ve rounded up some of the highlights for you below.
Johnson and Weld are selling optimism and purple politics.
It’s not secret that Johnson and Weld have their work cut out for them if they want to make it to the national debate stage. But the two candidates said during CNN’s Town Hall that they were going to push for a purple ticket, one where both sides of the political aisle can come together, according to UPI.
This kind of ticket, Johnson said, is a way for them to sell “optimism,” UPI reported.
"Our proposals would not say, 'Take that you stupid D Party or you stupid R Party,' it would be 'here's what we think this is kind of in the middle, can we come together around this' and the recipients of that information would not feel attacked so they might be more likely to come to the table," Weld said, according to UPI.
Johnson supports social tolerance and financial responsibility.
A Bernie Sanders supporter, who said he’s #NeverHillary, asked Johnson why he should vote Libertarian instead of Democratic.
Johnson told the supporter he agrees with Sanders on 70 percent of the major issues — specifically that he “supports gay marriage, abortion rights, drug legalization and an end to military intervention,” according to Reason.
But Johnson said he believes in capitalism and the free market, something that could sit well with conservative voters.
America needs to ‘wake up’ about racial discrimination.
Shetamaia Taylor asked Johnson how he felt about the Black Lives Matter movement and racial discrimination issues in the United States.
Johnson admitted he didn’t know much about racial discrimination before the rise of BLM, but that the movement has opened his eyes, according to Politico.
"What it has done for me is that my head's been in the sand on this," Johnson admitted. "I think we've all had our heads in the sand. And let's wake up. This discrimination does exist, it has existed, and for me, personally, slap, slap, wake up."
Weld said the government should be held to that standard, too.
"I think we have a national emergency in the number of male black youth who are unemployed without prospects," Weld said, according to Politico. "They're four times as likely to be incarcerated if they have intersection with law enforcement as white people are. Their educational opportunities are not there. We have to get them in to education and just concentrate the power of the government, trying to make sure that there are jobs available for them. It's a national emergency and when there's a national emergency, the government has to respond. Libertarian or no libertarian."
Johnson doesn't want any discrimination — against religion or otherwise
The Libertarian running mates didn't seem all-in on religious freedom. But, like he said in the aforementioned exclusive for the Deseret News, Johnson admitted he doesn't want any sort of discrimination, according to CNN.
"I fear that under the guise of religious liberty, the LGBT community is being discriminated against," Johnson said. "I don't want to support discrimination in any form whatsoever."
He wouldn’t change anything about availability of semi-automatic and automatic weapons.
A Hillary Clinton supporter asked Johnson if Americans should be allowed to buy semi-automatic and automatic weapons, specifically AK-47s and AR-15s.
Johnson said outlawing purchases of these guns probably would create more issues, according to Rare.
“Well, right now that is a category of weapon that encompasses 30 million weapons — the semi-automatic,” he said, according to Rare. “Let’s just say we passed a law that outlawed semi-automatic rifles. I think that maybe you would have half of those rifles turned in and the other half of those rifles would be owned by law abiding citizens that are now going to become criminals.”
More so, Johnson said the issue of automatic weapons is misunderstood, and that he wouldn’t change the standing laws about the availability of these weapons should become president.
“I think it’s a misunderstood issue,” he continued. “There are no automatic rifles currently allowed for sale. That went away decades ago.”
Johnson admitted how he feels about prostitution and sex trafficking
Johnson has faced criticism before for wanting to legalize prostitution, according to CNN. But he clarified in his Town Hall speech that he would leave it up to the states to decide how prostitution should be handled.
He did admit, though, that prostitution is a mostly victimless crime — except for the worker.
"The victim is the prostitute," Johnson said of criminal prostitution.
He said you should vote for who you believe in.
Johnson and Weld said they both expect people to waste their votes this coming fall by selecting candidates only because they align with their chosen party and not their own political beliefs.
But Johnson said it’s important to vote for who you believe in, no matter what side of the aisle, according to The Week.
"A wasted vote is voting for somebody that you don't believe in, and if we're going to continue to vote for the lesser of two evils, that's still evil," Johnson said.
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