... issuing bogus press releases that are ridiculously misleading.

For example, this thing that just hit my emailbox.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in New Mexico included a question with Gary Johnson as the Libertarian nominee.  The survey shows Johnson would poll 15% statewide, capturing a quarter of voters under 30 years old and nearly a quarter of self-identified independent voters.

That sounds awesome, right?

Well, no.  It's actually terrible, although you won't get that from Johnson's missive.  Here's the link to the actual poll itself and what it says about Gary Johnson:

Gary Johnson's third party Presidential bid may be hurting his image in his home state. In December his favorability rating was on positive ground at 45/39 and 23% of voters said they'd choose him in a three way contest with Obama and Romney. Now his favorability numbers have flipped negative to 37/42 and he gets only 15% as a third party candidate. Obama leads Romney 48-35 when Johnson's included so it doesn't look like he'd have a real strong spoiler effect one way or another.

Got it?

He's losing ground in a big way.  Not only is he now negative in favorability where he used to be considered positively (very bad news) but worse he's lost 35% of his support in just three months. 

At this rate of change his vote-getting power will be in the low single digits by election day, exactly where the other Libertarian candidates have been.

Why?

Because Johnson is making the same mistake that other Libertarian candidates have made and he's going to wind up in the trash heap the same way they have, for the same reason.

His latest missives have all been on his alleged "anti-war" stance (which really isn't; he supports blowing up warlords that have never hurt a single American if they're "evil enough" for him) and drug legalization, along with "gay marriage."

Drug legalization is something that is clearly Libertarian but even here Johnson fails in how he presents it in that he fails to make the economic and social benefit argument along with only attacking the "easy" part of the problem -- marijuana.  But "gay marriage" is not Libertarian; the Libertarian position is get the damn government out of the marriage business entirely.  If you want to be married go see a priest and keep it between you and God.  In short the Libertarian position is to remove the government from any role other than as an enforcement mechanism for privately-entered into contracts.  Libertarians who "walk the talk" would like to see all preferences for one living arrangement over another removed from federal law (e.g. the tax code, health regulations, etc) and left to the people to individually decide. 

The Constitution says that we have the right of equal protection under the law.  Why don't alleged Libertarians walk that talk instead of pandering to a tiny portion of the electorate, when walking the talk appeals to all but a tiny portion of hard-core statists rather than the reverse?

Pandering to a group that is less than 10% of the population is a great way to make a lot of noise with those people, but you***** off twice or more as many folks who hold opposite views as you gain.  You can't win an election doing this but you can sure make it look like you have a lot of support right up until the ballots are cast.  The worst part of this sort of pandering is that it's destructive to the claimed party platform you allegedly signed on with and thus does further critical damage to the "brand" of Libertarianism -- damage Libertarians cannot afford.  That the national party leadership is tone-deaf to this reality is both irrational and stupefying.

In addition as I wrote on before an actual Libertarian foreign policy is not hard to come up with, but it's nothing like what Gary Johnson has espoused.  There's only one thing worse than warmongering -- waffling when it comes to foreign policy.  The fact is that there are people who hate America, we do have enemies, and weak-kneed BS is one of the ways you encourage others to attack you. 

If you're a mugger and there are two potential victims from which to select, both 80 year old ladies, but one has a pistol visibly strapped to her hip and the second is obviously unarmed, which do you attempt to roll?  The same applies to foreign aggression; the belief that a nation will waffle at the top in response is an open invitation to aggression.  The belief that a nation will treat aggression as an act of war and respond immediately with overwhelming force is the best deterrent against war, without a single shot being necessary nor any intrusion into foreign affairs.

So what could Gary Johnson -- or any other third party candidate -- run on and actually win?

How about these ideas -- all of which are very Libertarian?

• All the fraudsters who were involved in the 2007-08 financial collapse are going to be investigated and where possible indicted and imprisoned, starting with those who ripped off the most money.  How many jobs and homes were lost in the last few years and how many people would vote for a candidate that said this and actually meant it?  I'm willing to bet there's not one person in America of voting age who was not impacted personally by this series of scams and frauds or has a family member or close friend that was.  Oh sure, you won't get any Wall Street votes with this platform plank, but they're the 0.1%, not the 1%.
  
  
• The banking system will be put on a One Dollar of Capital basis when I am elected, preventing you from being ripped off again, and wage and environmental arbitrage will be ended through the Constitutional process of tariffs to end the abuse of people and the environment that happens to also offshore our manufacturing jobs.  Again, how many jobs have been lost and how much looting has taken place?  Couple this with my monetary inflation and income graphs and you have an instant winner -- show the people that they have had 10% or more of their purchasing power stolen annually for the last decade!
  
  
• The monopolists in the medical system will have their privileges revoked and the free market will be restored.  The drug that is available for $2 in Canada but costs $25 here will be able to be imported by anyone who wishes; your cost for medical care will collapse.  You won't need insurance for other than catastrophic events such as a heart attack as everything else will be affordable on a minimum wage job.  Yes, you won't get one vote from the pharmaceutical industry this way (or one campaign dollar) but you will get votes from Seniors and everyone else who currently can't afford reasonable medical treatment and who has seen their insurance expenses go to the moon.  Incidentally that's all the small business owners, self-employed and once you educate people, those who work for big businesses and union employees as well!
  
  
• With those steps along with a real foreign policy (see my link here) we could actually balance the Federal Budget.  Not the weasely crap that Johnson parades around with claiming he'll submit a balanced budget (but note he doesn't say he'll veto one that is not balanced when the bills get to his desk!) but a real balanced budget that allocates funds only from what's actually taxed. 

Yes, I recognize that this will result in an immediate 10% or so economic contraction in GDP -- once.  But the cleaning out of the bad debt in the system is both necessary and healthy.  See 1920/21 for what happens when you do the right thing -- the asset price crash comes, as does the bankrupties, but immediately following that is economic recovery, realignment and progress.

But I'm willing to bet that a properly-positioned campaign platform centered on these four central planks would get a plurality of the vote in the general election, irrespective of what other candidates stood for, if they did not adopt them as part of their central campaign rhetoric. 

This much you can be sure of -- neither Democrats or Republicans will adopt them, as the Wall Street and Big Pharma money are too important for them to leave behind.

The problem is that we don't actually have any candidates running on any of the tickets thus far that are interested in actually fixing what's wrong with America.  They're instead content to play games and offer pretty faces and claims of Unicorns that **** out pretty-colored candies to be delivered to every household the day after the election.  Not only has Gary Johnson refused to take up these positions (and they're winners) none of the other third-party candidates still in the race have done so either.

Unicorns are mythical creatures and what's coming from the ass end are not candies, nor are those "poll results" good as Johnson represents.

They are in fact disastrously bad and the Libertarian Party is once again about to make a monstrous and irrevocable mistake at its convention next week.

I will not be there to contribute to it.