Gary Johnson Holds A Rally In A Waco Parking Lot
Waco – Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson spoke to a crowd of about 40 people in a hot parking lot near the beginning of the Heritage Square section of this midsized Texas city.
Johnson, along with the LP candidate for US Senate in Texas John Jay Myers, spoke without the aid of a stage or PA system, for about 15 minutes each as the sun beat down. The only reporter (other than me) in attendance was a writer for the pay-per-click site Examiner.com. Young people, many clad in Ron Paul shirts, made up the bulk of the crowd.
In his stump speech Johnson, dressed in black slacks and an un-tucked olive green shirt, emphasized how he is different from President Obama and Mitt Romney while mentioning that he would work to audit and, eventually, eliminate the Federal Reserve.
Myers spent little time talking about his two opponents, Tea Party-favored Republican Ted Cruz and former Democratic state representative Paul Sadler. He did, though, go after Cruz's social conservatism.
"I am not a social conservative. I am a conservative when it comes to spending but I am not a conservative when it comes to what you should be able to do with your life," he said.
Myers, taking note of the sizable Paul presence in the crowd, said that Paul's confrontation in with former New York Mayor Rudy Guliani during a 2007 Republican presidential debate encouraged him to get involved in politics.
Johnson and Myers hung around for about a half-hour after the event ended before departing for Austin. At one point a local college student asked Johnson to sign her copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. After that the former New Mexico governor eventually found himself in a familiar place: defending and explaining his position on the Fair Tax to a handful of college students.
Before Johnson left another student asked what he would do if he lost. Without missing a beat Johnson said that he would run again in 2016.
