Editor talks about views on third party candidates

posted in: Opinion | 0

With the Presidential Election almost a month away, many people are stuck between voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. It is safe to say that both of them have their own pitfalls. Whether it be Trump’s bigoted statements or the slew of horrible campaign advertisements that Clinton has run, it’s made the youth in this country question the bipartisan system.

This has caused a rise in votes for third party candidates such as the Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party. Like many moderate Americans, I would love to see a non-partisan candidate win the election.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe this will be the year for either of them. While reading through Johnson’s website, it was very hard to find what Johnson’s platform was for this election. What I found instead, was a heartwarming campaign commercial a description of Johnson’s achievements as the Governor of New Mexico, and a short excerpt on how Johnson was such an avid skier. Examples would be as such: “… despite cutting taxes and the size of government, he improved New Mexico schools, executed a major infrastructure overhaul, and earned national accolades for his leadership in handling the devastating Cerro Grande Fire that swept across the state in 2000.”

While this appears to look good on his resume, it doesn’t answer the golden question of “How?” This has become a reoccurring issue with this election. Whenever candidate makes a claim, they don’t back it with an idea. This election has been nothing but generalizations and if Johnson wants to have a chance, he needs to develop a policy and present it rather than discussing his love for skiing and climbing Mount Everest. I understand that Johnson is a Libertarian and maybe that is descriptive enough, but many Americans are unsure of what being a Libertarian means. In a general sense the idea is that the government should have very limited power over its citizens and that we should have “free will.”

On the other hand, there is the Green Party Candidate Jill Stein of whom many compare to former candidate Bernie Sanders. Unlike Johnson, Stein’s web page made it easy to access her platform as well as her plans if elected. The problem with Stein’s platform wasn’t the lack of policy but rather the reality of her ideas. Stein wants to implement what she calls “The Green New Deal” which claims that we will create transitioning by transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy. With this platform I ask, who is going to pay for it? Much like her plan to make College tuition free, stein isn’t looking at the cost of any of these projects. Do you know how it cost to build a solar panel? A small solar panel for a house costs an estimated $30,000. Now imagine those on every house, every school, and anything else that needs electricity. That money would come from our tax dollars, meaning taxes would rise immensely.

This election has been disappointing in the aspect that there has yet to be a practical candidate, and so far neither Johnson nor Stein has proven that. Johnson needs to implement more his policy while stein needs a reality check, because whoever can win the moderates and the middleclass will win the 2016 Presidential Election.

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