"Mitt Romney is losing 593 friends per hour..."

"... at least on Facebook today from 10 to 11 a.m. You can loiter on his page and watch them plummet by the second." That was written by a WaPo blogger yesterday:

Refresh the page – 12.08 million. Refresh again – 15 less. It would seem the defeated presidential candidate faces a problem unique to the social media age: The race may be over, but on the Internet his bid for president remains as a frozen digital relic....

Maybe the sudden follower fall-off supports criticism that Romney was not terribly well-liked by his party’s base and those partisans are now looking for new party leaders to follow. (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has seen a modest jump.) The dropping-off effect also has not afflicted lesser profile third-party candidates. Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson’s Facebook friend count rose during the same period that Romney’s fell. So did that of Green Party candidate Jill Stein. On Thursday, Stein was already posting again: “Our social movement is growing but there’s no time for rest,” she wrote. “Democracy doesn’t just happen on election day.”

Well, yeah. Stein and Johnson each embody a movement that goes forward. In fact, they only embodied a movement and were never possible winners. Romney was only ever a candidate and never any kind of a movement. There's nothing to follow now — even if you actually like the guy. But I'm sure many WaPo bloggers and others enjoy thinking that nobody ever liked Mitt Romney. And now everyone who ever Facebook-liked him is quick to unlike him, like liking him is like liking the unlikeable kid in high school which will get unlikeability on you. It's just Facebook. Well, but maybe that is how Facebook feels. You have your page, with the things you "like," and that makes a picture of you, a picture you must craft and edit to project likeability.

Did you watch the big debate tonight?

You know: the Gary Johnson vs. Jill Stein debate. Of course, I didn't. I was at the Bob Dylan concert. But my son John watched and even live-blogged it. Of course, it's over now, but you can still read the live-blog:

10:24 - Johnson says in his closing statement: "Vote for the person you believe in. That's how you change this country for the better. I'm more liberal than Obama when it comes to civil liberties. I'm more conservative than Romney when it comes to dollars and cents. . . . I made a name for myself [as governor] by being a penny-pincher. . . . I don't know if there's a more important vote right now if you want to register your distaste with what's happening in this country." Johnson ends by asking for 5% of the vote, which will let the Libertarian Party get more ballot access and receive federal matching funds. So, the libertarian's slam-dunk argument for why you should vote for him is that it will let him receive federal-government benefits.

Meanwhile, over at the Wall Street Journal, Randy Barnett makes the argument to libertarians: "Libertarian activists need to set aside their decades-old knee-jerk reactions to the two major parties, roll up their sleeves, and make the Republican and Democratic parties more libertarian."

"Green Party’s presidential race rooted in Madison."

Obama's paid a lot of attention to Madison lately, but there's another presidential candidate concentrating on Madison: Jill Stein.

(And, as I said yesterday, I think Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, has a good amount of support in Madison.)

"Live Free — Gary Johnson for President."

That was the graffiti on campus today:



(Zeus thinks the movie's about him.)

Maybe libertarianism is catching on amongst the younger people.



We walked all down State Street and around the Capitol Square to see if there were any Obama-related activities in anticipation of his visit tomorrow. We saw lots of barriers and paraphernalia getting set up...



... but no sign of any people pre-celebrating Obama. Presumably, they'll be lining up before dawn, ready to stream around the Capitol and into photo-op formation.

Like Ralph Nader in 2000, Gary Johnson could throw the election.

Nader's 97,000 votes in Florida represented the difference between winning and losing Florida for Al Gore, and Gary Johnson could tip Arizona/Colorado/New Hampshire/New Mexico, where he's polling 9%/7%/7%/13% (if the pollsters are including him).

Unlike Nader, Johnson could hurt either of the 2 major-party candidates. It's more likely that he'll hurt Romney, but possibly not in Colorado and New Mexico. He could draw off erstwhile Obama supporters. If you're in a swing state, you have to want to make the point of giving no help to either of the 2 individuals who have an actual shot at winning. It's not enough to simply prefer Gary Johnson. (Take the I Side With test and see if you do align with him.)

Who are these people who not only want to say I prefer Johnson but also I decline to have any effect on the outcome? In 2000, the people who voted for Nader — did you know Meade was one? — perceived no significant difference between Al Gore and George Bush. Many of them went on to view that perception as quite inaccurate.

It's hard to believe the potential Johnson voters will think like that about Obama and Romney, which is why I think swing staters won't go third party this year. But I think the presence of Johnson in the race might affect how Obama and Romney fight in the swing states. Johnson is there as a refuge if the candidate we feel we're supposed to vote for offends us.

"I’m the only candidate that wants to get out of Afghanistan tomorrow, end the wars."

"I’m the only candidate that wants to end the drug war. I’m the only candidate that wants to repeal the Patriot Act. I’m the only candidate that’s talking about marriage equality as being a constitutionally guaranteed right. I’m the only candidate that wants to balance the federal budget now, and that means reforming the entitlements: Medicaid, Medicare."

 He's Gary Johnson.

"Johnson is incapable of bullsh*tting."

The quote in the post title, which appears at 3:34 in that video, comes from a GQ Magazine article from last November titled "Is This the Sanest Man Running for President?"

There is nothing he will not answer, nothing he will not share.... Johnson is fundamentally incapable of bullshitting, which is one of the many, many things that make him so unusual for a presidential candidate. (When a reporter asked him, after he gushed about how great New Hampshire voters are, if he says the same thing in Michigan, he replied, "No, Michigan's the worst.") He finds presidential politicking of the sort we've grown accustomed to—slick, scripted, focus-grouped, how-does-the-hair-look—to be "absolutely phony."

Another thing you need to know: He was never supposed to be the fringe candidate, and his campaign is no lark. Before he officially declared, he visited thirty-eight states—on his own nickel—to get a sense of whether he'd be a viable candidate. He was the first GOP candidate to announce, in early April, and for about twenty seconds seemed like a contender. The wildly popular (still) two-term Republican governor from a state that is two-to-one Democrat. A guy who's confident that he knows how to manage the purse strings and balance a budget because he did it—eight years in a row—in New Mexico. His fiscal conservatism is unmatched by anyone in the race. And his socially liberal cred—the only pro-gay and pro-choice Republican candidate—is unmatched even by some Democrats. (Of course, while this could be an asset in the general election, it's a bitch of a liability in the GOP primary.)

I'm so sad they let Gary Johnson into the GOP debate but not Thaddeus McCotter.

And now McCotter is withdrawing, saying, "It was sort of death by media."

James Taranto comments:

[Gary] Johnson, who served as governor of New Mexico from 1995 through 2003, is ideologically similar to Rep. Ron Paul, which is to say that he is a hard-core economic conservative whose foreign-policy views tend toward isolationism....

His speaking style is as bland as his ideological views are astringent....

That doesn't mean Fox is wrong to include him in its debate. True, his chance of being the Republican nominee is so low as to be indistinguishable from zero. But that's true of a majority of the other candidates who'll be on stage with him. His ideas deserve a hearing, and a presentation from someone who doesn't seem wild-eyed.

But if Gary Johnson is allowed in the debate, for goodness' sake, why wasn't Thaddeus McCotter? The representative from Michigan's 11th District is the most entertaining political speaker we've ever seen, with the possible exception of Sarah Palin. We don't agree with him on everything--he's one of the few Republicans to support forcible unionization by "card check"--but again, his ideas deserved a hearing. And he has the added advantage of being great fun to watch....

But it's not about fun, and it really isn't fair to the frontrunners for the characters to be playing a different, distracting game.

And hang out with me here when the debate starts this evening at 9 ET/8 CT. We're back to Fox News, so... presumably, more attention to what's wrong with Obama and fewer of those wedge issues that seem designed to stoke anti-GOP loathing.