Gary Johnson, the oft-forgotten candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, has officially dropped out of the Republican primary and is entering the race to run for President as a Libertarian.  Whether this means anything remains to be seen.  LP candidates generally get very little media exposure, and this isn’t likely to change anything.  However, the third party blogosphere has blown up over this.

I want to like Gary Johnson.  He lines up with some of my own beliefs.  However, I’m also a former dues paying member of the Libertarian Party — I was also an Illinois delegate to the LP convention in 2008 in Denver in which we nominated Bob Barr.  The same thing was said then — Barr was a former nationally known Congressman who was supposed to bring “credibility” to the party.  However, it never happened — Barr finished with minimal media exposure and a tiny vote count.

Hopefully this is another test for the viability of the Libertarian Party in national elections.  Barr was seen as not sufficiently libertarian, as too much of a Republican.  Johnson shouldn’t have that problem — he is a toe the line ideological libertarian and should not have the backlash among the radical sect that Barr did.

Whether this changes anything in the race remains to be seen, but it certainly better for the LP to have a former Governor leading the ticket than the nobodies currently running for the LP nomination.