The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s All Politics Blog asks: Johnson: Republican or Libertarian?
So, which is it? Is Ron Johnson, United States Senate candidate from Wisconsin, a Republican or a libertarian?
He’s a Republican. Johnson apparently quotes from Ayn Rand occasionally, but that doesn’t make him a libertarian. It makes him someone who quotes from Ayn Rand occasionally.
(By the way, Rand’s often the writer people quote when they want to sound sympathetic to libertarians. Anyone who grew up in the movement knows well that Rand had, to put it mildly, both intellectual and personal limitations. A liberty-oriented view of the world neither begins, nor ends, with Rand. There have been countless great men and women who have argued for liberty-oriented principles.)
I’d say that John McAdams, a professor at Marquette University quoted in the post, has it just right — that Johnson would probably vote as other Republicans vote, and that it’s most accurate simply to “call him a conservative.”