Billy Townsend has a great idea:

Sometime in the near future–I’ll need to gauge the calendar for strategic reasons–I will register to vote as a Republican. I will do this despite the fact that the current Republican party has become an insane fever dream in which its adherents believe Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ are peas in a pod. Thus, I better have a good reason. I do. Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson last week announced that he will run for president as a Republican.But more importantly, he’s running as the candidate of marijuana legalization. And like all longshots with pet issue, Johnson cares less about winning than bringing attention to his issue. So he’ll probably hang around long enough to force a real debate over marijuana and drug war policy and win my vote in the Florida Republican primary.

Just bringing the debate squarely into the mainstream may be enough to jumpstart the national conversation, and get both parties to take the issue more seriously. I think it’s a pretty smart strategy, actually, for liberals to support Johnson in the GOP primary and then vote for Obama in the general election.

Shawn Gude has a good critique of my back-tracking on Johnson, but I just don’t think I can honestly pull the lever for Johnson when it comes down to it. Imagine a Johnson presidency and both houses of congress controlled by Republicans. Then take a look at the Paul Ryan budget. This is the real danger.

Shawn is also right to worry about Johnson on education policies. At least Obama has been backing off the testing regime lately, and making moves toward slowing down some of the administration’s worst policies. I doubt we’ll see the backside of Arne Duncan, but it’s always possible we’ll see a new (and better) Education Secretary in Obama’s second term. A Johnson administration might very well appoint Michelle Rhee to the top spot, and I’m not sure I could countenance that.

Maybe Billy’s idea is a good compromise.

Support Johnson in the primaries, both to bring the conversation about war and the drug war to the surface (without having to join the Paulistas in the process) and then support Obama in the general, hopefully after having made him aware of the popularity of anti-drug-war ideas (public opinion toward legalizing marijuana has been tilting in favor of ending prohibition for some time now, and support is only growing).

Besides, it would be great to shake things up a bit during the primaries. I’d like to see Johnson and Ron Paul debate Trump and Newt Gingrich. You might as well get some entertainment out of all of this.