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The Power To Tax Is The Power To . . . Wait A Minute, Did I Say Something?

Nov 18, 2008
By .
Politics & Current Events

Over at Nobody's Business, a discussion and link to a potential benefit that might actually move the ball forward on legalizing marijuana: it promises impressive tax revenue even at lower prices.

Even so, I don't think we're within a generation of legalizing drugs, or even just marijuana. The Democrats are terrified of seeming soft on crime or soft on drugs, recognizing that the Republicans will eviscerate them with that issue if they head left. That's why criminal justice rhetoric has been, with few exceptions, fairly uniform among Republicans and Democrats for decades.

The Republicans could pull it off, if they headed in a libertarian direction. At the very least they could leave the issue to the states, which would be a principled and consistent federalist stance. But as I've said before, I think the Republicans are unlikely to kick their cultural conservative base to the curb, and that base is neither libertarian nor federalist. Legalizing drugs — even marijuana — would sound libertine and alienate that base.

So, for the foreseeable future, the position of Drug Czar will not involve tax policy.

Last 5 posts by Ken

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  1. David  •  Nov 18, 2008 @7:09 am

    But as I’ve said before, I think the Republicans are unlikely to kick their cultural conservative base to the curb, and that base is neither libertarian nor federalist.

    With respect, Ken, you're mistaken here. A substantial subset of the so-called Christian Right is both libertarian and federalist. Not the loudmouths, of course, but then those are amplified by a press that's looking for controversy.

  2. Ken  •  Nov 18, 2008 @7:34 am

    Oh, I know that Christians — including those who would call themselves Right — are diverse and belong to all sorts of political subgroups. But the Republican Party message (and, to the extent it tries to sound Republican, the Democratic Party message) is rarely pitched to the libertarian or federalist wing, but to the wing that believes that an appropriate role of government is to enforce religious norms.