MSNBC talking head and relentless Democratic
partisan Rachel Maddow just suggested marijuana legalization as one
issue with a clear partisan breakdown. Did you know Democrats are
pro-pot and would surely legalize it if only those pesky
Republicans would let them?
To be fair,
it is true that more Democrats support marijuana legalization
than Republicans. But long-time readers of Reason know
that it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Younger voters
by-and-large support legal weed, regardles of their party
affiliation. Medical marijuana is increasingly supported by
Republicans; those in the conservative fold are also more and more
likely to favor
letting states set their own drug policies rather than be bound
by federal government mandates. And while rank-and-file Democrats
are indeed more enlightened on pot than their Republican
counterparts, national Democratic leaders—including the one
currently occupying the White House—have done very little to honor
their base’s desire for less restrictive drug laws.
In fact, there is little doubt that Sen. Rand Paul, a
frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016,
supports a more sane approach to drug policy than does Hillary
Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee. Just today,
Paul said that if D.C. voters wanted to legalize marijuana
they were welcome to do so.
Bottom line: Support for drug decriminalization is rising on the
right, and some Republican leaders are taking initiative on the
issue. To be sure, many Republicans remain hopeless drug warriors,
but so do many Democrats. If Maddow wants to recast the
growing left-right consensus on the insanity of marijuana
prohibition as some kind of partisan thing… well, maybe her
viewers like that sort of analysis, but it’s cynical and
dubious.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/10stMSc
via IFTTT