The Immoral Majority
By JOHN TIERNEY,
Op-Ed Columnist, NYTimes on the Web. October 31, 2006
As usual, Republicans are hoping that
righteous voters will come through for them on Election Day. But this year
looks like the revenge of the sinners.
The sinners aren’t easy to count, since they don’t spend a lot of time doing
grass-roots politicking. There is no Washington lobby for the Coalition of
the Damned. They don’t like to confess their urges to pollsters. But
there are enough of them, particularly in places where Republicans are
struggling, to cast doubt on the party’s long-standing strategy.
Why did Republicans assume there was a Moral Majority? Where in the Bible
does it say that the virtuous outnumber the wicked? When you define
wickedness the way Republicans do, the numbers are daunting.
One of the G.O.P. Congress’s few achievements this year was a law to crack down
on Internet gambling, an industry that counted eight million American customers
last year — about four times the membership of the Christian Coalition.
The new law hasn’t stopped the online gamblers from betting, but it will give
them second thoughts about voting Republican.
The Republican war on marijuana — the chief priority of the current drug czar —
isn’t playing any better in the heartland. More than 40 percent of people
over the age of 12 have tried marijuana, and more than three-quarters of
Americans support legalizing it for medical purposes. The White House and
the Justice Department have had little luck in their attempts to stop states
from legalizing medical marijuana, but they have succeeded in alienating voters.
These federal intrusions are especially scorned by independent voters in the
Western states where Republicans have been losing ground, like Colorado, Nevada,
Arizona and Montana. Western Democrats have been siphoning off libertarian
voters by moderating their liberal views on issues like gun control, but
Republicans have been driving libertarians away with their wars on vice and
their jeremiads against gay marriage (and their attempt to regulate that from
Washington, too).
Libertarian voters tend to get ignored by political strategists because they’re
not easy to categorize or organize. They don’t congregate in churches or
union halls; they don’t unite to push political agendas. Many don’t even
call themselves libertarians, although they qualify because of their social
liberalism and economic conservatism: they want the government out of
their bedrooms as well as their wallets.
They distrust moral busybodies of both parties, and they may well be the most
important bloc of swing voters this election, as David Boaz and David Kirby
conclude in a new study for the Cato Institute. Analyzing a variety of
voter surveys, they estimate that libertarians make up about 15 percent of
voters — a bloc roughly comparable in size to liberals and to conservative
Christians, and far bigger than blocs like Nascar dads or soccer moms.
They’re especially prevalent in the West, where half a dozen states have
legalized medical marijuana. When Californians approved one of the first
medical marijuana laws, in 1996, drug warriors were so convinced it would lead
to a catastrophic spike in illegal use by teenagers that they sponsored a study
to document the damage. But there was no catastrophe: after the law,
marijuana use by teenagers actually declined in California.
In the decade since, as the Marijuana Policy Project documented in a recent
study, popular support for legalized medical marijuana has increased in
California and in virtually every other state with a similar law. Last
year it was favored by 78 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll.
Yet these realities still haven’t registered with Republicans in Washington.
This year the White House drug czar, John Walters, and his minions have been out
campaigning in Nevada, Colorado and South Dakota, which have marijuana
initiatives on the ballot. The drug warriors are still sounding the
discredited alarms about youths turning into potheads. Their fervor’s not
surprising — they may even believe their own hype.
What’s surprising is the political stupidity of the meddling. Westerners,
no matter what they think of marijuana, don’t appreciate sermons from federal
officials on how to vote. In 2002, when the White House campaigned against
another marijuana ballot initiative in Nevada, the state’s attorney general said
it was “disturbing” to see the federal interference in a state election.
This year, with Republicans in so much trouble in the West, the missionaries
from Washington aren’t doing them any favors. They need every sinner’s
vote they can get.
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