Eric covered the nomination of Vanita Gupta, as acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, runnning down the Drug War aspects of her nomination. Surprisingly, a pro drug site, The Weed Blog, covered some other aspects.
The Washington Post reports that Obama intends to nominate Vanita Gupta, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Deputy Legal Director, to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division. This news comes not long after Attorney General Eric Holder announced his imminent resignation, and indicates a continued initiative of positive federal drug policy changes.
Gupta has been outspoken on a number of issues, including racial sentencing disparities, federal incentives to state police that prioritize the investigation of drug arrests over violent crime, mandatory minimum sentences and related disparities, as well as marijuana legalization. She currently leads the ACLU’s Campaign to End Mass Incarceration. Gupta has also garnered bipartisan support with conservatives Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and David Keene, former president of the NRA, both speaking highly of her.
“Vanita Gupta has witnessed the damage caused by our erroneous policies throughout her career. She’s a brilliant choice for this position,” says executive director of LEAP, Major Neill Franklin (ret.). “This shows that the federal government is aiming to look at drug policy issues through a social-justice lens rather than a criminal justice one. ”
Americans for Tax Reform? The NRA? Well other than the Drug War she does not seem to be a bete noire of the right.
So lets have a look at WaPo.
“In that zone, she’s been good to work with and a serious person,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said in an interview. “She’s been open to working with conservatives on good policy. She has played a strong role in the left-right cooperation in criminal justice issues.”
David Keene, who was president of the National Rifle Association from 2011 to 2013, also praised Gupta’s “collaborative approach.”
“Vanita is a very good person,” he said in an interview. “I’ve worked with her on criminal justice reform issues. Most of the Obama administration people have been so ideologically driven that they won’t talk to people who disagree with them. Vanita is someone who works with everyone. She both listens to and works with people from all perspectives to accomplish real good.”
What our friends on the right fail to grasp is that except in certain small sections of the country the Drug War does not garner huge support. Last I looked the % of the population favoring an end to Cannabis Prohibition was 58% and rising. At what level of support for ending Prohibition does the Heritage Foundation give it up? If Segregation is any guide there will be die hards remaining for quite some time.
Well the Right wants to remain stupid on the issue. It will eventually cost them. Unless they can find a way to support Rand Paul.
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What our friends on the right fail to grasp…
What they fail to grasp is that it is a losing political strategy to tout your continuing support for a failed policy where public opinion is rapidly changing against that policy.
To borrow a metaphor here, the GOP sold its soul to the Devil when it actively courted Christians on certain issue that don’t have broad support outside of social conservative circles. And as I and others have noted, GOP candidates are in a real political bind, because if they don’t show sincere support for the socon issues, they risk losing socon support. But by supporting the socon positions, they drive away political moderates. Talk about a Catch-22.
The GOP already has a PR problem due to the big media outlets tilting decidedly to the Left. And some of that bad PR is well earned, in that many in the GOP are unwilling to adapt to changing times in the area of sexual mores. The GOP could lead the way on drug reform and help rehabilitate their political brand as agents of positive change. But the GOP seems bound and determined to fall on their swords in support of drug prohibition and let the Democrats reap all the political rewards that are there for the taking.
The conservatives have only ever had two arguments for drug prohibition:
The Mr. Mackie: Drugs’re bad, m’kay?
The Michael Medved: It’s always been illegal.
I vote Republican because I want low taxes, limited government and strong national defense. What I get is the drug war, school prayer, creationism and flag-burning amendments.[1]
[1] why not pass a law mandating all flags be fire proof? Solves the entire problem with no constitutional issues.
“The right” ain’t what it used to be. Notice that the pro-gun and the anti-tax lobbies are cool with this.