I like how Rand Paul talks about politicians who smoked pot as teenagers or college students who then, when they found themselves in a position to set policy, went on to support incarceration for others who smoke pot.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) accused Jeb Bush of hypocrisy after The Boston Globe reported the former Florida governor was a heavy marijuana smoker while at an elite prep school.
Bush opposed a Florida medical marijuana ballot initiative last year even though he partook liberally of the herb while in high school.
“You would think he’d have a little more understanding then,” Paul told The Hill while en route to a political event in Texas.
“He was even opposed to medical marijuana,” Paul said of Bush, a potential rival in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. “This is a guy who now admits he smoked marijuana but he wants to put people in jail who do.
“I think that’s the real hypocrisy, is that people on our side, which include a lot of people who made mistakes growing up, admit their mistakes but now still want to put people in jail for that,” he said.
“Had he been caught at Andover, he’d have never been governor, he’d probably never have a chance to run for the presidency,” he added.
I’ve said the exact same thing in the exact same way countless times. I believe it’s an unassailable argument that you ought not support ruining the life of someone for something that you did yourself unless you think your life should have been ruined.
If you’re only able to win elections because you got a second chance or because people just don’t know what you’ve done, you should be willing to extend the same generosity and good will to others.
It’s particularly galling to come out and admit what you’ve done and that you were never held accountable for it, and then to insist that others are held accountable.
Now, obviously, if you got away with committing robberies, sexual assault or something else that should clearly be punished severely, that doesn’t mean that you’re a hypocrite for thinking that we should maintain laws against those crimes. But you should turn yourself in or pay restitution.
And just because you did some drugs when you were young, doesn’t mean that all drugs should be legal, but the biggest part of this isn’t the legality; it’s the punishment.
President Obama doesn’t have a perfect record on this issue, by any means, although he has been moving the government in a better direction. Aqua Buddha has a less cautious and more morally clear position on marijuana, and I’m willing to give him credit for it.
I think it would do a lot more for our nation’s youth if people like Jeb, Barack, and Rand would talk honestly about their experiences using drugs and what they think about them in retrospect. They should tell kids how smoking pot held them back and why they quit using it. At the same time, some heavy marijuana smoking didn’t prevent them from becoming senators, governors and presidents. So, really, let’s get real.
I bash Rand Paul relentlessly for good reason, but he’s absolutely justified to give Jeb Bush shit for being a hypocrite on this issue. Even Obama has to take a bit of a hit here, no pun intended.
I’d say whether you smoked pot or not in the past or still do you cannot ruin someone’s life for doing it by putting them in prison. The offense is so petty and the punishment is so draconian that only a nasty bugger would ignore the discrepancy.
May Rand remember the logic of this good argument and use it going forward on Jeb’s platform. And since apparently Jeb has a similar intellect as GW, with his grades so poor he was almost tossed, let’s see if he defaults to his bullying personality to push back at Rand. And of course, the biggest question, who will be Jeb’s brain?
A republican hypocrite. Who’d a thunk it?
… he would have gotten his hand slapped, at most.
I mean, c’mon, a rich white kid at a prep school? He could have been a dealer and he wouldn’t have ended up in prison.
Not imprisoned, but expelled.
The problem not only is not what he did in High School, it’s also that his own daughter should have done a stint IN JAIL for her drug-linked criminal activity.
Getting away with something As innocuous as smoking weed leaves me wonder what other “crimes” they got away with.
A bullying personality reflects the sub-conscious realization of a less than keen intellect. Coupled with a dynastic Hitler financing Robber Baron sense of entitlement and a penchant for blowing up frogs with firecrackers…
Beast Rabban.
The Charles Pierce rule exists for a reason. It’s also why I hope he runs, though I’d never vote for him. He’s bound to say a thing or three that upsets the GOP applecart, so to speak. He’s the prefect guy to troll the rest of the GOP.
Another crack in your anti-Paul wall.
Good work, Booman.
Slowly the worm turns.
Rand Paul is as honest a successful politician as we have in this country at present. All successful pols have to slip and slide to some degree in order to be able to assemble a winning coalition under the conditions of this cobbled-together so-called “democracy,” and he is doing so very effectively. He obviously learned from observing the results of his father’s absolute refusal to play politics that such an approach is severely limiting in terms of the real acquisition of power, and he is headed straight up as a result.
You say “I bash Rand Paul relentlessly for good reason.” Check him…and his father…out in greater depth. Please. They are not the clowns that the media have tried to make them out to be. Not by a long shot. They are neither virulent racists nor are they are lockstep far right-wing isolationists or crackpot economic dreamers.
Watch. Rand Paul is on a roll.
He is the only national politician of either party with a well-functioning campaign support system who is speaking the truth to power, and he is headed straight into the mainstream of American politics as a result. How? By presenting commonsense truths like this one about Jeb Bush and the rest of the mealymouthed centrists of both parties who are currently running this country right into the ground.
Watch.
Your “relentless bashing” mode is showing some cracks. Good on ya. If he can get your positive attention he can get the attention of other erstwhile enemies.
Commonsense truth. An idea whose time has come in American politics? We shall see. In some ways he reminds me of Harry Truman.
Here is [an] incident that took place during the 1948 Presidential election campaign.
Like dat.
Watch.
It is said that every once in a long, long while, the magnetic poles of the earth switch. North becomes south and south becomes north. It’s called Geomagnetic reversal.
“As above, so below” say the Sufis.
Every once in a much shorter while the political poles shift, too. What was “liberal” becomes conservative and what was conservative becomes liberal. Are we headed for another pole shift?
Could be…
We shall see, soon enough. Bet on it.
Watch.
AG
Which is why I never voted for Bill Clinton.
Take away the Pauls ostensible support for legalizing marijuana and what would they have left to attract a national following? While their position on marijuana is more sensible than that of the all the “lock up the pot smokers” and/or hypocrites that love the prison-industrial complex, let’s not delude ourselves that either of them have actually proposed a well thought public policy on marijuana and presented anything that looks like legislation. All they’ve done is nabbed an issue with a pre-existing constituency that vaguely and simplistically fits within a libertarian framework.
Prohibitions on anything that adults choose to do that doesn’t harm others create more problems than their worth. Create black markets that exceed the ability of law enforcement to stamp out. OTOH, government regulation of what others disapprove of generally works well, particularly if the regulation is limited to the lightest practical and necessary at the public policy level. Sometimes exceedingly well. For example, legalizing abortion made it legal for licensed health care professionals to perform. Put the back alley abortionists out of business. Stopped self administered attempt to abort a fetus. Deaths and lifelong negative health consequences of abortions for women performed by licensed health care professionals are close to zero. There is no justifiable public policy reason for any further regulatory burden for abortions.
Legalizing marijuana at the federal level first instead of this very slow state by state process could lead to far fewer negative consequences. It’s not as if we don’t know how to do that because we did it before. And if we stopped thinking in terms of controlling others and looked at it from a more pure perspective of public health and economies, we could do it even better. For example, do we want the wholesalers, packagers and distributors of pot to reap more of the profits than the farmers? Do we want a new small group of pot oligarchs? A few branded products? Cindy McCain is wealthy because her daddy landed a beer distributor contract. How have those hops farmers been doing?
Douthat is saying we do that because he somehow hopes that we stop doing that – and stop doing it just at the moment when the nation seems poised to elect the first woman to the Presidency….or certainly nominate her anyway.
This is no accident.
That column is about gender.
Sorry wrong post! (ignore here – moving it there)
Pappy Bush would have gotten Jeb out of trouble. But his point is correct.