"Tea Partiers don't agree on everything," says Chris Good at The Atlantic. In fact, this hodgepodge movement encompassing everything from libertarians to hard-core social conservatives disagrees about quite a lot. So far, though, one potential fissure has been overlooked — "legalization of marijuana." This issue has the potential to become divisive as the debate over decriminalizing pot gains steam, with several states voting on medical-marijuana ballot initiatives and Californians weighing outright legalization. Here, an excerpt:
Marijuana seems like as good an issue as any to bring [the Tea Party's ] ideological poles into conflict. Libertarians support looser drug laws as an expression of their most basic principle — less government involvement in private lives; social conservatives and traditionalists [meanwhile] react viscerally to drug legalization as a descent into societal depravity. In broad terms, libertarians and social conservatives couldn't see marijuana more differently. ...
On top of that, marijuana is becoming a states' rights issue. The Obama administration has enacted a policy of deference to state policies on medical marijuana, and if California's Prop. 19 passes in 2010, or if a similar measure passes in California or elsewhere in 2012, the subsequent Obama/Holder decision over what to do about it will inevitably call into question whether the federal government should (constitutionally, it certainly can) supersede the decision of state voters.
