I suspect most Republicans feel otherwise.
Raich represented the last chance to rein in a Congress that sees no constitutional limits whatsoever on the reach and breadth of its power. It was GOP devotion to the drug war that subverted it, killing the Rehnquist federalism revolution in its infancy, narrowly limiting Lopez and Morrison and freeing the Congress to legislate wherever it pleases, with little or no constitutional constraints.
Over the past few months, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson have tried to position themselves as the standard-bearers for federalism. The Los Angeles Times’ Ron Brownstein recently praised Giuliani’s federalist approach to contentious social issues like gun control, gay rights, health care and abortion. Thompson has written several columns touting local control over the past few months.
But Giuliani has spent most of his career advocating for more federal power to fight the federal war on drugs. He has declared that he would continue the Drug Enforcement Administration raids on medical marijuana facilities, overruling state law.
Thompson is the only candidate yet to take a public position on the raids. While he’s right to note his impressive pro-federalist voting record in the Senate, he also voted for a number of bills strengthening the federal war on drugs.
And while Thompson’s campaign essays rightly decry the federalization of crime and the soaring U.S. prison population, they’re curiously silent on the war on drugs — a leading cause of both of these troubling trends. Thompson’s campaign did not respond to inquiries about his position on the DEA raids for this article.
Giuliani and Thompson claim they want to reinvigorate discussion of the virtues of federalism. Terrific. But you can’t argue that states should be free to make their own policies without federal interference — except when you happen to disagree with them. You can be a federalist, or you can be an ardent drug warrior. But you can’t be both.
Radley Balko is a senior editor for reason. This article originally appeared in The Politico.
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