When I get to the Mansion Gates, Tim Kaine’s gonna have to wait…..

…..so I can smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette!

As you’ve probably heard by now, Speaker Howell has reached a compromise with Governor Kaine that, the two men believe, will allow a bill largely banning smoking in public places to pass after years of such legislation being submitted. From the Washington Times:

Gov. Tim Kaine and House Republican leaders announced an agreement Thursday on a bill that would curb smoking in most public eateries and bars.

The bill represents a compromise between the Democratic governor’s longtime backing for an outright ban on all smoking in bars and restaurants and traditional Republican opposition to mandated smoking restrictions.

If passed, the measure will ban smoking except in private clubs and inside walled-off areas of restaurants designated for smoking and served by a ventilation system separate from the one that serves nonsmoking parts of the establishment. 

Governor Kaine has pushed rigorously for this action across the last several years, having previously banned smoking in state buildings. Now, after being founded by, raised on, and funded through King Tobacco, it looks like the Commonwealth’s four hundred year love affair with the sweet leaf may be finally coming to an end. 

Although not a smoker myself, I am firmly against this legislation due to very strong personal convictions. However, before I lay out my own case against the move, I think we should look at how this is shaking out in the political world, and why I feel this decision is just as disastrous politically as it is ideologically. 

At the beginning of this session, it appeared that state level Republicans were beginning to coalesce around the view that the party needs to re-brand itself as one that is focused on personal responsibility and fiscal conservatism without betraying or selling-out the social conservatives who have bolstered the party for years. While it became clear that we could not allow social issues to overwhelm the main thrust of our message, it seemed that our candidates could maintain the focus without alienating the grassroots (with the exception of certain extreme elements which will never be satisfied). Indeed, this strategy seemed to be helping us make major inroads in Northern Virginia, where we came within spitting distance of winning two separate special elections within the last month.

And then this issue reared its ugly head. I’ve been arguing for years that this is one of those issues that has the potential to blow apart the conservative coalition. On one side you have business-minded and libertarian leaning conservatives who see the measure as a fundamental violation of property rights. On the other side you have moderates and social conservatives who, either as an issue of public health or (rather or not they’ll admit it) morality, see this as a place where the government should be able to step in. You can see the fundamental disconnect here. 

And that disconnect has spread throughout the party. While Speaker Howell is very proud to have brokered this compromise. From Bearing Drift:

“The compromise strikes a fair balance between the rights of smokers who choose to enjoy a legal product and the rights of other individuals who want to enjoy a smoke-free environment when eating at a restaurant.

“This is the kind of balanced approach to resolving a tough issue that Virginians like to see their elected leaders seek to achieve. Also, it is a good example of bipartisan cooperation that people want.

However, many Republicans don’t see if the same way. Majority Leader Morgan Griffith has freed the Delegates to vote as they please. And thusly, Republican voices are making themselves heard in a very loud way. Delegate Todd Gilbert, who as a member of General Laws voted against the bill was quoted not once but twice. First in the Roanoke Times:

“I fear this is nothing more than the nanny state mothering us yet again for our own protection,” Gilbert said. “This bill sets a very bad precedent for the free market and for private property rights in general.”

And from the Delegate’s “favorite” paper of record, which generally seems to have no sense of humor, the Washington Post:

Conservatives are also blasting the proposal, saying it curtails individual freedom. “It’s a property rights, liberty and freedom issue,” said Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah). “One of the basic tenets of our party is that we trust people to make decisions that are right for themselves.”

But Delegate Gilbert is not only. Delegate Robert Lee Ware (with a name like that, he’s about as Virginia as you can get without actually being the women on our state flag) gave a stirring speech against the measure:

The principal craftsman of our Constitution, James Madison, insisted that it is not in a piece of parchment that our freedoms flourish. No, our liberty exists, is experienced, and is preserved in the customs, the social manners, the interchanges between free peoples, the private associations that individuals form, and in the institutions that are “intermediate” between the people and their government.

Today, through a feel-good surrender of another parcel of liberty to The Nanny State, we are chipping further away at the individual liberties and also the social bonds and institutions without which our people can not be free. And of course, predictably, it is in a seemingly “little thing” that this is occurring: the private citizens and private businesses of Virginia are to be compelled by government to ban the smoking of a perfectly legal substance that has for centuries been a cornerstone of our social, cultural, economic, and political life: the smoking of tobacco. And, to justify ourselves, we have first had to discredit (and of course to tax) a single class of people into an inferior status–those of our people who smoke.

Guess which statement is featured on RPV’s website? Hint: It’s not Howell’s. This issue is a political time bomb. It is pitting the party apparatus (or at the very least, Chairman/Delegate Jeff Frederick) against the party’s leadership in the House. Just as it looked like Kaine’s Governorship was headed to an early grave, Speaker Howell has handed Kaine a way to salvage his reputation simultaneously put a kink in efforts to re-brand the party as the one of small government.

Efforts that were being led by the party’s ostensible standard bearer for 2009, Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who’s own legislative agenda over the past four years has focused on issues such as government transparency and the reduction of bueracracy. Clearly, for him, this would be a step-backwards. From the WaPo:

J. Tucker Martin, a McDonnell spokesman, said the attorney general is happy that House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) tried to work out a compromise but believes ‘the free market” should decide if smoking is banned in bars and restaurants.

“He generally believes this is an issue that should be solved by the free market and not government,” Martin said.

However, it’s not just party officials that are having issues with this legislation. It’s also raising the ire of Americans for Prosperity, a free market group that is gaining increasing influence within the party. From the WaPo:

Americans for Prosperity, a group that supports limited government and free trade, has hired a company to make tens of thousands of phone calls to the offices of a dozen legislators to pressure them to vote against a smoking ban.

….

“Our members are upset that the Speaker has chosen to trust big government to solve our problems instead of consumers,” said Ben Marchi, the group’s state director. “This is a consumer rights issue. This is the government telling consumers they aren’t smart enough to decide for themselves where to patron.”

Meanwhile, the same sorts of splits are being seen throughout the right side of the blogosphere. SWAC Girl expressed her displeasure with the move, while over at Too Conservative, two different bloggers on the same blog have differing opinions, with Vince Harris supporting it and VA Blogger opposing it. One argument that I just feel the need to respond too, though, comes from Riley over at Virginia Virtucon:

This is a sensible compromise.  I take a libertarian viewpoint on this — I won’t interfere with your rights if you don’t interfere with mine. Start infringing on my rights, and you’re going to find yours curtailed to the extent that they no longer impact mine.  There is nothing I hate more than to go to a restaurant and be put in the non-smoking section at a table right next to the smoking section and have no division between the two.  I don’t think the government should outlaw smoking,  but I do think that there is a limited role for it to play if smokers cross the line and impact others who don’t want to be exposed to it.

Here’s the problem, with that logic–the bill knowingly sets a very high bar for restaurants that want to continue to serve their customers who choose to smoke. It fundamentally cuts into the rights of owners of restaurants. Some people try to frame this almost as if it is a civil rights issue, having to balance the “rights” of smokers versus non-smokers. However, the fundamental difference here is that being a smoker is not an immutable characteristic such as someone’s race. Immutable characteristics deserve protection and individuals should not be allowed to be discriminated against. However, the government should also not knowingly and outright ban a consensual behavior that does not directly harm those who choose not to engage. 

This is the crux of the argument for me; people seem to think that they have a fundamental right to patronize any establishment they want without encountering smokers. To me, this logic is akin to saying that restaurants such as Hooters should be required to have their employees be further clothed because some people enjoy the food but don’t want to be bothered with the sexual overtones. You know the nature of the restaurant, so you don’t patronize it. Why can’t the same be held for smoking? Because smokers, even though they are engaging in a consensual behavior, are on the bottom rung of society. However, this is not about status. This is about consensual adults being able to engage in behaviors they choose and to make their own decisions within the confine of another accepting individual’s private property.

However, I think ultimately this is a bill that myself and my colleagues in the blogosphere can reasonably disagree on and debate. Here’s the biggest problem: Speaker Howell has knowingly handed Tim Kaine his “legacy” issue and, while in the midst of a crisis that was showing the possibility of uniting the party on principle, blew it apart on an issue that, while certainly worthy of debate, is drawfed by the crisis we now face. And for what? For purely political gain. From the WaPo:

According to GOP delegates, Howell stressed during a closed-door House Republican caucus meeting Wednesday that the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and American Lung Association had dispatched a paid organizer to his district. Officials close to the organizations confirm that an organizer had been working in Howell’s district to “educate” the public about his previous opposition to an indoor smoking ban.

….

Other Republicans caution that Howell’s decision to back the ban had little to do with his own campaign this year.

They say Howell brought up the organizer to warn other GOP delegates that they could also be targeted in the fall elections.

While it may not be true that this move was for his own gain, it is clear that the thought here is all on politics. And once again, electoral math trumps principle, the reason many of us threw ourselves in with this party to begin with. 

Let us always work to ensure that principle prevails, because that’s why they’re there in the first place. They will never be all things to all people, nor should they be. But if you are always clear and always guided in your principles, there is no shame in losing a single voter, because you did the right thing, the thing you were sent their to fight for: your principles, which your constituents embraced as their own in the last election. To do anything else is pure politics, and not worthy of true statesmen.