Scooping up votes in swing states is how Paul Ryan serves Mitt Romney best. And what better dissatisfied liberal bloc for the Republicans to court than marijuana supporters, stunned by President Obama's total betrayal?
Hence the vice presidential candidate's stance in a college town in swinging Colorado, which will vote on legalizing marijuana at the November ballot, striking a libertarian tone to questions about marijuana enforcement. "It's up to Coloradans to decide," Ryan told Colorado Springs's KRDO. "My personal positions on this issue have been let the states decide what to do with these things.... What I've always believed is the states should decide."
Except not really, of course. Ryan as recently as May voted against an effort to weaken federal law enforcement's war on state-legal marijuana. So why would he even bother with such blarney -- is it merely craven, or does the GOP tickets' pitch to "weedheads" prove they're "desperate"?
Ryan's timing is dead-on. Marijuana is a hot issue in Colorado, which could be the first state in the union to legalize marijuana in November. Enough to win over pro small government, socially liberal Colorado?
Here's the brief exchange involving marijuana from the interview:
Singer: In Colorado we have medical marijuana. Under a Romney-Ryan ticket, what happens?Ryan's tepid pot talk -- which both echoed Obama's famous contradicted words and advocated no course of action or policy change -- set fire to the Internet over the weekend.
Ryan: It's up to Coloradans to decide.
Singer: So even if federal law says marijuana is illegal, you're saying?
Ryan: My personal positions on thisissue have been let the states decide what to do with these things.
This is something that is not a high priority of ours as to whether or
not we go down the road on this issue. What I've always believed is the
states should decide. I personally don't agree with it, but this is
something Coloradans have to decide for themselves.
failed to declare a similar promise to Americans, so it's not clear
that a Romney Administration would have a different enforcement
policy than what we're seeing today," said ASA spokesman Kris Hermes. "Ryan is also dodging the question of what a Romney/Ryan
administration would do about medical marijuana at the federal
level."
"How desperate do they have to be to court the weedhead vote?" mused
Mickey Martin, the East Bay cannabis activist and man behind edibles
legend Tainted, Inc., who described Ryan's words as "such a big fucking
lie, I do not know whether to laugh or cry."
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