A Republican Party insider I am not. Well, in August I was elected as a precinct delegate, and at the County Convention I was elected as a delegate to the Republican State Convention, where I finally voted, but as a Tea Party supporter and recent Michigan transplant, I don't expect my opinions to count much with the Republican leadership either here or nationally.

Or am I making an erroneous assumption that there is such a thing as Republican leadership right now?

I don't know. But whether there are Republican leaders or not, I would be arrogant to expect them to listen to me. Which means I might as well write a blog post offering some free advice to the leaders who probably are not there, and who wouldn't listen to me if they were.

It concerns the legalization of drugs. (Or, as I like to call it "relegalization.")

I think the issue is more of a winner for Republicans than for the Democrats. That's because the Democrats are in power, and they cannot afford to bite off more than they can chew or look ridiculous. Nor can they afford to appear "soft on drugs." (Which can easily be translated into being either coke-snorting potheads or lovers of coke-snorting potheads.)

However, because the small government, anti-statist philosophy is deeply embedded among conservatives and libertarians (if not the weak, vacillating "Republican leadership"), Republicans have a much better chance of getting away with opposing drug laws without being seen as wanting to lie down with coke-snorting potheads. It comes down to basic political stereotypes, which can almost be reduced to math; Republicans have for decades been steeped in the law-and-order, tough-on-crime, culturally conservative ethos, and they have always been more vociferous in their support of law enforcement generally, and drug law enforcement particularly. From that perspective, who do you think has more credibility in opposing the drug war? A former cop or prosecutor who spent years putting druggies away, or a long-haired, earring-wearing ACLU lawyer who has devoted his career to whining about the druggies' rights? This is not to say that all Republicans are like the former or all Democrats are like the latter, but there's no escaping that general stereotype. (Especially in the minds of voters.)

Whether they know it or not, the Republicans are sitting pretty. Some Democrats know it too, although it isn't being discussed much. It's easy to understand why; they know it's a loser for them. I think their worst fear is that the more the issue of drug legalization becomes open for public discussion, the more likely it is that there might be a general political awakening of the sort described by Russ Belville in the Huffington Post. Commenting on some wishful thinking by California Democrats that the state's marijuana legalization initiative is analgous to the anti-gay-marriage Prop 8 (and will somehow draw liberal voters the way Prop 8 was thought to draw conservatives), Belville warns his lefty colleagues that they may be in for a surprise:

I think the Democrats are in for a surprise. See, Karl Rove and the Republicans really believed in the initiatives they were pushing. They had a frame for it -- "one man one woman" -- that resonated with their voters and the overall worldview espoused by most of their downticket candidates. So when that Religious Right base came out in 2004, energized to vote against dreaded homosexuals and for the continuation of all that was good, true, and Christian in America, they had George W. Bush and a whole slew of Republicans to vote for that echoed that sentiment.

What do Democrats have to offer the cannabis consumer who comes out for a 2010 election? Unlike Rove and the Republicans, the Democrats don't really believe in these initiatives (publicly). Sen. Boxer, Sen. Feinstein (a former mayor of San Francisco, c'mon now!), and former Gov. / current AG Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown all publicly oppose Prop 19 (really, Jerry? You toked with Linda Ronstadt! Please!) Democrats can't even go on the record to discuss this strategy. They haven't yet framed it other than to murmur a bit about tax revenues, which is a lousy frame easily countered with "Well, if taxing crack made the cities money, should we legalize that?" Tax revenues resonate well within Assembly committee hearings, but they make for a ghoulish appeal to the average voter.

There's also the disappointment factor. A lot of cannabis consumers were very excited about supporting Barack Obama for president. He wrote candidly of his youthful marijuana and cocaine use! No more "I didn't inhale" bullshit; we even got an "I inhaled, frequently, that was the point." He ran for Senate saying "The War on Drugs is an utter failure and I think we need to re-think and decriminalize our marijuana laws."

But are the Republicans stuck? Hell no. In fact, some of them are tantalizingly close to doing what the Democrats would most fear, by simply reaching out and stealing what Belville calls the "low-hanging fruit":

Democrats may still benefit from the cannabiphiles flooding the polls if only due to the "who else ya gonna vote for?" strategy championed by folks like Rahm Emanuel. But how long will it take some younger, Tea Party-friendly Republicans to realize they have a potential windfall of new, young, diverse voters if they steal the low-hanging fruit of marijuana legalization for their own?

Republicans already have the frames of "small government," "personal responsibility," and "states rights" to work within. If marijuana legalization in California passes by a wide margin and sees support from the women, minorities, and young people the GOP desperately needs to rebuild their party, how long before they begin framing the War on Drugs as the "big government," "nanny state," and "federal overreach" that it is? They've got revered conservative figures like William Buckley and Milton Friedman they can quote to bolster their position. They can easily point to the Democratic Congresses of the 1980s that created the mandatory minimums and the last three Democratic presidents who supported decriminalization and inhaled or didn't inhale yet arrests kept increasing (at the greatest rate under Clinton, they'll note).

The GOP isn't quite there yet. Marijuana is still associated with hippies, counter-culture, leftism, atheism, communism, heathenism, and a few other isms the Republicans still rail against. When I was arguing for marijuana legalization back in my home state of Idaho, I used to ask the hippie-hating, pickup-driving, hardest-right Republicans I knew why, if they hated marijuana and hippies so much, did they support hippies making a living without ever paying taxes? "Why is it that you have to clock in at 8am every day," I'd ask, "and 30% of your check is gone before you ever touch it because of taxes, while a hippie gets to sleep til Noon, grow a plant in a closet, never leave the house, and make twice as much as you do, and never pays a cent in taxes? It's not like you see a bunch of hippies opening up brewpubs." If the GOP can use their base's continued engagement in the culture wars of the '60s and '70s by framing legalization as the only logical way to control and punish (through "sin" taxes) the users of cannabis, they could radically revitalize their party.

Just in time for 2012 when a vocally pro-marijuana legalization, anti-prohibition former governor of New Mexico named Gary Johnson will be fighting for the Republican nomination.

Drug legalization is a loser for Democrats, and a potential winner for Republicans.

So take that and do nothing with it, nonexistent Republican leadership!