NH Republicans and the Smoking Ban Part 2

By Jim on March 2nd, 2007

Well it looks like the pubbies in the NH Senate really did goof on the smoking bill and it may come back to haunt them.

Knowing that they didn’t have the votes to kill Sen. Dave Gottesman’s bill to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, they tried last week to load it up with amendments so unappealing that Democrats would have to kill the bill. That’s standard political gamesmanship. But the Republicans played clumsily.

They pretended that they really believed in their eight amendments, which would have banned smoking in private and public places such as foster homes, nursing homes, social and veterans clubs, at youth athletic games and in the State House. They claimed that they would vote for the bill if only it had all of those amendments.

Democrats were not fooled. They rejected the amendments, passed the bill, and then did something far more clever than the silly prank the Republicans pulled. Gottesman pledged to put all of those GOP amendments into one bill and bring it up for a vote.

Now, there’s a rule of thumb when you’re offering amendments to try to kill a bill. The amendments have to offend the other side’s basic political impulses, not appeal to them.

Senate Democrats desire nothing more than to expand the nanny state as far as possible. Senate Republicans tried to thwart those plans by . . . offering to expand the nanny state as far as possible.

Way to go.

Now, instead of a narrow smoking ban that violates the property and free association rights of bar and restaurant owners and patrons, we might just have a broad smoking ban that violates the rights of tens of thousands more.

The only good thing I can think about this is that if the Democrats over-reach and pass something REALLY obnoxious, it might piss off enough people for it to come back on them in the next election. Just goes to show you though that Democrats cannot be trusted with liberty. They will go for the socialist nanny state crap every time. Yep, I’ve got friends that are Dems but they just don’t understand that we all don’t want to live under their oppressive nanny state bullshit.

TAKE ACTION: CONTACT YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE AND DEMAND THAT THEY VOTE AGAINST THE SMOKING BAN AND FOR LIBERTY.