The GOP's bad bet

Today, without a word of comment, President Bush signed a law banning Internet gambling.

He didn't really have any choice, because Republicans attached the ban, which makes it illegal for banks and credit card companies to process payments for online wagers, to the completely unrelated Safe Accountability for Every Port Act.

The Republicans slipped the gaming ban into the port security bill after they failed to stick it onto the defense appropriations bill.

They're betting that the crackdown on demon rum -- sorry, online poker -- will energize and mobilize social conservatives, who might otherwise stay home on Election Day and mope about the persistence of sin despite twelve years of Republican majorities on Capitol Hill.

What they're missing is what all the polls miss. People don't tell the truth about what they do on the Internet.

For every social conservative who rails against pornography and gambling, there are two, or four, or four thousand, or maybe forty thousand, individual Americans who like to surf porn sites and gamble in online casinos.

They're not going to show up in any poll. But if they show up on Election Day, they won't be feeling kindly disposed toward the Republicans.

It's entirely possible that the Republicans will lose close races on this issue alone. We will never have empirical data to support the theory that the gambling ban is what cost the GOP its majorities, because people won't tell anyone with a pencil or a tape recorder that they're angry about the ban on Internet poker. They'll say something about Iraq or something general about the need for a change.

Of course, the Republicans think the Internet gambling ban will excite their base. They picture close races going their way on the strength of all those doorbell-ringing evangelicals who suddenly feel a warm rush of righteous affection for the GOP moralists.

We'll see.

This is more than a political issue for one election. This is a fight over whether conduct that some people consider immoral should be criminalized for the entire nation, and more broadly, whether it is appropriate for the U.S. government to use federal law to regulate private moral conduct.

The Constitution limits the power of the federal government to do that kind of thing. When social conservatives of another era wanted to ban alcohol, citing a list of social ills much like the ones cited by gambling opponents today, they had to get a constitutional amendment to do it. The Constitution did not give the federal government the power to regulate alcohol.

Of course, Prohibition was repealed. That took a constitutional amendment, too.

In a free country, citizens do not have to get permission from their government for everything they want to do. The government has to get permission from its citizens for everything it wants to ban.

But the Republicans did not do that.

Instead of voting openly on the Internet gaming ban, the Republicans slipped it into an important bill on port security. They did it late on a Friday night, just before adjourning for the fall campaign season, knowing that no one would have the nerve to vote against port security and then go home to face the voters.

That may be a well-established Washington practice, but it is not government by consent of the governed.

Here's some advice for politicians who want to repeal the ban on Internet gaming but are afraid to look like they're standing up for sin: Stand up for freedom, for limited government, and for the principle of government by consent of the governed. Don't be intimidated by those who cite the welfare of children to justify a constant expansion of federal power. Stiffen your spine with the words of President George Washington: "Let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."


Copyright 2006


Editor's Note: You might be interested to read "Marijuana, Prohibition and the Tenth Amendment" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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