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by dablya
3078 days ago
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To sum up... AEI, an ideologically conservative, non-partisan think-tank is defending a Republican-sponsored policy by interpreting the Commerce Clause in a manner that is antithetical to conservative ideology. Am I missing something? |
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Yes, you're missing the part where this isn't particularly antithetical to conservative ideology anymore (it would have been a century ago, but not recently).
There's a common caricature of conservative ideology under which any use of federal powers to limit state powers is hypocritical. But that's not a particularly accurate depiction of conservative ideology, any more than the caricature that any use of state powers is somehow hypocritical under a liberal ideology. (If that were the case, then this push by New York and California could itself be characterized as similarly hypocritical).
In this case, both the left and the right have agreed for the better part of the last century that the federal government has this sort of power, and they have both used that power for their own respective causes at many different points in the last century. People who believe that the federal government doesn't (or shouldn't) have this sort of power are in the minority and are not a dominant force in any political party.
Again, this is a relatively new development in US Constitutional history; in 1818 or even 1918, the situation was very different; almost all the rulings that expanded the Commerce clause have happened in the last 100 years.