I hate cigarettes and applaud efforts to keep them out of my face and encouraging smokers to quit, but there is a line where government starts to impinge in individual rights, de facto outlawing, or making overly expensive, a habit millions enjoy and which is not illegal.
If you are a true libertarian, you should feel uncomfortable with onerous smoking regulations and taxes, even if you don’t smoke yourself. Next time it could be your ox getting gored and all that:
On tobacco, McCain proposed sweeping anti-smoking legislation in the late 1990s that would have raised taxes on cigarettes, restricted the industry’s ability to advertise, and given the Food & Drug Administration broad new authority over tobacco companies. He estimated that it would cost the industry more than half a billion dollars over 25 years. The tobacco industry fought it to a standstill in the Senate.
However, it seems to fit into a larger picture of McCain taking on corporate interests, even if it might hurt him politically and financially:
That long history of sparring with industry may be one reason why Romney bested McCain in corporate fundraising in 2007. According to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, both men depended heavily on business donors: They made up 84% of Romney’s 2007 support and 78% of McCain’s, but Romney heavily outpaced McCain in total dollars from business, raking in more than $35 million, compared to McCain’s haul just shy of $21 million.
Romney also raised more money than McCain in nearly every business sector, including agribusiness, communications and electronics, construction, finance, health, and transportation, according to the same analysis. The only two sectors in which McCain had an edge were defense, where his vocal support of the Iraq war surge has surely had an impact—and lawyers and lobbyists, from which group McCain’s long years in Washington have given him a deep Rolodex of names. Corporate donors are famously pragmatic, and their financial backing of Romney may have been a reflection of the state of play of the campaign in 2007—when McCain had been all but given up for political dead, and Romney appeared to have a strong chance at the GOP nomination. Now that equation seems to have flipped, and corporate financial support may flip too.
All the Ron Paul retards should applaud stands like these, breaking from Republican orthodoxy and taking on the big Corporation, acting all Corporation-y.