Sen. Rand Paul’s best applause line at Howard University Wednesday probably came when he said this: “We should not have laws that ruin the lives of young men and women who have committed no violence. That’s why I have introduced a bill to repeal federal mandatory minimum sentences.”
As Mike Riggs noted, “The line revealed a neat overlap between civil libertarians and Howard’s Democrat-leaning African American student body.” But it’s also a sentiment that is increasingly popular on the right.
While some prominent conservative governors have spoken out on the issue in the past (citing concerns about prison overcrowding, cost reduction, and the problem of prisons turning petty offenders into serious offenders), Paul may be the first Republican federal official of his magnitude to champion this issue.
Vikrant Reddy, a policy analyst for Right on Crime, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, was especially impressed by Paul’s line about mandatory sentencing.
Reddy and I recently discussed all the reasons why Paul was substantively right on this issue (listen to our full conversation here.) But Reddy did an especially terrific job of selling me on why this is a smart and proper political cause for conservatives to embrace:
“I think that the big project among conservatives right now is to find new constituencies — to find new voters — but to not do it by changing principles. Instead, you really kind of need to focus on first principles and get back in touch with what conservatism is all about.
… conservatism is all about limited government. It’s about civil liberties. It’s about keeping costs low. It’s about compassion. And those are all things that are really kind of implicated in this massive incarceration state we’ve been building for the last twenty, or so, years.” (Emphasis mine.)
Listen to our full conversation here.