Do We Really Need the Federal Government to Stop Us From Playing Online Poker?
By Rich Muny
September 29, 2008, 9:15 pm
The GOP has historically been the party of limited government and personal responsibility. President Ronald Reagan said it best in his frequent citations of Thomas Paine’s famous axiom – “the government governs best that governs least”. Unfortunately, the party has long been moving away from the limited government conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan in favor of big government nanny-statism. In fact, the 2008 Republican Party Platform went so far as to advocate a federal prohibition of online gaming – including even poker – and its backers use reasoning that would be more at home in the Democratic Party Platform.
In a classic “be careful of what you wish for, you just might get it” scenario, a bill prohibiting some online gaming transactions – the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) – passed into law in 2006 after being pushed through the Senate by GOP leadership. This opened up a can of worms for the Republican Party. Many Americans, particularly younger swing voters, developed a negative view of the nanny-state instincts of the “new” GOP. Banks and other financial institutions were equally outraged at being deputized to be the unpaid Internet poker police. Former Republican Congressman (and current pro-Obama turncoat) Jim Leach of Iowa, the sponsor of the legislation, was also its first casualty, losing his reelection bid to Democrat Dave Loebsack that same year.
Poker players responded to UIGEA by forming the Poker Players Alliance, an organization that lobbies for poker rights. This group now has over one million members. Additionally, a number of banks have come out strongly in opposition to many aspects of UIGEA. The American Bankers Association, the Credit Union National Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and Wells Fargo all testified at a Congressional hearing earlier this year against much of this bill, and dozens of other banks have submitted comments of concern to the Federal Reserve and to the Treasury Department.
The drafters of the 2008 GOP platform got the message and kept anti-online gaming language out of the platform. The committee can count votes, and they know they will need every vote they can get this November. Unfortunately, just prior to commencement of the Republican National Convention, anti-poker extremists managed to add an anti-online gaming amendment to the platform. Reaction was swift. Reason magazine ridiculed the party for inserting this piece of big government into their platform, and John McCain received tens of thousands of letters and phone calls in protest of this platform plank. Many more protests are likely to be delivered via the voting booth on November 4th. With tight races across the country, the nation’s poker players could be in a unique position to sway some elections.
One wonders why a small but loud minority of the conservative movement has this knee-jerk reaction against gaming. It seems they see this as a special area that requires big government limitations of our liberties for our own good. Surely this is the type of area where truly principled conservatives would be expected to simply decline to participate in gaming if they did not like the activity, much as we do with smoking and other activities of personal choice. This should especially be the case with online poker, as online poker is a game of skill that people play in their own homes with their own money. It is hard to see how it is anyone else’s business.
George Will, Grover Norquist, Walter Williams, and other leading conservatives have come out in strong opposition to what Will calls “Prohibition II”. It is certainly very difficult to understand how truly principled conservatives could ever see prohibiting this activity as the proper function of the federal government. Perhaps its inclusion into some descriptions of conservatism is an anachronistic holdover from the beliefs of the Temperance Movement of the early 1900s, when too many social conservatives (unfortunately) started seeing value in using the power of the federal government to influence society. It is definitely an idea whose time has passed.
Hopefully opponents of online poker will reconsider their desire to restrict liberty out of unfounded fear. We need less government control over our lives, not more.
By Rich Muny
September 29, 2008, 9:15 pm
The GOP has historically been the party of limited government and personal responsibility. President Ronald Reagan said it best in his frequent citations of Thomas Paine’s famous axiom – “the government governs best that governs least”. Unfortunately, the party has long been moving away from the limited government conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan in favor of big government nanny-statism. In fact, the 2008 Republican Party Platform went so far as to advocate a federal prohibition of online gaming – including even poker – and its backers use reasoning that would be more at home in the Democratic Party Platform.
In a classic “be careful of what you wish for, you just might get it” scenario, a bill prohibiting some online gaming transactions – the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) – passed into law in 2006 after being pushed through the Senate by GOP leadership. This opened up a can of worms for the Republican Party. Many Americans, particularly younger swing voters, developed a negative view of the nanny-state instincts of the “new” GOP. Banks and other financial institutions were equally outraged at being deputized to be the unpaid Internet poker police. Former Republican Congressman (and current pro-Obama turncoat) Jim Leach of Iowa, the sponsor of the legislation, was also its first casualty, losing his reelection bid to Democrat Dave Loebsack that same year.
Poker players responded to UIGEA by forming the Poker Players Alliance, an organization that lobbies for poker rights. This group now has over one million members. Additionally, a number of banks have come out strongly in opposition to many aspects of UIGEA. The American Bankers Association, the Credit Union National Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and Wells Fargo all testified at a Congressional hearing earlier this year against much of this bill, and dozens of other banks have submitted comments of concern to the Federal Reserve and to the Treasury Department.
The drafters of the 2008 GOP platform got the message and kept anti-online gaming language out of the platform. The committee can count votes, and they know they will need every vote they can get this November. Unfortunately, just prior to commencement of the Republican National Convention, anti-poker extremists managed to add an anti-online gaming amendment to the platform. Reaction was swift. Reason magazine ridiculed the party for inserting this piece of big government into their platform, and John McCain received tens of thousands of letters and phone calls in protest of this platform plank. Many more protests are likely to be delivered via the voting booth on November 4th. With tight races across the country, the nation’s poker players could be in a unique position to sway some elections.
One wonders why a small but loud minority of the conservative movement has this knee-jerk reaction against gaming. It seems they see this as a special area that requires big government limitations of our liberties for our own good. Surely this is the type of area where truly principled conservatives would be expected to simply decline to participate in gaming if they did not like the activity, much as we do with smoking and other activities of personal choice. This should especially be the case with online poker, as online poker is a game of skill that people play in their own homes with their own money. It is hard to see how it is anyone else’s business.
George Will, Grover Norquist, Walter Williams, and other leading conservatives have come out in strong opposition to what Will calls “Prohibition II”. It is certainly very difficult to understand how truly principled conservatives could ever see prohibiting this activity as the proper function of the federal government. Perhaps its inclusion into some descriptions of conservatism is an anachronistic holdover from the beliefs of the Temperance Movement of the early 1900s, when too many social conservatives (unfortunately) started seeing value in using the power of the federal government to influence society. It is definitely an idea whose time has passed.
Hopefully opponents of online poker will reconsider their desire to restrict liberty out of unfounded fear. We need less government control over our lives, not more.
