John Taylor, Alcohol Reform, and Republican Competitiveness in Cities

If all that changes about the alcohol reform plan in committee is that the phase-in period gets elongated, that won’t be the worst thing in the world. But why does John Taylor want to do this?

The combination of Taylor’s district and his party’s free market politics ought to make Taylor the very most enthusiastic supporter of pro-consumer alcohol reforms. It’s an excellent deal for the big metros and their suburbs, aka Taylor’s district.

People sometimes complain about how uncompetitive the Republican Party is in the major urban areas, and my take on their problem is that they never have anything nice to offer urban voters. It’s all fiscal scolding and kicking the poors.

Here you have a great idea that’s super popular even with Democrats, which is really a perfect application of Republican ideas about how to make people’s lives better. And it’s an idea where everybody already agrees that the regulations are stupid and arbitrary. If Republicans pass this and people like it, which they will, they’ll be able to turn around and say “Remember how we brought free market principles to bear on the alcohol retail market and you liked that? Now we want to apply those same ideas to _____ and we think you’ll like that too.”

The partisan Democrat in me doesn’t want the Republican Party to start offering nice things to voters and improve their political brand, but wearing my policy reformer hat, I do think that cities would benefit from more political party competition, and that city politics would benefit from a competitive political movement applying rule-based pro-market ideas to city level policy issues.