U S  to end lenient policy that let legal pot flourish | NewAge News ​
Channel: NewAge News
Date: 2018-01-04

Cory Gardner just showed how Senate Republicans could check Trump if they wanted to
this morning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced changes to Obama-era marijuana policy guidelines that had in effect allowed several states to move forward with pot legalization even though it remains illegal under federal law. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Colorado, one of the legalizing states that has benefited from Obama’s approach, immediately objected.

I’m not sure if Gardner’s gambit here will work or not — that will depend on what level of support he gets from other senators — but it certainly might work.
And in doing so, it debunks the often-heard theory that senators like John McCain, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, and Susan Collins, who have expressed serious doubt about Donald Trump, can’t be blamed for consistently voting with him on nominees and legislation. It’s true that the reason Trump has secured near-unanimous GOP support for all his nominees is that he has hewed closely to conservative orthodoxy. But US senators have never been bound by that kind of policy literalism
That’s standard-issue behavior for a US senator. And by the same token, if Flake or Corker or anyone else wants to shift Trump’s behavior on any topic, this is the way to do it.
Republicans could, if they wanted to, demand that Trump stop mixing his business interests with politics. Or stop employing his unqualified son-in-law as a top White House aide. Or stop lying relentlessly about election fraud. Or whatever of a dozen other things he does that aren’t related to the main elements of conservative ideology. But they keep choosing on a daily basis not to do so, engaging in a form of “ideological collusion” that threatens the stability of American institutions.