I’m only now getting to Jeffrey Miron’s NRO column on why the tea parties should embrace drug legalization. My views on drug legalization are fairly well known to longtime readers (I’m for the decriminalization of pot, against the legalization of hard drugs), and I really don’t want to start that debate from scratch again, so let me just say I find some of Miron’s familiar points on the merits of the issue stronger than others. But my main objection to his argument is more practical: It’s politically absurd. I can totally understand why someone who cares passionately about drug legalization would love for the Tea Parties to pick up the cause. And I can sympathize with a pro-legalization libertarian’s frustration that the Tea Partiers don’t share the legalizers’ priorities and passions.

But from every tea-party-sympathetic perspective other than the pro-legalization crowd’s, it would be beyond idiotic at this juncture for the tea parties to embrace legalizing coke, heroin, meth, or even pot. The tea parties are having a hard enough time convincing the press and voters that they are a mainstream, commonsense movement dedicated to sound economic policies. Embracing legalization at this time would amount to nothing more than a catastrophic unforced error.

And to be fair, I think the same logic applies to the issues surrounding gay marriage, abortion, Israel, the infield fly rule, the season finale of Lost (I know, I need to vent about that myself), and countless other issues. The American public is acutely concerned about the economy, the size of government, the debt, the deficit, taxes, and so on. The tea party was created in response to those concerns. The last thing this inchoate movement needs is to lose its way with mission creep. Embracing legalization would split the tea partiers themselves, give liberals an easy target, and dilute their effectiveness on precisely the issues that brought the movement into existence.

Please: Don’t take your eyes off the ball.