It was nearly a given that Sen. Rand Paul would say that
it was cigarette taxes that killed Eric Garner, not being suffocated to death by New York police, because that is what Sen. Rand Paul does. That is his schtick.
Watching other conservatives take up that mantle is a bit awkward, though. Fox News seems to have pinned themselves to Paul as their own personal horse in the next presidential race—again, why I couldn't tell you, but sometimes you have to go with the one that will lick your face—so I suppose they now feel they have stake in whatever Rand Paul does.
During the December 4 edition of Fox News' Hannity, host Sean Hannity invited Senator Paul to discuss his comments that taxes played a role in the death of Eric Garner. Hannity agreed with Paul, arguing that there "are cops whose full-time jobs" are to check stop black market cigarette sales and that this played a role in Garner's death. [...]
During the December 4 edition of Fox News' The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld argued that taxes on cigarettes were to blame for Garner's death. Gutfeld claimed that "unnecessary laws" like "crazy taxes" on cigarettes, "have consequences, and in this case that consequence was death."
Is this going to be a thing, or was it just the momentary reflex of needing to defend Their Guy? I hope the latter, but it does fit with the usual reductive reasoning that is so common in thinky-brainy conservatism. By the same token you could say that a man killed by police after running a red light proves that we shouldn't have traffic lights at all—otherwise this
never would have happened—or that a child killed in a public park for playing with a toy gun proves we shouldn't have public parks, because if the damn kid lives in a house without his own personal backyard then maybe he shouldn't be playing outside at all, hmm? You can use it to justify anything your ideology might justify, which is how you know that it is a stupid, embarrassing argument to begin with.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) makes a similar case when he argues that the police didn't know Eric Garner had asthma so being more vulnerable to a police chokehold was his own damn fault. Or perhaps this proves that Obamacare is a waste of money, because if we just let the asthmatics die childhood deaths we wouldn't have to worry about accommodating them anymore. Or perhaps excessive police force on a public sidewalk is really the fault of the American government providing sidewalks, which are much harder and less forgiving than the mud-and-manure paths that proceeded them. Or perhaps the death is the result of campaign finance reform, which has required our nation's politicians to pander to voters with ridiculous tough on cigarette taxes policies rather than ignoring the rumpled masses to cater to the five or ten Americans that paid them the most cash and being done with it.
The problem with New York police officers killing a man over selling cigarettes on the street is ... that we have cigarette taxes? See now, maybe our central problem is that we keep electing legislators that say these self-serving, self-promoting things rather than giving a damn about what the actual problems in front of them seem to be. Maybe Eric Garner was killed by a generation of politicians who have never given a shit about Eric Garner, and aren't about to now.