Republicans Are Opposing School Choice

Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t only left-wing authoritarians who oppose parents’ right to decide how to educate their children. Many times, politicians who extol school choice with a camera in front of them suddenly lose the passion when it is time to take action.

These squishy Republican type tend to slip under the radar because conservatives clash with progressives who think children belonged to the state, not their parents. These battles distract from the fact that many opponents of school choice govern in the same states as rank-and-file Americans who believe parents should be able to make decisions regarding their children’s education.

Last week, Georgia’s state House killed a bill that would have significantly expanded school choice because of actions taken by an organization that advocates for school choice. The fact that they refused to give more parents the option of choosing how to educate their children demonstrates just how serious they are about the matter.

The Washington Examiner reported:

David Ralston (House Speaker) stated that the bill which would have created a $6,000-per student voucher program was not being considered for the current legislative sessions. It had been dropped by Republican lawmakers because of a campaign to send out mailers by the American Federation for Children. They are a pro school choice group.

Interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ralston explained that he was “livid” about the campaign, which he called “the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my career and one of the most deceitful.”

He added: “This is these are people we have tried to help over the years, and they turned to attack us very viciously.”

The House Speaker and some of his colleagues became upset after the American Federation for Children mailed a series of flyers to potential voters urging them to contact their representatives and push them to “stand up” to “the radical left” by voting for the measure. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:

Above a photo of the state legislator, Abrams was featured in each mailer.

“The radical left want to cancel your right to choose your child’s school,” it read, asking recipients to tell their representative to “stand up to them.”

The other side of the flier featured the phone number of the Republican legislator, along with a plea not to let them “give in to the radical left.”

To drum support for the legislation, the group held a demonstration in front the State Capitol Building.

Kaleb MacMichen told the story as a Ralston spokesperson The Examiner that Republicans chose to pull the bill “after the American Federation for Children sent mailers attacking more than a dozen members of the Majority Caucus — including members of leadership” and said it would quadruple their campaign budget if the measure passed. The spokesman claimed this constituted a “quid pro quo” scenario.

McMichen said it was “unfortunate that AFC’s reckless behavior ended consideration of this measure and turned members who were supporting or might have supported the bill against the measure.”

Corey DeAngelis, director of research for the American Federation for Children, castigated Ralston for withdrawing the bill, calling it “a weak excuse to side with the [education] monopoly.”

In a conversation with The Examiner, DeAngelis suggested that Ralston should put the measure up for a vote “so parents can know where their representatives stand” and that by removing the bill, Ralston was “protecting fake Republicans.”

DeAngelis touched on the likely future. RealitätIssue in this story. “If you are really for school choice, you are not going to kill a bill over a bunch of mailers,” he said.

Herein lies the problem.

It is clear that the issue isn’t AFC sending out a bunch of mailers. The issue is that these GOP officials aren’t as keen on school choice as they would have us believe. Ralston appears to have sought out the right excuse to stop efforts to fund systems instead of students and used mailers as a justification. To put it simply, these people don’t want parents deciding where they send their kids to school.

It is absurd to think that Republican legislators would stop parents from choosing where their kids are educated. This shows that they were not serious about this issue. The government shouldn’t be able to decide how parents educate their children.

This squishy Republican is even more disgusting than Democrats against school choice. Leftists will be open about their belief that children should belong to the government and not to parents. GOP legislators like to make it seem that they are in favor of school choice, so we can keep them in power. But given the opportunity, they will make any excuse possible to ensure that parents are not in charge of their children’s education. This is the type of people voters need to be wary. They are in essence no different from the Democrats that they say they oppose.