The Republican field of candidates is scary on many issues. On education, there is no debate because they all agree with privatization of public education and getting rid of unions.
For some reason, the media has taken to calling Marco Rubio a “moderate.” He is supposedly the “establishment” candidate. If this is true, it shows how extremist the Republican establishment is.
This article in the Daily Beast describes Rubio’s views. The author John Favreau believes it will be easy to defeat Rubio because he is so extremist. I hope he is right.
Because Trump and Cruz have moved the goalposts on what it means to be bat-shit crazy in a primary, the press will confuse Rubio’s moderate temperament with moderate policies, of which he has none. Rubio was once described as the “crown prince” of the Tea Party. He has a 100 percent rating from the NRA. He’ll appoint justices who will overturn the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision. He opposes abortion with no exception for rape or incest. He opposes stem cell research and doesn’t believe in climate change. He’d send ground troops to Syria and trillions in tax cuts to the rich.
Does anyone detect a difference between Rubio and Cruz?
Rubio’s ascent must be depressing for Jeb! Bush, because Jeb! was Rubio’s mentor.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“For some reason, the media has taken to calling Marco Rubio a ‘moderate.’ He is supposedly the ‘establishment” candidate.’ ”
The reason is that the media are corporate, and want a corporate candidate, such as any Republican, or Hillary Clinton, to continue the destructive, oligarchic, imperialist neoliberal and neoconservative policies which have served Wall Street and corporations so well since 1975, to the severe detriment of everyone else as well as to our only livable planet.
Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein offer sane alternatives to these sociopathic policies.
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Rubio’s best quality is his Hispanic surname which may fool some people to vote for him. He is dull and lifeless like Jeb Bush, his mentor. He takes all his cues from the Tea Party, the regressive force in the Republican party, which has shut down the government costing us billions and impeded meaningful legislation for almost eight years. A vote for Rubio will send us back to the dark ages. My own personal instinct tells me he would be way out of his depth as president.
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The GOP has gone off the rails and become an extreme far right wing party. The GOP candidates who are supposedly moderate, sane or adult are just as extreme as Trump or Cruz. I’m voting for Bernie but if he should lose the primary, I will gladly vote for Hillary who is far less evil and crazy than all the hacks on the GOP side. She will not stack the supreme court with far right wing ideologues, she will not try to repeal the ACA, she won’t try to destroy abortion rights, she’s not a creationist and she does not think that climate change is a hoax. She is socially liberal.
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Then, there’s Rubio’s credit card issues, his brother-in-law’s real estate license, his wife’s connection to a car dealer’s “charity”….
Easy for Bernie to beat.
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Did anyone catch Chris Christie bragging during the debate about how he took on and defeated the teachers’ unions in New Jersey? He proudly extolled ending teacher tenure as one of his greatest accomplishments.
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oh, yes… Dee… he has been doing that for 8 years and it was quite personal in my extended family when he was going after the teacher unions…. He was also out in CA raising funds for Carly 8 years ago… he has been a perpetual fund raiser like Sarah Palin. He has filled up his wife’s bank account and feathered his own nest . None of those Bridge Gate inquiries seemed to get close enough to bring him down. The only one who approached be a decent moderate was Lindsey Graham and he dropped out — he has said some import an things about the party … wish more people would speak up like that.
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One could make the same observations about both Govs Kasich & Bush, both of whom seem to be getting bumped up in NH (because of their more even-tempered demeanor, perhaps mistaken for moderate positions?)– & both of whom are single-handedly destroying public ed in their respective states via Tea-Party-like talking points.
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There are no moderates in the GOP primaries
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Kasich masks his peevish and childish behavior, his corporate welfare ideology, which translates into political donations and, his love of tax cuts for the rich, which impoverishes local governments.
He can not work across the aisle because at his core, he is vindictive. The former Ohio Republican Party Chair witnessed it first hand.
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Any of these blog entries would accommodate this item but I wanted to put it on a recent one. On a listserv for foreign language teachers a teacher requested ideas to help her get back into the classroom after a severe illness.
One of our members wrote this:
May I also comment — show me another profession where people go back to work while they’re still on oxygen, and write to help lists to ask how to deal when the oxygen line is too short! Only teachers…
Pat Barrett
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