John Merrow and I cling to a belief that once upon a time there was a Republican party that was reasonable and genuinely concerned about the future of the nation. We think of people like Eisenhower and McCain.
But Merrow identifies a day when he says the GOP as we once knew it actually died: The day that Betsy DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education. Actually, it was two days. The first was when the Senate Committee approved her nomination, with the assent of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, despite her inability to answer the most basic questions about education law or practice. The second was when the Senate confirmed her.
The Republican Party fell in line behind the most unqualified person in the nation because Trump wanted her. That was reason enough, which mattered more than the fact that she had spent her entire life attacking public schools. Perhaps no less important was that most of the senators who voted to approve her, as Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out at the time, had received large campaign contributions from her. No principle was involved. Just votes for cash.
All the Senators on the committee fell into line and gave Trump the completely unqualified nominee he proposed.
Only one Republican vote on the Senate committee would have doomed DeVos’s nomination. Neither Susan Collins nor Lisa Murkowski was willing to vote no and kill the DeVos nomination. They voted yes in committee, then “No” on the Senate floor, when their votes could not stop her. Vice President Pence, as choreographed, broken the tie to approve this unqualified person.
Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Lamar Alexander were profiles in cowardice. They voted to approve clueless, incompetent Betsy DeVos, who was unleashed to wreak havoc on the nation’s public schools.
Merrow adds:
Fun fact: Trump’s first choice for Secretary of Education was the now-infamous Jerry Falwell, Jr, who told CBS he turned down the job because Trump wanted at least a 4-year commitment that Falwell said he couldn’t make because Liberty University needed him.
Trump also interviewed Michelle Rhee and Eva Moskowitz. Any of them would have demonstrated his hostility to public schools and his determination to undermine them. Too bad Falwell said no. His exposure at this moment would have added to the circus atmosphere of the campaign.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
DeVos Day was not so much the day the GOP died as the day the zombie rose from the grave to begin eating children’s brains.
DeNight of DeLiving Dead
DeVos is DeNight
Of DeLiving Dead
DeVos is Delight
Of DeTweeting Head
LOL. Perfect, SomeDAM! Another masterpiece!
McCain ran for president in 2008, but nobody wanted him; Obama won. 😐
I would have voted McCain if Sarah Palin hadn’t hopped onto the crazy train. She cost McCain the Presidency.
Palin’ with Palin? You betcha
I wish the good ol days were here
With Sarah Palin, drinking beer
I really fear those days are gone
The Palin days, for which I long
You’re probably right. 😁
Considering this is a Democratic Party board, I can’t imagine anyone here voting McCain over Obama. 🤔
Eddie…Obama was not kind to public education ramping up NCLB into RTtT by letting Arne Duncan bribe states for their education tax dollars. I’m sure McCain would have just continued with NCLB and RTtT, too. The only reason that we still have ACA is because McCain gave his dissenting vote. McCain was a logical and thoughtful man (a patriot) who happened to also be fiscally conservative….nothing wrong with that if that is what’s needed at the time and it doesn’t seek to stomp out the social safety nets for “we the people”.
After what Obama did to public education in his first term, I would have voted for John McCain if he had run in 2012 and w/o Sarah Palin.
In would have voted for Palin without McCain.
How well I remember Sarah Palin giving a speech, very shortly after she was chosen as McCain’s running mate, in which she laughed and sneered, outraged, that the government had spent some x amount of dollars studying fruit flies! “Fruit flies!”she exclaimed, as though this were the most insane thing one could imagine.
Of course, this profoundly ignorant person had no idea that much of our understanding of genetics and of genetic disease comes from the study of D. melanogaster. I laughed and laughed that she didn’t know the science she might have learned from a third grader’s Scholastic Weekly Reader. Such profound ignorance. But then, horrified, I saw John McCain pick up the same talking point the week following, and I thought: well, here we are. We are on the cusp of the most significant change in the history of life on Earth, when we eliminated genetic disease and then people start taking evolution into their own hands and it becomes, for the first time, TELEOLOGICAL. The consequences of the latter will be profound beyond any current reckoning. It changes the basic rules that have always held.
And this is happening at a time when our politicians, at the highest levels, don’t know even the most basic science.
All this was prelude to Donald Trump, the guy who thought we could send astronauts to the sun, that windmills cause cancer, that a dementia diagnostic was a test of general intelligence, that exercise needs to be avoided because it uses up energy, and that injecting disinfectant might be a great way to treat Covid19.
But guess who does understand this? Last year I read a speech by Putin in which he talked at length, intelligently, about genetic engineering.
So, this raises a question: Why do Americans elect to high office such ignorant people? the Sarah Palins and Matt Gaetzes and Donald Trumps among us? And that raises another question: can we survive this tendency to elect the profoundly ignorant?
Think of this. OUR PRESIDENT AND COMMANDER IN CHIEF is a man who thinks that we could nuke hurricanes, that climate change is just weather, that we could send astronauts to the sun, that windmills and low-energy light bulbs cause cancer, that stealth planes are actually invisible, that a dementia diagnostic is a test of general intelligence, that we need to return to using asbestos in our buildings, that HIV and HPV are the same thing, that the primary cause of California wildfires is bad forest management, that coal and natural gas are “clean energy,” that “the ice caps” are “at a record level,” that global warming is a hoax invented to reduce U.S. competitiveness with China, that we are better off without federal regulation of pollutants of air and water, that exercise needs to be avoided because it uses up energy, and that injecting disinfectant might be a great way to treat Covid19.
But remember that “nobody knows technology like Donald Trump,” and that he is on top of “the cyber.”
And what, Eddie, does THAT say about the Republican base? Pretty appalling. Of course, McCain did choose as his running mate someone almost as ignorant as Trump is.
Lisa M. Thanks, I had no idea. 😐
Bob, I don’t know about any party’s voting base. I know Palin hadn’t completed her Governorship. I know Obama hadn’t completed his Senateship. 😐
I believe the republicans decided at the outset of the Obama administration to oppose any success that could be claimed by the Democrats. Thus they had to demonize a republican idea (theACA), along with any other moderate idea. In four years, this party reaction had pushed the party so far to the right that they had to pair a traditional party man with a symbol of the tea party. The result was a poor showing and a second four year stall by the party. This marched the Republican Party so far to the right that it could not decide among the plethora of candidates who saw the opportunity awaiting the next president. So they chose trump, who has made the party into a populist party that does nothing for its voters, but is blessed with a combination of brand loyalty (about half of trump votes) and personal attraction (people who like trumps confrontation and sneering style). Given the geographical imbalance of the country in favor of this odd combination, it will take an all-out assault to command the electoral votes. The tragedy of all of this is that neither party has any motivation to serve its opposition minority. This undermines the necessary formula for true freedom: majority rule with respect for minority interests.
Roy My mother used to say I had cut off my nose to spite my face . . . when I wouldn’t do something that my brother suggested, even when it was right, merely because he might get the credit for it. CBK
Yeah, really strange how they went after what was, after all, Romneycare. Romney invented this approach when he was governor of Massachusetts, and Obama simply adopted the Romney plan, which was all about maintaining private insurance while extending coverage. It was the pro-industry alternative to Medicare for All OF THE KIND THAT EVERY OTHER DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY IN THE WORLD HAS.
McCain was venal (note how he treated Obama with derision throughout his term and he was known to treat people with condescension regularly while on the Hill), privileged Navy legacy, abandoned his wife when he found a young rich one, Keating Five corrupt, weak willed (Steve Schmidt–your so-called Lincoln Project darling–foisted Palin on him to poison whatever might have been left of the Republican Party), and a bully. In my short teaching career of mostly privileged children, I could always tell the good and bad parents by getting to know their children. McCain’s daughter tells me all I need to know about what kind of person he really was. But that’s just me.
Roy, can you elaborate on what you mean here: “neither party has any motivation to serve its opposition minority.”
I define minority as any group that does not support a majority opinion. For example, let us use education. I think public education, problematic as it can be, is a good thing overall, and that it deserves a robust funding from a federal government that oversees a nation that has always been very mobile. This is apparently a minority opinion, for no political leader has advocated using tax dollars from very wealthy areas to help fund programs for poorer areas since we solved the Appalachian poverty problem (sarcasm alert) under the Great Society. Under compromise politics, federal laws have provided some money, however, even though the majority of voters seem to be willing to let unfortunate communities suffer like Flint Michigan, saddled by an unfunded IDEA.
You may not feel funding help for needy children will work in the long run, but you vote for it anyway because you could be wrong. This is what majority rule looks like with respect for minority opinion. We do not have this. We have an increasing number of political leaders who view themselves as never wrong. Under The second Bush, republicans governed as though they had a landslide majority, even though they had barely won in the electoral college. They paled by comparison to the trump administration, which, due to its senate majority, has governed without regard for any differing opinion.
Clear as mud, Bethree?
Yes, thanks Roy. failure to represent “opposite minority” within a party is a good lens on what ails both parties and leads directly to gridlock. My longtime local rep (state, then Congress) was Republican, but after a number of years I began voting for him regularly. He had a couple of more out-there (rw) positions that had kept me away. But gradually I began noticing he championed a number of positions that directly supported the needs of his constituency even though the demographics were growing more liberal by the year. Including key policies not supported by other Reps that were important to my pocketbook and general outlook. I think this is not exactly what you’re talking about, but if each lawmaker represented the plurality of his/her constituency, it would lead to that party acknowledging everyone under the umbrella, and from there to bipartisan legislation. So many of the Republican Senators especially seem to be vying for position of Most Rabid-Tongued Ideologue.
I don’t mind that secretary DeVos bashes all public schools- I knew she was ideologically opposed to the existence of our schools.
I do think it’s LOUSY how she depicts all public school STUDENTS as low performing and violent. She’s a hack. She’ll happily denigrate and demean 50 million public school students in order to reach her ideological goals. It’s disgusting behavior and she should be ashamed.
Jon Tell us what you REALLY think. But to this:
“No principle was involved. Just votes for cash.” Betsy confirmed this and her capitalist-only mentality (enter: shamelessness) when she said that she thought she deserved it. I cannot remember her exact words before the committee, but it was clear she thought it was okay because she had earned it.
Also, that finagling at the edges of the voting numbers in the Senate, at least, has Mitch McConnell’s fingerprints all over it. CBK
At the Trump National Convention (the Republican Party might as well change its name to Trump’s Toadies), a HUGE PUSH was made for school “choice” for all parents. There were many spots throughout the convention devoted to this. Trump promised to “make it available” to all parents in his second term and positioned it as “the civil rights issue of our time.” During Trump’s Acceptance Speech, Ditzy DeVoid was in the audience, maskless, among the hundreds of other maskless attendees, beaming. It was clear that they are going to make charter schools and vouchers big priorities if given a second term.
I would suggest that accepting the Reagan postulate that government was by definition bad placed the GOP on a slippery slope. Instead of expecting government to measure up , indeed wanting it to fail, the GOP has created a group of voters who think their own government is evil, but it’s flag is sacrosanct.
Spot on!. But the party was there even before Reagan .
What do you mean exactly, Joel? I was only paying attention to presidential politics at that age, & did not pick up that vibe from Reagan’s predecessor Nixon.
I agree Joel. This summer I read biographies of John Hay (who was TR’s Sec of State, Republican), William Taft (Republican) and Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) and the one nemesis all had in common–probably contributing to both Hays’ and Wilson’s respective demises–was Republican Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge. What a slimy piece of work he was. After reading these histories, I realize he is likely the inspiration to McConnell.
What gets me is that these same people who hate the government are the 1st in line for SS and Medicare when they turn 65. I sometimes think these people really believe that the $$$$ grows on trees. They only hate the government when they have to pay their taxes.
These wealthy individuals believe in corporate welfare, but harsh capitalism for everyone else. Every times companies open, they seek tax abatements and subsidies. It is the taxpayers that pay the bill. When drug companies research a new drug, they often get huge subsidies from the fed (taxpayers). When the drug comes out, the people pay again, even if insurance companies pay some of the bill because people must pay the insurance companies as well.
“Every time companies open, they seek tax abatements and subsidies.” Companies will always try for anything that boosts their bottom line, that’s their job. And it’s govt’s job to restrain raw capitalism, regulate it, make it work for the people as a whole. It’s not an easy job, trying to strike a balance between an environment that encourages entrepreneurship, innovation, healthy competition, while at the same time ensuring good working conditions for labor, and distribution of profit throughout society while leaving companies w/enough profit to keep growing. (Regardless of what “these wealthy individuals believe.” Clearly they have way too much power, if their “beliefs” trump what should be legally possible.) But that’s the job. The pharma situation: just another example of how the system is not working. (There was a time when govt did & footed the research). What we citizens have to figure out is how to make govt do its job.
for so many roads, bridges, libraries, schools and parks all come from Santa Claus.
Nailed it, Roy.
Trump looks bad now for his dog whistles, but don’t forget Karl Rove and Bush’s attack on McCain in the 2000 primary in South Carolina, the lies and dog whistles were just as vile.
YES!
The day the GOP died
I thought it died with Lincoln
At hand of John Wilkes Booth
The party has been sinkin’
Since Lincoln left the booth
The Party of Linkin’?
“United we stand
Divided we fall”
The Party’s re-brand
“Is Party of Wall”
I think it’s the party of Linked In. Shallow, all about connections and the bottom line of “how can I profit off you?”
For last line, how about, “& Lincoln told the truth,” or some such?
Educators know that education is an ever evolving process. Good education cannot, unfortunately, be distilled into a formula. Parents and politicians, who have never tried to facilitate the learning of 30-40 children simultaneously, want this to be true, but also at the minimum expense to the taxpayer.
The effort to scapegoat Public Education, as well as to subject it to the distorted and reductionist metric of constant testing, is actually destroying what made America great. Public Education like any educational process, was built on its inheritance from previous generations of teaching. Our best way forward is to trust educators from K to D, to provide each new evolutionary shift. Most teachers want a better future for their students and work hard to make that happen. That cannot be said for the corporate grifters who seek to destroy a truly “democratic” institution in the name of “reform”.
When our health fails us, we seek the best medical attention we can afford. In the twenty first century we may smile at the consumption of elixirs and potions that were consumed just in the last century, rather than trusting a doctor. Why should any of us trust corporate Snake Oil salesmen rather than those with years of experience and the highest level of training? We need to trust in our learned,creative abilities to build upon, and better what was done before, in what is still another great American experiment.
“Parents and politicians, who have never tried to facilitate the learning of 30-40 children simultaneously, want this to be true, but also at the minimum expense to the taxpayer.” How do you facilitate the simultaneous learning of 30-40 kids? Parents in wealthy areas make sure their kids’ classes are capped at 25, or at least that aides are in there for larger classes. Parents in poor areas pull their kids out of big classes, into charters, regardless of quality, figuring some adult attention is better than none. As for “at minimum expense to the taxpayer,” check out last yr’s PDK poll where a large majority of parents said the #1 problem w/pubschs was underfunded & wanted to be taxed more to correct that.
The problem is the politicians! As shown by polls on this as well as other QOL issues like gun-control & healthcare, politicians do not support the policies that their constituents want. I really think the only way to tackle that is pushing for campaign-funding reform, lobbying restrictions, work-around for Citizens-United decision.
Trump also interviewed Michelle Rhee and Eva Moskowitz, but they did not have as much money as Besty the Brutal Beast DeVos. How much did the Beast and/or members of ALEC donate to Trump since Betsy is a member of ALEC?
It wasn’t that Michelle and Eva didn’t have as much $$$$. It was all about keeping it in the Scamway family…Erik Prince.
If the (cough, cough) Grand (cough) Old (hack) Party died with DeVos nomination, was the final nail in the coffin of the American democratic republic hammered in today?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/intel-chief-ends-election-security-briefings-congress-leak_n_5f4adff6c5b64f17e13e9766
My biggest fear for the upcoming debates is that Joe Biden will be Mr. Nice Guy and not call Trump out on his most egregious actions, such as demanding in meetings that border patrol officers SHOOT UNARMED ASYLUM SEEKERS. Trump is going to try to run on his opponent’s imagined lack of fitness for the job. If he does this and Biden doesn’t, there will be a problem. Trump has provided SO MUCH MATERIAL demonstrating that he is an extremist and a lunatic. Biden needs to use it and quote Trump back to himself, again and again and again, at Trump’s most insane.
About fruit flies (as referenced above): they are useful in the school, as well.
One day, we had so many kids staying for afterschool detention that the asst. principal assigned 2 of us. I decided that we were going to really make these middle school kids never want to have to serve detention again, so I found an old science encyclopedia (you know, one of those w/the really small print * & the rambling, boring descriptions
& scientific terminology. Kids were supposed to bring their homework–but most did not (they would ask to go to their lockers & get it, wasting time diddling around in the halls or bathrooms–of course, they thought that their doddering, old teachers would forget about them…). Therefore, since they weren’t allowed to do so & had no work to do, I read–in my very nasal & annoying voice, the section about fruit flies (& some other boring stuff). My detention partner was a substitute who had been–get this!–an officer in the Army, so every so often he’d yell out, “Attention!” to make the kids sit up straight (as we’d required) & to not allow anyone to fall asleep on their desks.
When the hour was up, kids left, grumbling, “I’m never doing detention again!” This stuck–for a couple of weeks, maybe…it was hilarious…
& then there were the other times, when kids didn’t bring their work, & I had them work on….test preps! Oh, the groaning & moaning…
LOL. This reminds me of how the owners of shopping malls took to playing Lawrence Welk polka music at their entrances to drive away the gangs of teenagers who would hang out there.