In George W. Bush’s first year in office, prior to the terrorist attacks in September, he had most signaled his moderation through his commitment to a federal role in public education. Whatever its flaws, the No Child Left Behind legislation that he crafted with the help of Senator Edward Kennedy was a departure from conservative orthodoxy. Despite this, the House passed it 384-45 and the Senate passed it 91-8. Democratic opposition was pretty much restricted to a few members of the Congressional Black Caucus, while Republican opposition came mainly from committed ideologues like Jim DeMint (then a congressman), Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Joe Scarborough, Virgil Goode, Richard Pombo, Jesse Helms, and Jon Kyl. The only Democratic senators to vote against it were Russ Feingold and Fritz Hollins (probably not for the same reasons).
Because the legislation was promoted by a Republican White House, the vast majority of Republican congressmembers swallowed their qualms and supported No Child Left Behind. But, now that Obama is looking to reform the bill, I don’t expect the Republicans to be supportive. We don’t think of the Bush administration as moderate, but, on education, they were. Here’s an excerpt from a 2004 Cato Institute article:
As recently as 1996, the Republican party sought to abolish the Department of Education as an inappropriate intrusion into state, local and family affairs. The GOP platform that year was clear: “The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education.”
While the Republican congresses of the mid-1990s are most famous for their efforts to eliminate the department, their goal was not a new one. Conservatives had talked about eliminating the department since its creation by President Carter. President Reagan made a campaign pledge to eliminate it, and renewed his promise in his first State of the Union address in January 1982: “The budget plan I submit to you on Feb. 8 will realize major savings by dismantling the Department of Education.”
Unfortunately, President Reagan was unable to achieve his goal because of solid opposition by the Democratic House. President Bush has done far worse, and with far less excuse. In his State of the Union address last month, the president touted huge federal education-spending increases — the largest under any president since Lyndon B. Johnson — as an accomplishment of his presidency.
They described Bush’s heresy as a “massive political realignment.” It wasn’t. It was just a blip on the radar. The Republican Party followed along because they are lemmings who will follow their leadership wherever it goes. But without a Republican president pushing for a federal commitment to education, the lemmings will fall back to their prior position that any federal role is a socialist plot to get their daughters to date atheistic black folk. Watch.
