Senator Kay Bailey BO-ring!
I hope Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson does better with her campaing speeches than this snoozefest of an editorial in The Washington Times.
I get what she’s trying to say: Republicans have forgotten to make their policies, which at their core are conservative policies, relevant to ordinary Americans and here are a couple ways we can do that. However, she smothers that very simple point in a stultifying gravy of focused-grouped catch phrases.
Let me give you an example.
Let us start with education, which always has been and always will be a reliable predictor of opportunity. There are exceptions, but on the whole, a person can expect greater professional and financial success if he or she has an education. There are first- and even second-generation American families, many of them ethnic minorities, who work tirelessly in family-run businesses or other jobs to make sure that, when the time comes, they can afford to put their children through college. There are parents working two jobs to provide for their families so their children wont have the same challenges and struggles they faced. But if they are living in areas with crime-ridden, poorly performing schools, the odds will be stacked against those children, despite their parents efforts.
We are not meeting these families needs. And it isn’t fair that, for all their hard work, their children will still be disadvantaged. We must restore local autonomy to our nations public schools and focus on both the foundational basics, such as English grammar and math, while also providing our students the technological edge that is critical in the 21st century
Also, ponies! Sorry, but isn’t that really what she’s saying here?
As a side note, let me say that whoever edited this piece should be getting a reprimand today for apparently forgetting how to use apostrophes. Maybe they were in a hurry or perhaps there is some sort of strange TWT policy to save ink by cutting down on the total number of punctuation marks, I can’t say.
Back to the point. What, exactly, is the point Hutchison is trying to make, besides “Education, Hooray!” What conservative policy is she suggesting? On one hand, she recommends more local control of school systems, but on the on the other, she hints at more government “focus” and a heaping helping of “providing”. Which is it – less big government or more? She’s not clear.
The rest of the editorial is worse. She talks about high taxes and increasingly meddlesome government, but she doesn’t actually offer a suggestion for what to do about either. That baffles me a bit because, I have a vague recollection about a perfect example of high-cost, high-intrusion legislation heading right at her. Iinstead of meandering half-heartedly through a generic “Yay, Conservatives” editorial, she could have used the Times’ valuable space to propose at least a thumbnail of a couple fixes to what she sees wrong with our health care system. Even if her ideas weren’t terribly original, they would have been useful, if for no other reason than to serve as a marker by which we could judge her worthiness to command our attention.
If this is an example of the sort of muddy, bog-standard stuff that’s going to come out of her campaign for Governor, then Rick Perry can breathe a little sigh of relief. She’s going to either confuse the voters or bore them to tears long before November.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Dreher: America’s Bad Because of Too Much Freedom
- David Brooks in Fantasyland
- Another Sweet Takedown of John McCain
Category: Conservatism
Poor Kay is violating the basic rule by challenging a secure incumbent of her own party and in the process jeopardizing both a TX Senate seat and the governor's position since the primary battle will sling all the mud that any Democrat could desire between the two Republicans.
In that bland piece she is trying to sound "conservative" with appeals to local control, but she throws in a heavy dose of populist pap about opportunity, equality, leveling and inevitably government hand-outs.
She should be sitting in a secure seat in Washington and let Perry deal with Kinky Friedman, who looks better the more this goes on!
Kay Bailey Hutchison has announced her goals for education, but she does not address how she would pay for these changes. She touts electronic textbooks as a cost-saving measure, but she ignores one crucial area of cost-savings for education. In terms of getting the most for our money, the method of delivery—books or electronic formats—is not as important as the actual content. If we did not have a State Board of Education that forces publishers to make special versions of textbooks for Texas students, the state could benefit from economy of scale by using the same books that most other states use. At one time, because Texas was such a large market, our book choices dictated textbooks for the nation. This is no longer true. Now, due to advances in desktop publishing, Texas can demand its own dumbed-down version of books, but we pay a steep price. These revisions cost more money and, more importantly, they rob our young people of the full, up-to-date education they need for higher education and the world of work. We need to bring true accountability to the system and give our students a 21st-education, which is why I'm running for Texas State Board of Education in District 5.
-Rebecca Bell-Metereau