QOTD: an unnamed GOP operative
by digby
You have to love this:
"We are about to hold more House seats than we ever have. We will take the Senate," said the GOP official, who asked not to be named to preserve his business options. "The future is bright for us. Shit, we may even take on the teachers unions with Obama campaign operatives-turned-lobbyists."
See? These Republicans feel good. And why wouldn't they? They have tons of money and don't have to govern in order to get their agenda passed --- with the help of former Obama operatives. That's just sweet.
Read the rest of the story. It's enough to make you scream.
I'd just like to point out to the Obama campaign lobbyist in question Robert Gibbs, in case he and the rest of these idiot so-called liberals don't know it: the reason teachers have tenure is so that throwback neanderthals can't fire them for teaching reality instead of superstitious nonsense. The idea that the Republicans are worried about "bad teachers" when they encourage the practice of kids being taught at home by parents who aren't qualified to teach someone how to get up in the morning is a joke. They want to make sure that children are indoctrinated in their worldview.
Take this example of fine conservative education --- one of the most popular homeschooling curriculums in the country for decades:
The worst thing about brainwashing is that you can't see it for what it is. You never think you're in a cult when you're in a cult. Until the day you can't deny the reality of what you've seen, what you lived. Until the day you speak out loud what your mind has known for a while, "I grew up in a cult."
There's barely a memory from the first twenty years of my life that isn't run through by the thread of the cult.
We joined the Advanced Training Institute when I was in first grade. Bill Gothard's materials were the foundation of my homeschooling curriculum for the next twelve years. The Institute's books began to fill our shelves; their routine became part of our daily life.
As a child and then a teen, ATI/IBLP formed most of my peer group. In the summer we went to the camps and the conferences. I attended the seminars as a child, then as a teacher. After I graduated from high school, I spent the next two years living and volunteering at the one of the Training Centers.
My wife was exposed to the cult when she was growing up too, though not as deeply as I was. When we began our awkward courtship, we followed many of the rules and procedures prescribed by the cult. And in the years since then, I've found myself in the long, slow process of rooting out the remaining traces of the cult from my heart, reconstructing a faith brick by brick.
When I tell my story, people say "You should hate God by now. It's a miracle you're a Christian at all.
They're right. It's a miracle.
The man who ran that cult was very well connected with right wing politicians. He has followers in congress as we speak. He's recently been exposed as a sexual predator (shocking, I know) but up until now he was widely considered to be a respectable "educator" in right wing circles.
So before any liberals get on the education "reform" bandwagon they really need to consider what these conservatives consider bad teaching. It likely isn't what they think it is.
Robert Gibbs isn't a liberal so it's not surprising that he would join the anti-union movement. What remains depressing is the fact that Barack Obama would have ever considered such a person for his inner circle in the first place.
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