The NEA Should Support Republicans: The GOP is Better for Education

In Teachers Should Vote Republican I wrote that "Teachers need to wake up and vote the right way next election- vote Republican." The reasoning that I laid out there and elaborated on further in my post Oppose Race to the Top: Reasons Why Conservatives Should Oppose RTTT is that teachers need to start doing a simple cost-benefit analysis- they need to weigh the real results for education under Republican leadership vs the real results for education under Democratic leadership.

The NEA and the MEA should be supporters of the Republican Party, like me, because when you look at the results for education under Democrats vs the results under Republicans, things are almost always better for education when a Republican is in charge. The economy is better is better under Republicans, which means more tax money going to schools, which means higher pay and better employment for teachers. And perhaps surprisingly, whenever Democrats are in charge, labor unions are under assault even more so than when Republicans are in charge.

Today everyone in our school got the following message from another teacher-

"Colleagues, we as educators are facing attack from all sides. Check out this letter that was recently sent by me to Arne Duncan. Right now legislation is going to be introduced that will impact all of our futures as teachers. Our union needs your support to represent our interests effectively. Become informed and ask what you can do to support the efforts of our union."

The sad thing is that our union worked hard to put in place the very people who are attacking it the most. The legislation that he refers to will be introduced by Democrats who will try to put in place more provisions for the Race for the Top program. The letter that this person sent was to Arne Duncan, a Democrat appointed by a Democrat President and confirmed by a Democrat Senate, who supported the firing of every single teacher in a particular district.

My reply to this teacher, sent to the whole staff, was a sarcastic "Good thing we didn't vote Republican last election- imagine how bad things would be if Engler or Bush was in charge."

Engler was a past Republican Governor in Michigan who dramatically increased teachers salaries but was bitterly opposed by teachers, and Bush was hated by teachers even though he through billion at them through increased budgets for education nationally.

Now my inbox is being filled up with all sorts of emails, most of which missed the sarcasm and agree that if Republicans were in charge things would somehow be worse, even though the evidence is the contrary- when teachers work to support Republicans and get Republicans elected, when Republicans are running our country and states, things are better for education and things are better for the union. I hope one day the union and Democrat teachers will get this and start to vote the right way for education- vote Republican.