The GOP's War on the Poor: School Choice and Charter Schools

Hmm, the memo said say something about poverty. Aha, school choice!

We could have predicted this, friends. 2014 was shaping up to be a bad year for Republicans until Obamacare floundered, but now that the healthcare rollout is back on track, the GOP is back in the frying pan because income inequality give the Democrats a popular set of issues to run on. (Hear that Dems, huh? Run on them.)

So the memo goes out that the GOP can't look like dicks even though they've just shot down the unemployment insurance extension. Marco Rubio, seizing the moment, says minimum wage, feh! Right on Marco. And your idea to give federal money for the poor to the states because, well, states, is a big winner. Frontal lobes!

Eric Cantor's a leader, so, uh, and he got the memo, too, so, uh, help the poor! His brainiac notion is school vouchers and charter schools. What is that, focus-group-tested mumbo-jumbo? Maybe so.

It is clever, though, in the sense that he gets to say he's going to deliver a major policy address on poverty, and he gets to get all serious and yell football!! and everyone claps. He's for the poor all right.

Except that school vouchers and charter schools haven't proven to be much of a benefit to anyone at this point -- except for those who hate public education, if God had wanted the poor to get educated, He'd have made Christian schools free, hey, wait, I've got an idea! Vouchers!

Charles, load the children in the Bentley, we're going to the school of our choice.

So, let's look at the ideas scorecard for 2014. Including the death of the unemployment insurance extension, it's GOP 3, the poor 0. At least they're thinking of you, poors.