soccer mom responds, The

Human Events, Feb 11, 2000 by Coulter, Ann

Not to worry, though. Collins promised that the Republican takeover of education would mean "not more paperwork, but better results"--just the way the federal government always makes everything so much simpler!

I'd like to think that Maine voters were expressing their contempt for the federal government by sending someone like Collins to Washington. (It's not implausible: Maine gave Ross Perot the largest percentage of the vote of any state--30%.)

But it's not just Maine and it's not just Collins. This is how almost all Republicans on Capitol Hill think about "education," among other mane government dominions. I know because I used to storm out of Republican staff meetings whenever the subject of education came up.

The last time I heard some Republican staffer explaining that the Republican position on "education" was that "we" would spend more money on education, but it would be spent on "our" programs (YEA!), I told them that if their idea of a Republican revolution was not to reduce big behemoth federal government but to commandeer big behemoth federal government for their own purposes, I had work to do on habeas corpus reform and would be getting back to my office.

That was it Three meetings on "education," and I began working on criminal law exclusively.

I'm sorry, I did my best, but somehow haranguing bland white male Republican staffers didn't work. Not with images of those Stalinist Soccer Moms dancing in their heads.

The problem with the Republican response to Soccer Moms is this: Stalin isn't a frightening image to Stalinists. Trent Lott with all of Stalin's power is. So the Republican switcheroo isn't going to work even with its narrow target audience: liberal women. They want the federal government to be mandating metal-welding classes for girls and sewing classes for boys. They want Huck Finn removed and Heather Has Two Mommies inserted in its place.

Maintaining an enormous federal role in education while trying to quietly substitute the Ten Commandments for condoms isn't going to trick the Soccer Moms.

The Other Problem

That's the Republicans' other problem: They're Republicans. Liberal women vote for Democrats. Republican women don't want condoms being distributed in kindergarten-but they also never wanted a big federal role in education in the first place. Republican politicians who prattle about the federal role in education just end up annoying everyone.

The best thing Republicans in Congress could do for education in this country would be to cut all federal involvement in "education" and expand C-SPAN. Then when little children come home with bad report cards, their parents could turn on the TV and show them what might become of them if they don't shape up.