The corrupt media has already set presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney up for failure when it comes to his speech this morning before the NAACP. According to Obama’s Media Palace Guards, unless Romney rolls over and demands the states end their voter I.D. laws, he’s a coward and an extremist and probably a racist.
As he has done throughout the campaign thus far, though, Romney isn’t allowing the media to play the tune he will dance to. In excerpts released in advance of the former Massachusetts Governor’s speech, you’ll see that he hits on a number of themes important to left-wing groups like the NAACP — education, inequality, poverty — but through a conservative prism.
When it comes to inequality, Romney looks at Obama’s abysmal jobs record, which has been especially brutal for the black community:
If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, then a chronically bad economy would be equally bad for everyone. Instead, it’s worse for African Americans in almost every way. The unemployment rate, the duration of unemployment, average income, and median family wealth are all worse for the black community. In June, while the overall unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2 percent, the unemployment rate for African Americans actually went up, from 13.6 percent to 14.4 percent.
Americans of every background are asking when this economy will finally recover – and you, in particular, are entitled to an answer.
When it comes to education, Romney embraces what should be the civil rights issue of the 21st century — school choice and the scourge of teachers unions:
When it comes to education reform, candidates cannot have it both ways – talking up education reform, while indulging the same groups that are blocking reform. You can be the voice of disadvantaged public-school students, or you can be the protector of special interests like the teachers unions, but you can’t be both. I have made my choice: As president, I will be a champion of real education reform in America, and I won’t let any special interest get in the way.
I will give the parents of every low-income and special needs student the chance to choose where their child goes to school. For the first time in history, federal education funds will be linked to a student, so that parents can send their child to any public or charter school, or to a private school, where permitted. And I will make that a true choice by ensuring there are good options available to all.
Until now, no national Republican figure has made school choice a major part of their campaign. This, I think, is due in large part to the fabricated reality the media creates around the issue. The idea of giving money directly to impoverished parents and allowing them to choose which school their child will attend terrifies the left because it undermines their power.
As a result, Democrats and their media allies always come out screaming about how this policy means the end of the world as we know it. Like we saw in Wisconsin after Governor Walker passed his union reforms there, there are particular fights the left and the media intentionally make as nasty and bitter as possible in order to scare our side away from engaging at all.
And there’s good reason for this panic. If low-income parents have the God-given right to pull their kids out of failed public schools, it is the end of the world, at least for Democrats — because it’s an end to the fat cat teachers unions that use millions of our tax dollars to campaign for Democrats every campaign season.
It works like this: 1. Teachers unions spend millions every year to get Democrats elected. 2. Teachers unions receive the money to do this from dues paid from the teachers’ salaries. 3. Taxpayers pay teacher salaries. Therefore… 4. You and I fund Democrat elections.
It’s one of the greatest scams going right now.
But for parents of kids trapped in appalling public schools, choice means real hope that a child might get the kind of education that gives him a fighting chance in the world. But the left is much more concerned with their own power than with the futures of a bunch of poor black kids, so they fight as dirty as they can to make sure this will never happen.
It’s a tough fight but a vital one, and I would sure like to see Romney make this a cornerstone of his campaign and take the message directly into America’s urban areas.
Obviously, Obama is going to win a staggering majority of the black vote regardless. But this kind of appeal might peel away some of those voters desperate to rescue their children from awful schools and might also appeal to independent voters who may not have children trapped in failing schools but who understand how vitally important this issue is to our country as a whole.
Furthermore, were Romney to make school choice a major part of his campaign, were he to win in November, he would have the mandate needed to actually do something.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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