Cornyn and White
DMN compiles wire reports:
"We can't have one-size-fits-all," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Thursday. He led a group of House and Senate lawmakers in introducing legislation that would let states opt out of No Child Left Behind requirements without losing federal education money.
Any state that does not adhere to the requirements of the $23 billion program cannot get the federal dollars that come with it. The requirements include annual testing in math and reading in grades three through eight, and once in high school. The tests must show steady yearly progress toward a goal of getting students working on grade level by 2014.
John Cornyn, R-Texas, Mr. Bush's most reliable defender in the Senate, is supporting the conservatives' bill. So is House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, even though he voted for the law in 2001.
It's quite fascinating to see Cornyn come out for a bill that guts NCLB. I have no inside information, but it is widely assumed that Karl Rove made calls encouraging folks not to challenge Cornyn once he had announced.
I assume -- though I haven't looked it up -- that the "Mr. Bush's most reliable defender in the Senate" is the DMN editors language.
Cornyn has two political weaknesses: 1) he is still unknown to many of the state's voters after 4 full years in the Senate. 2) the Establishment views Cornyn as too close to the President.
I continue to doubt that Democrats will field a serious candidate, however. Bill White might be the best choice, but he really, really needs some time to try to clean up the mess that he's created on crime in Houston. Check Taylor and Carnahan at Professors R Squared:
What peeves both of us is that Jon asked a direct question about HPD staffing (thank you to both Chris Baker and Councilman Michael Berry for inspiration!) when he was one of four academic panelists in a 2003 Mayoral debate… at a time when the issue of HPD retirements and manpower was just starting to heat up and could have been addressed quickly once Mayor Lee Brown blessedly left office to haunt Rice. Our then-future Mayor gave the usual hyperbole about being tough on crime, but essentially ignored the question. Surprised?
Crime has certainly lost some of its potency as an issue. But it will be salient in White's record, and the sort of suburban female swing voters who might swing towards White will be very turned off by his record as mayor. Everyone knew that the Houston Police Department was facing an impending shortage of officers, and yet Bill White did nothing. Houston's sharp rise in crime is directly attributable to Bill White's decisions. Whether he is soft-on-crime or not, the buck stops there.
Posted by Evan @ 03/18/07 09:17 AM
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