Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Mike Franken states there’s a Republican-led, capitalist-evangelical plot to “dumb down” youth through “a war on education,” created to acquire an electoral benefit in the years to come.
Throughout a campaign event in Red Oak recently, Franken told voters Republicans are uniting “the über-capitalists … and the ultra-right evangelicals” on academic concerns “make people dumb and lemmings.”
“Is this what Newt Gingrich wanted everybody to do in the ’90s?” Franken said, according to a video of the event obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “Dumb down America as much as we can because the demographics are working against the Republican Party? It’s true. It appears so.”
Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich informed the Free Beacon he discovered Franken’s remarks “laughable” which the Senate prospect “is falling for the teachers’ union line.”
“As a Ph.D. in European history and author of more than 40 books, I find it laughable that Franken thinks I could be anti-learning. I participated in the launch of President Reagan’s dramatic report A Nation at Risk in 1983,” Gingrich said. “The teachers’ unions and their Democratic Party loyalists have fought against reform every step of the way. Children should not be trapped in terrible schools that cripple their future. Parents have the right to know what is being taught to their children.”
Franken did not answer requests for comment.
The retired Navy vice admiral, who served under the previous president Barack Obama and as a military advisor to former Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.), has no position on public education listed on his campaign website. He has, nevertheless, taken strong positions on increasing abortion gain access to, broadening Medicare, and combating climate change. The Iowa Unity Coalition, which has actually backed Franken, supports tuition-free college education for all state citizens. A Harvard University research study in 2014 found that a Massachusetts tuition-free program lessened students’ college completion rate.
Republican politicians have made education a substantial election issue, as parents have revealed serious concerns over a public education system they think has deserted the instruction of core scholastic topics and doubled down on racially dissentious rhetoric and courses. The Republican National Committee of 2021 adopted a resolution that condemned critical race theory and “antiracist” school curricula. Congressional Republicans in January put forth as part of their midterm platform a Parents’ Bill of Rights, which would openly reveal state education spending plans and curricula.
Franken did not elaborate on his opposition to Republicans’ education platform, which might possibly push away some Iowa citizens worried about radical teachers about America’s history in schools. The State House in 2021 entertained a bill that would have prohibited the New York Times’s 1619 Project from public education.
Franken’s Democratic election this year was unanticipated. In 2020, he lost a primary race to Theresa Greenfield, who would go on to lose her election to Sen. Joni Ernst (R.). Franken in June bested Democratic prospect Abby Finkenauer to win the party’s election for 2022.
Having actually raised almost $3 million so far for his campaign, Franken will face incumbent Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.) in November.
A Grassley campaign spokeswoman said Franken’s comments were “lockstep with the Biden White House,” which in 2021 “orchestrated a memo from the National School Board Association in an effort to intimidate parents by unleashing federal antiterrorism surveillance tools on them at school board meetings.”
“Mike Franken didn’t read the memo from last November’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, the near upset gubernatorial race in New Jersey or the school board recall election in his dream state of California,” Michaela Sundermann told the Free Beacon. “Waging a war on parents is not a winning strategy. Chuck Grassley fights for the fundamental right of parents to have a say in their child’s education.”
H/T The Washington Free Beacon
