Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

SUN EDITORIAL:

Republican rhetoric

Conservatives over the top, blasting president’s planned speech to children as ‘indoctrination’

President Barack Obama plans to give a nationally broadcast speech to school children across America on Tuesday. His speech is expected to be a pep talk to kick off the school year, encouraging students to stay in school and work hard.

It is not a policy speech, but conservatives have come unglued. Jim Greer, head of the Florida Republican Party, said the president is trying to “spread liberal lies” and “socialist ideology” by “indoctrinating America’s youngest children.”

The New York Times quoted Mark Steyn, filling in for conservative radio demagogue Rush Limbaugh, as saying Obama was trying to create a cult of personality like Saddam Hussein or North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.

On the Internet, bloggers are decrying the use of children as “political pawns.” On Twitter, there is a conservative movement urging parents to pull their children out of school Tuesday so they don’t have to see the speech. (Of course, the speech is not mandatory viewing. It is up to the schools to decide whether they’ll show it.)

To cut through all of this hyperbole, here’s a question for those right-wing reactionaries: Who’s really indoctrinating the children and using them as political pawns? Answer: The parents who keep their children from school and — horrors! — from hearing the president of the United States, who simply wants to encourage students to go to school.

The Republican Party has passed beyond the normal bounds of partisan politics and become paranoid. If the party had any ideas worth listening to, why would it be so worried about a presidential speech? The conservative outrage, though, is not about ideas — it is an inflammatory, false and reckless assault on the president.

Republicans should note that former presidents George H.W. Bush and conservative icon Ronald Reagan spoke to students in nationally broadcast appearances.

Bush’s 1991 speech was criticized by Democrats, who complained that taxpayer dollars were spent to produce and tape a “political advertisement.”

In response, then-Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., asked, “Why is it political for the president of the United States to discuss education?”

Good question.

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