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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (16588)	4/6/2000 5:30:00 PM
From: lawdog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Michael, you're missing my point. All Social conservatives are not Rep. Today, which is what I care about, social conservatives have flocked to the Rep party and they are causing us to lose elections. Fiscal conservatism has been, as long as I can remember, a Rep. platform alone.

To: greenspirit who wrote (16588)	4/6/2000 5:33:00 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Here's some good news for pro-choice Americans: Choice Debate Is Over School choice is still hotly contested in much of the country, but in the city that started it all the debate is effectively over. Ten years ago Wisconsin voted to permit Milwaukee to implement the nation's first pilot school-choice program. Allowing parents the option of sending their children to private schools has become so popular that in this week's mayoral election both candidates endorsed choice. Candidate Gore, take note: Both were Democrats. The easy winner, three-term Mayor John Norquist, says choice is improving the local public schools and he wants to expand its availability beyond low-income kids to the middle class. Currently about 8,000 of 108,000 public school children receive vouchers to attend religious or other private schools. Milwaukee is so liberal that the last mayor who wasn't a Democrat was elected as a Socialist. As a political matter, choice was able to take hold there because local liberal leaders had the courage to take on the teachers unions. A decade ago State Rep. Polly Williams, a former Jesse Jackson campaign chairman, and John Gardner, a union organizer who serves on the city school board, rejected busing and other social experiments and decided to empower parents. Parents have responded by backing choice. Last year, voters elected a 7-to-2 pro-voucher majority on the school board, handing the teachers union a crushing defeat. The board named a new superintendent, who is streamlining bureaucracy, partnering with private educators and opening charter schools. This year, for the first time in a long time, a majority of students who enter public high schools will actually graduate. Recognizing the reality of competition from vouchers, the Milwaukee teachers union has abandoned confrontation for cooperation. It stayed neutral in this week's election, ignoring its old nemesis, Mayor Norquist. The union has also helped persuade 30 teachers who were clearly not up to the job to seek another career. "We hear much less moaning about how the schools would be better if they were richer or more integrated," says Mr. Norquist. "Now there's a belief that school quality is within our grasp." The Mayor says the future of school choice in Wisconsin was also assured by this week's landslide election of Diane Sykes to a seat on the state Supreme Court. In 1998 that court only narrowly upheld the Milwaukee program as constitutional, prompting the state teachers union and some local unions to give money to Louis Butler, her opponent. Mr. Butler criticized Ms. Sykes for her membership in the conservative Federalist Society, falsely claiming she was "working to turn the clock back" in civil rights. She wound up carrying 65% of the vote, winning every county in the state. The electoral successes of Mayor Norquist and Justice Sykes call into question Al Gore's strategy of pounding away at George W. Bush for embracing vouchers. Polls show that Governor Bush's stands on education are viewed favorably by as many or more voters as embrace Mr. Gore's positions. Tamala Edwards of Time magazine embarrassed the Vice President during a primary debate by pointing out that a majority of African-Americans support choice. Mayor Norquist, a loyal Democrat, worries that Mr. Gore "doesn't appreciate the political power of the choice idea once people understand it." He says his city has experienced a "virtuous circle" in which each change in attitude by the school bureaucracy has led to more positive steps. "The catalyst has been choice," he told us. "It has helped all schools gear themselves to the needs of parents rather than bureaucrats. Someday the whole country will recognize that." interactive2.wsj.com