REPORT: 49 GOP Congressional Candidates Join Ginni Thomas-Led Assault On Education

[ProSense]

REPORT: 49 GOP Congressional Candidates Join Ginni Thomas-Led Assault On Education

Senate candidates Ken Buck (R-CO) and Sharron Angle (R-NV) have both received significant attention for their absurd claim the federal Department of Education is unconstitutional, but because House races generally receive much less media attention than the higher-profile Senate contests, it’s unclear just how common this radical position is among the GOP’s full slate of candidates.

A questionnaire circulated by Liberty Central, the right-wing group led by Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas, sheds a great deal of light on this question — and the answer is not pretty. Of the 60 candidate questionnaires submitted by current GOP nominees for a House or Senate seat that ThinkProgress reviewed for this report, at least 49 adopt a view that would declare much — if not all — of federal education policy unconstitutional.

The Liberty Central questionnaire includes the following question:



The overwhelming majority of GOP candidates who submitted this questionnaire answered “no” to this question, a position that would drastically limit the federal government’s ability to help struggling schools, and which could also threaten Medicaid and other essential programs. Several of these candidates offered ahistorical, ideological and occasionally paranoid constitutional theories:

<...>

In other words, just like the many GOP Senate candidates who believe that the Constitution means whatever they want it to mean, much of the Republican slate of House candidates have no compunctions about inventing new and incoherent ways of reading the document in order to undermine laws they don’t like. For more on the implications of Ginni Thomas’ positions on essential programs such as Medicaid, and for a full list of the 49 Republican Congressional candidates endorsing her group’s vision of the Constitution, visit the Wonk Room.

Looks like Republicans aren't going to stop until they repeal the Constitution.