If, as conventional wisdom suggests, Gov. Bobby Jindal has gone all in on opposition to the Common Core State Standards in order to boost his national electoral profile, one must question his thinking and/or the quality of the political advice he’s getting.
As previously
noted, with practically no political power to do so available, Jindal has
been waging an intense rearguard action to prevent the state from implementing
fully CCSS, and in the process of doing so has bet his entire national
political future on an issue most voters don’t know about, of those that do for
many it’s not a big priority, and one that splits his conservative base. Worse,
the tactics he uses increasingly have acquired a sheen of desperation, such as
a recent
suit that essentially claims the 225-year old federal grant-in-aid system
is unconstitutional, make his natural constituency of principled conservatives scratch
their heads over his choices – especially when there is an education issue on
which he has been a leader with a genuine constitutional question at stake that
his side would win in which he appears to have no interest.
Last year, the federal government
attempted to assert control over Louisiana’s scholarship voucher program, to which
Jindal objected. Ultimately, District Judge Ivan Lemelle (who tipped
his hand in a previous case) rendered
an opinion that did not give the Pres. Barack Obama
Administration control over the program, but in that justification wrote in an implicit
power of the federal government to define unlawful discrimination by state
government as a product of individual decisions by families unrelated to
government – an audacious rewriting of the Constitution that vastly expands
government’s power to intervene not just in instances where there has been
intended and deliberate discrimination employed, but also merely where are
present discrepant outcomes. More incredibly, it was based on the preclearance
argument already dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier the year before
that.
However, after a subsequent
ruling in April that reports had to be delivered – implying that the federal
government could intervene related to the data – the Jindal Administration basically
lost interest in the case, declaring victory in the battle without bothering to
trying to win the war. Only after legal wrangling could the case be revived, on
the basis
that the federal government’s case had to be dismissed because of the death of
the preclearance concept, in an effort brought by families, the Louisiana Black
Alliance for Educational Options, and the Goldwater Institute. Early last
month, Lemelle again stubbornly ruled as he had previously, and last week the plaintiffs
appealed – just as the Jindal Administration should have done months ago,
as the ruling did not close the door on the federal government getting an
injunction to stop the program on the contrived basis of discriminatory impact.
It was about that time of demurral
on the case that Jindal decided to energetically begin opposing CCSS,
culminating now in this suit that runs entirely counter to the jurisprudence of
intergovernmental relations; to say it’s a longshot to win may overstate its
chances of success. Yet since Jindal has been absent in a matter in the area of
education that was one of his signature policy achievements as governor, that
is more widely understood with more conservative support than the quixotic CCSS
quest, and as a constitutional question stands on far more solid ground than
his Hail Mary suit. If there’s any legal matter on which he should hang as hat
as a demonstration of superior education policy-making and ability to achieve
it, it should be this other suit and, politically, he should be front and
center championing it.
If he’s not because he thinks or
is being advised that there’s more political mileage in making the CCSS education
issue so high profile almost to the exclusion of everything else, even as his
pursuit appears to alienate as many in the public as his crusade attracts supporters,
if he’s paying for that advice he needs to get his money back. The lane is open
repeatedly to drive for the easy layup to score big buckets, yet he insists on
pulling up at half court and taking nearly impossible shots. For those not appalled by his unrelenting tactics, they might admire
the confidence and panache of that,
but it doesn’t win games.
1 comment:
Personally, I detest his actions, and I am disgusted that we taxpayers are apparently paying for them.
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