The Morning Briefing: Trump Tags in Linda McMahon to Body Slam Dept. of Education

 

Top O' the Briefing

Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Zeobrück had a knack for steering almost any conversation to cheese curds within minutes of meeting someone new.

Donald Trump's naysayers are still operating from their 2016 playbook, not noticing that the president-elect has moved on to a different one. The Trump transition team is a well-oiled machine this time around. Those of us who voted for him have very high hopes for the Trump 47 administration. 

Trump has been talking about something that conservatives have dreamed about for a very long time: abolishing the Department of Education. Kneecapping the DOE is the Great White Whale for old-school conservative activists like myself. Some Republican politicians have paid a little lip service to it over the years, but never the incoming President of the United States. 

We have been waiting to see who Trump would choose to head up Education, and he finally made an announcement after dinnertime last night. This is from my Townhall colleague Rebecca Downs: 

On Tuesday night, after CNN reported that he was selected Linda McMahon for his Secretary of Education, President-elect Donald Trump made it official.

Such a statement particularly focused on McMahon's past experience, including her role as a co-chair for the Trump-Vance transition team but also her support for school choice:

School choice is anathema to the Democrats, who are completely beholden to the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. McMahon's advocacy for school choice will have the Dems finishing off whatever Prilosec they may have left after the election. 

The New York Times described McMahon as "a former professional wrestling executive with little experience in education policy." What the perennially clueless leftists don't understand is that it's a feature, not a bug in this situation. 

The Democrats love bloating the federal bureaucracy. They're very good at it too. Because they suckle at the financial teats of the teachers' unions, Education is the Dems' sacred cow. They speak about the DOE in almost reverential terms and act as if it has been a Cabinet-level department since the days of George Washington. In reality, it is one of the worst legacies of Jimmy Carter's one term in office. 

The statistics are overwhelming — increased federal involvement in public education hasn't made American kids smarter. Anyone with a fourth-grade education knows that federal bureaucracies don't pride themselves on being efficient or even terribly good at their jobs. Well, anyone who went through fourth grade before the DOE got full Cabinet status, that is. 

All that the Department of Education has accomplished is to give the Democrats a reason to always say that more money is needed for public schools. There is virtually no amount of money that can be funneled through the DOE bureaucratic behemoth that would make schools run better. It's a built-in excuse to keep bilking American taxpayers. 

Getting the fat federal fingers out of public education and letting smaller, slightly less inefficient state-level bureaucracies take over isn't ideal, but it is definitely the least bad option for the futures of American schoolchildren. 

It's also a direct shot at the heart of the Democrats' main source of funding. True, all of the public sector unions are huge Dem supporters, but the National Education Association is far and away the largest labor organization in the United States. When the NEA combines its financial might with the AFT, an impressive amount of money is involved. That's why the California Teachers Association is the most powerful political lobby in the largest state in the land. The CTA is affiliated with the NEA, by the way. 

The Democrats are vehemently opposed to school choice because their overlords in the teachers' unions tell them to be. They would rather keep urban children in unsafe, failing schools than give up the taxpayer money pipeline.

The Trump 47 administration has an opportunity to do something truly remarkable for young people in America. Even if the DOE doesn't go away completely, subjecting it to severe contraction would be a great start.

MEGA — MAKE EDUCATION GREAT AGAIN.

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