There is no topic that interests me more right now than the rising opposition to private school vouchers on the political right. While there’s been lots of coverage of why rural Republicans are cool on their party’s top education policy priority, the resistance is far broader—and deeper—than just rural voters. In the latest episode of Have You Heard, I talked to a dozen conservative opponents of school vouchers in Texas. (If you prefer ‘reading’ your podcasts to listening, here’s a transcript.)
In addition to rural skeptics, I also talked to business-minded Republicans who fear the consequences of privatizing education for workforce development, homeschool advocates who worry that vouchers come with government “strings,” and conservative moms who see a larger agenda at work here.
But the real lesson in this episode is political. The big money push to expand school vouchers, and expel voucher opponents, is spurring rising discontent within the ranks of the Republican party, including among some of Trump’s staunchest supporters. “Vouchers aren’t MAGA,” is how welding teacher and self-described populist Brett Guillory explained his opposition to me.
To me, MAGA is like the middle class, building up the middle class. And so when you talk about wealth transfer, it just, you know, it's going from the hard working class to the wealthy. Vouchers essentially are welfare for the rich. If you look at all the numbers, all the statistics, all the data, it all says the same thing, that over three quarters of people who use vouchers are the wealthy.
A few weeks ago I wrote about a key political pivot made by the school choice lobby. Instead of trying to win over Democrats by branding choice as the civil rights issue of our time, voucher proponents embraced what they’re calling the Red State Strategy, and aiming their fire power at holdouts within the GOP. We hear from a couple of them in this episode, but we also hear from voters who are beyond frustrated that their elected representatives can no longer represent them on an issue that they really care about.
Listen closely and you can hear something profound taking shape in Texas, and it’s not just opposition to vouchers. The Republicans we hear from are sick to death of big money politics in which their elected officials are responsive to PACs, corporations and big donors but not to voters.
“The political landscape over the next four years, I believe, is going to change drastically,” Guillory told me. If he’s correct, the GOP’s embrace of scorched-earth politics in support of a policy its own voters don’t support will be a big part of the reason why.
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