Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but I had to paraphrase her famous line after reading this Bill McGurn column in the Wall Street Journal about how Republican poliitcal hacks in the Illinois state legislature voted to kill a voucher bill that would have rescued inner-city children trapped in terrible government monopoly schools. If you don’t hate government and despise politicians after reading this excerpt, there is something deeply wrong with your soul:
Illinois has given us a new breed of Republican: Roger Eddy. Mr. Eddy is what they call a downstater, an assemblyman who serves an east-central Illinois district hugging the Indiana border. His day job turns out to be in government as well, as a public schools superintendent. Last week Mr. Eddy became the face of the Republican failure to get a voucher bill through the Illinois assembly. The bill had passed the Senate. Yet despite being pushed by a remarkable coalition involving fellow Republicans, a free-market state think tank, and a prominent African-American leader, only 25 Republicans in the House voted yes. That was 12 votes short. Mr. Eddy was one of 23 Republicans who killed it by voting no. …the GOP failure is striking. Republicans typically complain about not getting black support for reforms that would benefit primarily black families. In this case, however, they had that support, in the form of the Rev. James Meeks, a African-American state senator leader whom Barack Obama has called a spiritual adviser. …According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, since 2002 Mr. Eddy has accepted more than $76,000 in campaign contributions from the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and the Chicago Teachers Union. … Less than a month ago, the same teachers unions that have given so generously to Mr. Eddy made up a large chunk of the 15,000 protestors who converged on the state capital shouting “Raise Our Taxes” as the solution to the state’s $13 billion budget gap. ..The pity is there were 25 Republicans who did come through. The Republican house leader did what he could. One Republican legislator, a former public school teacher, was in tears on the House floor, begging for this bill. All these people went out on a limb with Mr. Meeks—and Republicans like Mr. Eddy sawed that limb off. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236110265227270.html
