Ezra Klein’s blog at the Washington Post lists what he sees as the oddest planks in the GOP platform. He prefaces his list with this:
Any party platform is necessarily a compromise between a number of different interest groups. Inevitably, there are always some odd or puzzling policy planks that make it in.
1) Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment! Maybe… “In any restructuring of federal taxation, to guard against hypertaxation of the American people, any value added tax or national sales tax must be tied to the simultaneous repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which established the federal income tax.”
2) Police the universities for liberal bias. “Ideological bias is deeply entrenched within the current university system. Whatever the solution in private institutions may be, in State institutions the trustees have a responsibility to the public to ensure that their enormous investment is not abused for political indoctrination. We call on State officials to ensure that our public colleges and universities be places of learning and the exchange of ideas, not zones of intellectual intolerance favoring the Left.”
4) End our dependence on foreign… fertilizer? “Our dependence on foreign imports of fertilizer could threaten our food supply, and we support the development of domestic production of fertilizer.”
8) Innovation is all about freedom. “Liberty alone fosters scientific inquiry, technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and information exchange. Liberty must remain the core energy behind America’s environmental improvement.”
10) No minimum wage for the Mariana Islands. “The Pacific territories should have flexibility to determine the minimum wage, which has seriously restricted progress in the private sector.”
Ah yes, political indoctrination–a lightning phrase initiated by Glenn Beck to excite his once-upon-a-time, right-wing listening audience. I couldn’t begin to count how many times that “scary” phrase was mentioned on the Telegram message boards; reminiscent of Palin’s “death panels” and the party’s “death tax.
It’s all about the fear.
Sybil- I have no reason to challenge your research into origins of a phrase although I suspect it predates both of us. I would guess however, that the origins of the phrase are far removed from the origins of the plank. Do you believe that public higher education educators tilt toward progressivism and that it bleeds through into the collegiate classroom instruction?
No, I do not. But if you do, I’d love to hear examples–especially here from Lenawee County.