She began and ended her speech by affirming her commitment to the three-legged policy stool –national security, fiscal discipline and social conservatism. She did not specifically address the big social issues of life and marriage.
The bulk of Rep. Bachmann’s speech centered on cheer-leading conservative Republican political gains in the last election, the need for fiscal discipline, and rolling back Obamacare. That’s all very important. But those are also checkbox issues. When we’re considering national Republican figures and, for instance, who should be the next Republican presidential nominee, those are issues on which there is going to agreement from figure to figure, from candidate to candidate.
Rep. Bachmann rightly discussed the travesty of the Obamacare takeover. But she did not touch another big Obama takeover –President Obama’s Race to the Top program. We have seen an unprecedented expansion of the federal intrusion into education policy-making. That expansion has been a central issue in the last two presidential elections. President Obama made it a key part of his recent State of the Union speech, so we can expect to see more of it.
If you consider the 10th Amendment’s “powers reserved to the people,” education is bell- weather. It’s naturally a matter for parents and local control. If we cannot be faithful to our founding in this area, is there any hope for a return to fidelity in other areas?
If our elected office-holders fail to respect the rights and abilities of the people to govern in that area, we cannot expect that they will respect those rights and abilities in other areas.
I suspect that Rep. Bachmann has populist views on that issue, views flowing from our founding principles. But we’d like to hear them.
Originally posted at Get Conservative.