While watching the race for the Republican nomination, it’s quite common to hear some pretty conservative rhetoric about education. Some candidates want to eliminate public schools altogether. One candidate wants teachers to be punched in the face.
But as Politico reported, John Kasich broke unexpected ground yesterday with a whole new area of concern.
While some Republicans have called for abolishing the federal Education Department, Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Wednesday set his sights on a smaller target: the teacher’s lounge.
As the Ohio Republican explained it, he believes school teachers congregate and, while talking among themselves, express concerns to one another about lost benefits and pay cuts.
And Kasich apparently sees this as a problem — not the threat of lost benefits and pay cuts, but rather, the fact that teachers have these “negative” conversations, driven by “the unions.”
“If I were, not president, if I were king in America, I would abolish all teachers’ lounges where they sit together and worry about ‘woe is us’,” the GOP presidential candidate said.
Perhaps now would be a good time to note that teachers worried about lost benefits and pay cuts will still have the concerns, whether or not lounges exist.
American Bridge posted a video of the governor’s comments.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."