September 06, 2009 12:40 AM UTC

How to Craft a Winning Strategy-Not (w/"Poll")

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• by: ClubTwitty

(Be safe Polsters, it’s getting weird. – promoted by ClubTwitty)

On the Denver Post “poll”, attached to yesterday’s article about President Obama’s Tuesday speech nefarious plot to brainwash all of America’s schoolchildren more than 38% of the 6900 ‘votes’ declare “I would not watch and discourage my child from watching.”

The article primarily describes how some area schools are handling the matter TEOTWAWKI:

But some districts set about trying to make it work. One school even offered to tape the speech, review its content and then show it to kids – only if President Barack Obama says nothing objectionable.

…Denver Public Schools chief academic officer Ana Tilton on Thursday reminded principals who choose to show the speech that “the focus of the classroom activities must be completely educational and nonpolitical . . . if there are parents who still don’t want their child to listen to the president’s speech, please have an alternate activity available.”

Douglas County Schools has an opt-out form on its website for parents who wish to exclude their children from the speech.

Dave Minter, principal at Pine Grove Elementary in Parker, told parents the school will videotape the speech, review it and determine whether it can be shown at a later date.

“If we do decide to show it to students, parents will be notified in advance and given the option to excuse their child or children from participating,” Minter said in a communication to parents.

I trust I share this sentiment with a few sensible Republicans: I desperately hope that this is not even where 38% of the state’s GOP are at, let alone of the Post’s online readership.

Don’t get me wrong–I don’t want Republicans to gain control of any of the levers of government. Party as a whole, they have no new ideas, only the same old pablum that has been served, and rejected, before.  And the shrill, apparently dominate, overlapping membership of the GOP with wingnutia is not helping to rebuild the brand (even if it does fire up the bilious base).

But presumably I interact with these people, share the roads with them.  They are clearly unhinged. As a diary at the  Huffington Post  puts it:

But as expected, the issue has been hijacked by the right-wing lunatic fringe that’s either gone completely mad or lost all control of its racial bigotry. Either scenario is equal parts frustrating, infuriating, shameful and scary.

The Post article includes some of the local fringe flavor:

“I don’t want that man talking to my children,” said Crista Huff in Douglas County, who has three daughters in school. “Look at other leaders who had socialistic policies and chose to talk to children; this would include Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and Castro. I will keep my kids home from school that day and we will re-read the Declaration of Independence.”

…Highlands Ranch parent Shanneen Barron, in an e-mail to The Denver Post, wondered why Obama’s speech is OK for the classroom when the Bible is not.

“I believe in the Bible and I believe it has educational value,” she wrote, “but teachers aren’t allowed to teach on that. So why this? We won’t be sending our kids to school on Tuesday.”

One Jefferson County parent complained of Obama’s “political recruiting,” while a Douglas County parent said that “spreading (Obama’s) liberal agenda in publicly funded schools is reprehensible.”

Another similar quote comes from a Texan, whom I also fear are likely to be on the local roads, courtesy of the New York Times:

“The thing that concerned me most about it was it seemed like a direct channel from the president of the United States into the classroom, to my child,” said Brett Curtis, an engineer from Pearland, Tex., who said he would keep his three children home.

“I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.”

Less than a year into his presidency, and a large part of the Republican base is behaving thus.  It is hard to fathom what the 2010, let alone 2012, election will be like.  And it’s even harder to fathom how this gets to 50% + 1.  But for now I’ll keep both hands on the wheel.

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