December 20, 2009 06:07 PM UTC

Norton's "Abolish Dept. of Education" Call Ridiculed, Campaign Won't Comment

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• by: Colorado Pols

We knew when we first saw it that Senate candidate Jane Norton’s recent call at a “Tea Party” gathering to abolish the federal Department of Education was going to go over badly with the well-adjusted majority–and today, the Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels reports:

Democrats last week pounced on a report that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton wants to abolish the U.S. Department of Education as part of her push to reduce the size of government.

They accused her of embracing a “far-right Tea Party agenda” and pandering to a small group of voters.

Even a leading political consultant questioned why Norton would go after such a “dated target” when President Barack Obama has given the GOP plenty of ammunition…

Norton’s campaign manager, Norm Cummings, declined Thursday to comment on her remarks or the reaction to them.

“We’re going to have more to say about this and other issues related to budgetary restraints and out-of-control spending after the first of the year,” Cummings said.

“It’s a holiday. Nobody cares.”

But clearly Democrats do…

And there’s a very simple reason why they care: Norton’s position, once it makes its way out of “Tea Party” circles and into general circulation, comes across as extreme and anachronistic. It alienates far more general election support than it attracts. It doesn’t matter if she pads it with slogans like “cutting waste,” or assures that federal funds would continue to flow to schools under her plan (would they?)–“abolish the Department of Education” is way too easy to portray as a radical, ideological, simple-minded attack on the one part of government even many Republicans value.

Political consultant Eric Sondermann was puzzled why Norton would go after the Department of Education when Republicans long ago abandoned the idea.

“If the motive is to secure a few nice mentions on Tea Party blogs, it’s a fool’s errand,” Sondermann said.

“Moreover, Obama’s Department of Education is actually a voice of reform, a first for a Democratic administration. That’s something reform- minded Republicans ought to encourage along with all Americans who care about the deeply troubled state of our public schools.”

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who also is running for the GOP nomination for Senate, does not support dismantling the department, his campaign said. The other GOP contender, former state lawmaker Tom Wiens, could not be reached for comment.

Bottom line: we don’t think Norton intended for this to be heard beyond the “Tea Party” audience she is courting. That strikes us as profoundly ignorant given today’s connected online environment–did she think that because this blogger is in Alamosa…people elsewhere wouldn’t see it? For us, it’s just more evidence that Norton is running her campaign from a 1990s Bill Owens-era playbook: the good old days when you could say anything you wanted to out in far-flung small market constituencies, and nobody ever compared notes.

Well, much like the GOP’s discredited pledge to get rid of the Department of Education–abandoned at latest by the time of No Child Left Behind, probably long before–those days are over.