March 20, 2010 06:09 PM UTC

Jane Norton: "First" To Call For Department of Education's Abolition

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• by: Colorado Pols

More forwarded tracker video of Senate candidate Jane Norton, this latest from earlier in the month at a metro-area candidate forum:

A couple of notable statements in this 30 seconds of video–Norton begins by asserting that “the only sector growing in our economy right now is the federal government.” It’s a catchy sound bite, but it’s also a brazen lie you can see debunked on every business page–the economy has been growing again since the second quarter of last year, and the only politicians who won’t admit it are those who willfully refuse to for electoral purposes.

The second item we find interesting in this video clip is Norton’s justification for ‘abolishing’ the Department of Education. Watch her slow her cadence as she says the words “five thousand employees,” referring to the Department of Ed’s payroll–sounds like a hell of a lot, doesn’t it?

Sounds a little less dramatic when you realize that the federal government has about two million civilian employees–she sure is getting a lot of mileage out of a proposal to ‘abolish’ 0.25% (note the decimal) of the federal government’s payroll, don’t you think? If the average non-radicalized general election voter figures out that Norton was making all this grandstanding hay over a mere 0.25% of the federal government’s payroll, and the part most concerned with their children’s education at that–how do you think they will respond?

Now as we’ve said before, we don’t actually think that Norton’s more radical policy prescriptions in front of the “Tea Party” audiences she’s been touring will stay in her script through the general election cycle, and at some point she’s going to have to distance herself from the wacky things she’s been saying to win the primary. The problem for Norton is the growing permanent archive of such statements outside her campaign’s control, which doesn’t seem to be tapering off even after they kicked out the camera guy, and could be the only part of this that endures past August.