GOP has strayed from its original position on public ed

Iowans should be interested in the so-called conservative values of its Republican Party. Here is the text of one of its presidential platform planks from 1876:

“The public school system of the several states is the bulwark of the American republic; and, with a view to its security and permanence, we recommend an amendment to the constitution of the United States, forbidding the application of any public funds or property for the benefit of any school or institution under sectarian control.”

If Congress had passed and the States ratified this constitutional amendment, then Iowa taxpayers’ money would never have been so egregiously diverted toward funding predominantly parochial schools as it is today. This is just one of many ways that today’s Republican Party has radically strayed from its long professed conservative values.

In the 2024 elections, Iowans whose “muscle memory” inclines them to vote Republican should stop and take stock of how politically extreme Iowa’s GOP has become. In fact, today’s Iowa Republican Party now represents the very threat to the security and permanence of public education that it warned against nearly 150 years ago.

Ed Wasserman

Iowa City