The GOP presents itself as the party that understands the importance of locality, detail, specificity and, in general, the contingency of any situation. Its favorite buzz-words, often imported from the business community, are flexibility, accountability, local-control and, most directly, “understands business.”
But it’s been amazing in the last few years to watch the party become progressively more lockstep and more monolithic. Speaker John Boehner’s infamous demand during the debt-ceiling debate that the party “Get its ass in line” sums up the degree to which the GOP values absolute adherence to party decree as a requisite for membership. Unfortunately, as the GOP should know, straightjacket politics can lead to grotesque distortions.
Point in case, compare the conservative response to reports of the discovery of [widespread cheating](http://www.slate.com/id/2299709/) by teachers on the No Child Left Behind assessment tests, which can be used to reward schools, to allegations of inappropriate practices by a small group of climate-change scientists, shows the extent to which the GOP has become a caricature of itself and blindsided a basic fact-based approach to governance.
Here are responses by some leading GOP education pundits on the NCLB scandal:
“Any system that has serious rewards and punishments attached to it will invite people to finagle and try to jimmy the results in their favor either to avoid the punishments or to maximize the rewards and that’s true in schools as well.“ – Chester Finn, President of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, speaking on the Fox Business Network.
“Those who imagine I’m saying that testing is bad because cheating occurred are missing my point. I’m all for testing and sensible test-based accountability.“ AEI director Rick Hess.
“Considering that test cheating is rare — found in just five percent of elementary schools every year — this argument [to scrap testing] is ridiculous; most teachers and principals, regardless of their views on standardized testing or their level of talent and care for children, behave ethically.“ -Conservative writer RiShawn Biddle.
In other words, the verdict was that low-levels of cheating should not be the death siren to an entire system. As a response, that doesn’t fix the problem, but it’s at least reasonable and a starting point from which to rethink high-stakes testing. Now compare that response to the GOP’s latest lambasting of climate science “manipulation”:
“I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.“ – Rick Perry.
“It’s fair to say the science is in dispute.“ – Tim Pawlenty.
“[Climate science has] a lot of corruption surrounding it .. We’re not the ones taking grant money with scientists and making up results.“ Fox News host Brian Kilmeade.
The rumored “manipulation of data” referred to is most likely a 2009 incident famously dubbed “Climategate,” a cheating scandal since proved to not have been one at all. Inquiries by the British Parliament, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Pennsylvania State University and the InterAcademy Council found no wrong-doing. But even if this small group of scientists had fudged some numbers, where’s the understanding of the inevitable imperfection of reward-systems? But in fact, the number of scientists who believe in global warming — 97-98 percent — has stayed constant over the last few years, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The denialism of the GOP’s view is nothing less than stubborn.
Some will say this is an effect of the party system, in which organizing around ideals has a strategic advantage over having an internally inconsistent party. But contradiction and complexity have always been embraced and distilled by stronger parties. At the moment, GOP oversimplification is only burrowing itself — and the country with it— deeper into a future of disillusionment.
