I don’t know if Jim Gilmore has any control over his “bloggers “, but trumpeting as an achievement the spending of budget surpluses towards public universities rather than returning them to the taxpayer doesn’t seem like the best move to underscore one’s fiscal conservative values. D.J. McGuire explains:
One of the many things the American right has done to change the debate on education in general is to force Americans to see that a government monopoly is not the best way to deliver education. At the K-12 level, this has led to numerous conservative proposals for education reform under the e umbrella of educational choice – in essence, taking the entire idea of government help for education and restructuring it so that the students, not the institutions, are aided. The conservative movement is making similar moves in housing, medical insurance, and other areas.
Gilmore’s tuition freeze, by contrast, moves in the exact opposite direction. It doesn’t strengthen individual choice; it limits it by forcing them to use public education in order to benefit from the aid. It doesn’t embrace the free market; it distorts it by using government power to artificially lower the prices for government-funded universities to the detriment of private and religious ones.
Artificial subsidization of public institutions kills private and religious universities. Not a difficult concept to master, unless you’re a big-government type… and there’s a party for that.
What’s more disturbing at this point is the utter lack of message control… where once again, Marshall’s conservative record has zero apologies to make.
UPDATE: Kenney the Younger sees the same problem (and coincidentally attends VCU). Is anyone watching the Bloggers 4 Gilmore henhouse?