Posted: December 14, 2012 at 7:19 am

This is Frightening

The Montana Republican Party announced today that it wants to make sweeping changes to education in Montana.

When the party responsible for the “broken, unconstitutional school-funding system had crashed and burned” calls for sweeping changes, be afraid. The changes they’ve pushed for in Montana seem to be more about stoking the roiling paranoia that motivates the right-wing base than anything else.

Montana Republicans have come out vigorously against evolution, public school classrooms, teachers’ bargaining rights, the age of the Earth, student loan programs, and the entire skill of critical thinking.

The last Republican governor in Montana poo-pooed education. The last GOP candidate for Governor backed abolishing the Department of Education altogether. Their candidate for U.S. Senate is listed first among the most anti-science candidates in America.

Montana Republicans even tried formally codifying their disdain for education, attempting to do away with all educational requirements for candidates running for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Posted: February 6, 2012 at 8:29 pm

What You Won’t Read in the Lee Newspapers Profile About Sandy Welch

Lee Newspapers ran a profile today of the GOP candidate running for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Sandy Welch is campaigning against the current Democratic office holder, Denise Juneau. For some reason, the article didn’t include any of the more juicy and interesting details about the Republican candidate. And so, we bring them to you here.

Sandy Welch is chair of the Flathead County Republican Party, which is known to be a haven for nutjobs. In fact, when white supremacist April Gaede was interviewed about the Flathead Republicans in a national profile of area extremism, Gaede claimed to have “pro White” supporters who are “high up in the Flathead Valley Republican Party.”

“I cannot say who they are, obviously they would get lots of flack for it, but yes, we do have people who are pro White active in higher places,”

Welch disputed the claim by saying, as Chair of the Flathead Republicans, that she saw “no obvious racist or pro-white activity in our party.” Presumably that means no one shows up in a KKK hood.

Welch ran for the legislature last cycle in the primary against fellow TEA Party Republican Jerry O’Neil, garnering only 475 votes to O’Neil’s 2,700, which is pretty sad. Almost half of her funding came from out-of-state sources.

Of course, Welch will be doing her utmost to play these things down. In her profile today, Welch didn’t offer much in terms of proposed changes. The tasks Welch says she wants schools to take on are tasks that they are already doing. (Though perhaps this can be excused simply as Welch being uninformed.) Overall, she seems to be running as a school administrator who seeks to make life easier for the other school administrators of the world. That’s a pretty small target audience to go after. Most voters probably don’t care much about making things more comfy for those in the highly paid administrative offices. They’d prioritize high quality public school classrooms instead. Just how Welch plans to make schools more “accountable” while eliminating standards is also unclear.