Scrapbook
Scrapbook The Truth About the "Texas Miracle" When the RAND Corporation issued a study last week challenging the results of Texas's statewide educational assessment tests, Democrats gleefully sent...
...Maybe McConnell, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was daunted by the more than $50 million in personal funds that Democrat Jon Corzine has poured into the race...
...For months, the NRSC's stinginess dried up other funding sources, and left Franks fending for himself, with small subsidies from the moderate Republican Leadership Council and tiny donations that Franks had to raise personally, distracting him from the campaign trail for days at a time...
...This goddess business, pioneered by guru Michelle Lusson, is based on the idea that your endocrine system links your body and mind...
...The 14-page "Issue Paper" compares students' performance on the statewide Texas Assessment of Academic Skills with their performance on three examinations from the National Assessment of Educational Progress...
...if it's your pancreas, you're Aphrodite...
...We were also moved to ask why this article ran in the "Health" section...
...McConnell will either get credit for decently acknowledging a mistake, and moving bravely to fix it, or he'll be remembered as having applied to the Franks campaign the same tactics that Vladimir Putin applied to the submarine Kursk— launching a massive rescue effort at exactly the point where it was too late to make any difference...
...If your dominant gland is the thyroid, you're a Mercury...
...the study examines only Texas...
...To speak of a "Texas miracle" invites mockery...
...Neither have any serious education reformers...
...Up until now, Franks's ads have focused on Corzine's money advantage...
...So the debate boils down to this: Are Texas students doing a whole lot better than they were before Bush took office, or just a lot better...
...The next issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD will be printed the Friday before Election Day...
...Regular Scrapbook readers won't be surprised to learn that Gore and his surrogates were exaggerating...
...We were moved to ask why liberal bureaucrats, who profess to be appalled that residents on welfare are left to make do with inferior health care, initiated this program in the first place...
...But Bush himself, while obviously proud of his Texas record, has never once referred to it as the "Texas miracle...
...As a quick Nexis search shows, that phrase is used almost exclusively by reporters, TV anchors, critical think-tank researchers, and, above all, the Gore campaign...
...That will still leave at least $900,000 for a closing-week blitz...
...And why would they...
...And how about fourth grade math...
...HUD's Healing Touch Last week, the Washington Post ran on the cover of its "Health" section an account of an $840,000 HUD program contracted out to something called the National Institute for Medical Options...
...Since then, things have begun to change...
...Certain mistakes, though, can't be unmade...
...They all use the phrase as if were common parlance in Texas...
...Franks is now set to make his biggest ad buys of the campaign: $550,000 in New York and $265,000 in Philadelphia...
...Bush's] claims to accountability rest on half-measures and a hollow record...
...So McConnell announced to Franks last Thursday afternoon that the senatorial committee's money would be forthcoming...
...Bush's critics invariably mock the "Texas miracle"—a phrase they present within sneer quotes...
...That's one explanation...
...So you don't have to wait a whole week for our brilliant analysis of the election returns, a special Daily Standard will be published on our website early Wednesday, November 8. Visit weeklystandard.com early and often...
...Whatever the reason, McConnell didn't offer Franks a cent of NRSC money until Franks prevailed upon him to do so at a face to face meeting in mid-October...
...Presumably because the Post does not have a weekly "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse" section...
...A late-week Quinnipiac poll showed the race narrowing from 14 points to 5, the closest it's been since the primaries...
...It concludes: "Except for fourth grade math, the gains in Texas were comparable to those experienced nationwide during this time period...
...The case for TV ads in the New York and Philadelphia markets touting the two endorsements and introducing voters to Franks's own, more moderate agenda became obvious...
...Ignoring the political odor emanating from the release of the latest RAND report—the authors are all Democrats...
...But there's no sign anyone there ever said such a thing...
...We cannot afford to . . . [leave kids] with serious learning deficits," Al Gore told supporters...
...Gore is so accustomed to claiming credit for his own miraculous achievements, he may assume that everyone does the same...
...We'll find out in a week...
...Which is probably the key to its origins...
...A New Jersey Surprise It must have chagrined Mitch McConnell to wake up last Wednesday and discover that the New York Times loved New Jersey's Republican senatorial candidate Bob Franks more than he did...
...The increase in fourth grade math scores in Texas was significantly greater than it was nationwide...
...Presumably because they view it as a supplement, and will defend the program even if national health and prescription drug benefits become law...
...But I thought Venus was Aphrodite," you may ask...
...The Gore playbook for this election called for Dukakisizing George W. Bush...
...And both papers endorsed Franks...
...House minority leader Dick Gephardt asserted, "Students in Texas did not have better scores on the tests than other students around the country," while his Senate counterpart, Tom Daschle, added, "I think really the so-called Texas miracle is nothing more than a tall Texas tale...
...Neither has his staff...
...And if Bush was less cartoonishly boastful about his record as governor than Dukakis had been...
...Election Extra...
...The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Times took the opposite view of Corzine's money: While admitting some sympathy with Corzine's ideology, both papers found little to like in the way his money has permitted a machine-style buying of New Jersey political organizations...
...it was issued just two weeks before Election Day—it's hardly the bombshell Gore's campaign would like people to believe...
...It self-consciously echoes the much-maligned "Massachusetts miracle" of Michael Dukakis (absent the alliteration...
...if it's the adrenal gland, you're a Venus...
...In other words, maxing out on ads for Franks now looks like a better investment than it did a week ago...
...well, no matter, you can fill in the gaps with dishonest rhetoric...
...Or it may simply be a case of projection...
...The program pursues "alternative wellness" therapies in public housing projects, taking residents with problems as serious as glandular imbalances, battery wounds, and drug addiction, and treating them with gemstones, incantations, and "goddess typing...
...There is another exaggeration in the attacks on Bush's Texas record that has gone unremarked because it is so subtle (almost subliminal...
...Maybe he was ticked off that Franks twice voted in favor of the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill, towards which McConnell has vowed over-my-dead-body opposition...
...Scrapbook The Truth About the "Texas Miracle" When the RAND Corporation issued a study last week challenging the results of Texas's statewide educational assessment tests, Democrats gleefully sent the findings to reporters across the country and set out on the stump to eviscerate George W. Bush's education record...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 8
