​For politicians, there is no better photo or sound-bite opportunity than standing next to a young person. The kid’s academic success or overall standing as a person doesn’t really matter; the youthful face is all that really counts. So when candidates Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and even the less photogenic Rick Santorum or Ron Paul cozy up to a group of high school students on their respective book tours or before one of the seemingly infinite Republican presidential debates, are their claims of having the next generation’s interests at heart really valid?
​All of the above candidates have denied the well-published scientific fact that climate change and evolution exist. This may seem alarming to someone not familiar with the political race, this is simply a pre requisite for securing PAC (Political Action Committee) money from various family values groups who throw endless amounts of money at campaigns. Political Action Committees are not required to disclose any of their donors and are not limited to any amount of money to spend because of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that protects corporations’ unlimited campaign spending under free speech. Secret as well as widely known conservative campaign contributors like Karl Rove and the Koch brothers spend in order to fight the big three: evolution, abortion, and marriage equality. For these Republicans aspiring to lead the free world, science and the next generation’s future will be open to the highest bidder.
Hopefully the hardline positions taken by the candidates didn’t come cheap. Mitt Romney has taken the standpoint of creationism and science working together to form a more perfect world in which we could possibly have lived with dinosaurs, or not, “The science just isn’t out yet.” Mitt has also taken several different positions on key issues such as immigration, abortion, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and heath care. In his home state of Massachusetts Romney signed into law a mandate that all citizens and children have health insurance. After the bill went into action, Massachusetts ranked second in the nation in quality of care. He now vows to repeal Obamacare, even though MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who worked with Obama and Romney on their respective bills, has said that the bills are the same.
Former pizza and National Restaurant Association tycoon Herman Cain is never shy when it comes to preaching that he and his book are the saviors of the next generation. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the former frontrunner said, “I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me, ‘Who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan?’ I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know? And then I’m going to say, How’s that going to create one job?” Cain loves to ramble on about “School Choice” as the future of American education. Cain would like to see more charter schools and to see ideal local governments create regulations to make private school more affordable. “Children in this country should be able to attend any school they want, anywhere they want,” said Cain during a Fox News debate. Whenever he is asked about spending government money to improve struggling public schools, the current frontrunner claims that school choice and the free market is the answer, not improving the under-funded schools students struggle in today. However, this dream of allowing public schools to compete with charter and private schools in the open market is just as unrealistic as his 9-9-9 plan, raising taxes on the poorest Americans while also having a sales tax rate as high as seventeen percent in certain areas due to the fact that Cain’s flat tax is simply added on to the state and local sales taxes one already pays. To Cain’s defense, he only has experience in the private sector, which should be reason enough to keep him out of the conversation as a legitimate problem solver for the education of America’s youth.
Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann believes that homosexuality is the devil’s work. When asked about her position on homosexuality at a rally in Iowa, Bachmann claimed that a more scientific explanation for the “Disease” would be that all homosexuals were molested as children. She has also claimed that God has talked to her at length on several occasions.
At Bachmann’s core is a belief that big scary socialist government has overstepped its bounds by not allowing public schools to be religiously affiliated. In her early political career, Bachmann, along with a few other ultra-religious parents, started the New Heights Charter School in Stillwater, Minnesota. Under state law, this publicly funded charter school could not be religiously affiliated. In only a few months Bachmann had managed to transform her dream school into a place where science took a back seat to a radical curriculum in which students were taught concepts like the earth being only five thousand years old.
Bachmann resigned six months after the school’s founding. However the New Heights Charter School became the springboard to Bachmann’s now infamous political career. For several years on her campaign website, a book sympathizing with the beliefs of Robert E. Lee was on her must-reads list, along, of course, with the United States Constitution. The Republican candidates all believe in and sympathize with the majority of the views held by the Tea Party, and Bachmann has been the darling of the ‘party’ through thick and thin.
Texas Governor Rick Perry also claims to be on the side of America’s next generation. Perry was unable to name three government agencies he would cut during a Republican debate. At a recent appearance in New Hampshire, Perry said, “Those of you that will be twenty-one by November the twelfth, I ask for your support and your vote.” The voting age is eighteen, and November twelfth is not a voting day. He asserts on every Fox News appearance, debate, and press conference that natural gas and offshore drilling is the future of this country. He constantly brings up taking away federal regulation and abolishing the EPA and believes that alternative energy is simply not the American way of doing things. Some of Perry’s biggest campaign contributors are oil companies, so it is no surprise that he adores the innocent and oppressed corporations of Exxon and BP. Besides once offering secession from the union as a possible plan of action, Perry has also claimed that climate change research is still too up in the air and, to be clear, he wasn’t alluding to greenhouse gases.
​There is no doubt that the election of 2012 will be incredibly close. Young voters may be microscopic in population compared to the numbers of adults that vote, but they will still play a major role in the election. With such fervent rhetoric coming from the right, it is important for young voters to see which candidates are looking out for our best interests. With candidates that believe social security is a Ponzi scheme, the earth is five thousand years old, global warming isn’t real, and that homosexuality is satanic, young Americans will hopefully take a second look at these people who claim to have our best interests at heart.