Remember when Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) had a formidable lead in the 2021 Virginia governor’s race and was widely expected to win?
And then he lost.
It hasn’t been an incredibly long time since the state voted Republican—it was 2004 when the state voted for George W. Bush in the presidential election—but it’s been trending blue ever since. Despite a reputation as a battleground state, Joe Biden won it by 10 points, signaling that the transformation to a solid blue state was complete.
Republican Glenn Youngkin’s once-longshot campaign achieved a stunning victory over Democrat McAuliffe, and it was the issue of parental rights in education that ultimately turned Youngkin from campaign underdog to victor.
As we all know, McAuliffe made a gross miscalculation about the importance of parental rights in education. While many in the Democratic Party are okay with indoctrinating kids on transgender ideology and critical race theory, most are not. And when it comes to protecting our kids, parental instincts trump party loyalty.
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And yet, curiously, the left hasn’t learned from their defeat. They are actively campaigning against the Parental Rights in Education bill recently signed into law in Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis. The law prevents schools from teaching kids third grade and younger about sexuality and gender. While this seems like a rather reasonable concept, the radical left, desperately wanting to use the classroom to indoctrinate young kids about radical gender theory, falsely smears the bill as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”
At the moment, it doesn’t seem to be working. Recent polling shows that over 60 percent of U.S. voters support the language of the bill.
“Big-government Democrats have made it their number one priority over the last year to wage a war on parents, from colluding with union bosses to keep kids shut out of schools, to trying to label parents as domestic terrorists for taking an active interest in their kids’ education by speaking out at school board meetings,” says House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.). “Now, Biden and his extremist allies are doubling down on this insanity by trying to force sex education on five-year-olds without the consent of their parents.”
Scalise also sees parallels between the left’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education lawsand what happened in the Virginia gubernatorial election last year. “As we saw in Virginia, parents will not stand for this and will not support a political party that tries to take away their rights to have a say in their kids’ education,” Scalise added. “Republicans will continue to stand up for parents and kids against this liberal lunacy and government control, and that’s one of the many reasons we will win back the House in November.”
Republican strategist Matt Wolking, who was Glenn Youngkin’s communications director, sees that Democrats haven’t learned a thing since their defeat in Virginia.
“It’s the Terry McAuliffe strategy all over again,” Wolking said. “McAuliffe’s campaign was all about January 6, his claims that Virginia’s economic growth and cost of living were just fine, defending critical race theory and opposing parents’ rights in education, including curriculum transparency. Now Democrats nationwide are running on the exact same platform. It’s like they saw McAuliffe lose decisively in a state Biden won by 10 points and thought, ‘hold my beer.’”
If sexualizing and indoctrinating kids is the hill that Democrats want to die on, they are going to find themselves out of power very quickly.
