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EducationPoliticsCommentary

Is the GOP the New Education Party?

Rahm Emanuel on October 09, 2025, in the District of Columbia. (Shannon Finney/Getty Images)

Steve Cortes is president of the League of American Workers and advisor to CatholicVote. He directs political campaigns on media, polling, and Hispanic outreach, including Trump 2016/2020 and Vance 2022 U.S. Senate. He is a former broadcaster for Fox News and CNN.

Democrats, please listen to Rahm Emanuel.

Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under former President Barack Obama, stands out as the voice of reason on education and the systemic problems facing his own Democratic Party on this crucial issue. Yes, Rahm Emanuel the progressive former mayor of deeply blue Chicago and longtime President Obama confidant. That Rahm Emanuel.

He recently stated that Democrats “lost the plot” on education. He continued: “you have 50% of our kids not reading at grade level,” and yet Democrats “bring a set of cultural wars to our schools … we are on the losing side of those cultural wars. Full stop.”

Thank you Rahm, for doing my job and writing advertisement and messaging script for Republicans into November’s plebiscites.

He’s right, of course. Various educational metrics and the latest polling prove the saliency of his points. In states where Democrats exert political control, Republicans have a rare chance to legitimately run on a decidedly education-focused agenda.

For example, in Wisconsin over the last decade, spending per pupil soared, rising over $6,000 per year for each child, up 53%. In that same time period, classroom excellence declined markedly, with 60% of Wisconsin children not reading at grade level.

Spending way more for much worse results makes Wisconsin taxpayers and parents angry, and understandably so. In my latest statewide poll there, 67% of voters said that they were not getting “good value” for their education spending, while only 25% affirmed they were. Among seniors, who vote at high rates, 71% believe this “bargain” of increased spending and declining results does not work.

Similarly, Wisconsin citizens are unhappy that the state’s once-vaunted public education system now produces lower test scores than Mississippi. 63% identify that new reality as a “sign of failure.” Even the majority of Kamala Harris 2024 voters concur, with 55% in agreement.

On the spending side, Wisconsin residents also bemoan recent spikes in property taxes, which mostly fund education spending. When asked about tax challenges, 45% of people in the Badger State identify property taxes as the most burdensome, nearly 3 times as many who cited income taxes, in second place.

So, with radical Democrats controlling the governor’s mansion and every significant statewide education office in Wisconsin, the field is fertile for presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany to make a strong case as an education reformer.

He should highlight declining test scores, soaring costs, and Democrats’ focus on woke narratives rather than academic excellence. That level of Democrat misdirection has real world consequences for young people who are simply not learning the skills they need to succeed in our current digital economy. Children of limited means are hardest hit by these failures. Tragically, Wisconsin has the largest achievement gap between black and white children in the entire nation.

When asked about that racial disparity, only 12% said it makes them more likely to vote Democratic vs. 32% who said more likely to not support Democrats, and 48% saying no difference. Even in super blue Dane County, home of the leftist University of Wisconsin at Madison, 21% of voters said they are less likely to vote Democrat because of this achievement gap.

While Wisconsin’s case is an extreme one, it is indicative of a nationwide problem. In blue jurisdictions across the U.S., Republicans have a real shot to run as genuine education reformers.

School districts that focus on time-tested methods of reading, writing, and arithmetic still thrive. Model schools earn educational success by prohibiting mobile phones, limiting the use of technology overall, and involving parents intensely in the educational process. Moreover, the GOP can credibly demand that schools return to the task of academics rather than the Democrat plan of schools as indoctrination labs for secular humanist ideologies. 

With this approach, enunciated powerfully by none other than President Obama’s confidant Rahm Emanuel, opportunity awaits aggressive candidates on the political right. In addition, in places where President Donald Trump and the Iran war are unpopular—like Wisconsin—this education issue provides the chance to make state and local races about those localities, and not nationalized contests.

The 2026 landscape presents a chance for our movement to materially help children across the country and reap the political benefits of doing so. What a fantastic opportunity!

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

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