It was February 2016 and Donald Trump stood on the stage in a ballroom at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, soaking in his victory in the Nevada caucuses – his third straight primary season triumph – and he riffed on the win.

“We won the evangelicals, we won with young, we won with old, we won with highly educated, we won with poorly educated,” Trump said as he broke down the demographics of his coalition of supporters in the Silver State.

“I love the poorly educated,” he said in a now-famous line from his victory speech.

I’m beginning to think all the Republican Party loves the poorly educated – so much so, they’re willing to do whatever they can to keep them that way.

What is Dolly Parton's Imagination Library?

The latest evidence of that is the efforts by the GOP all over the country to either slash or defund Dolly Parton's Imagination Library – a program created by the beloved country music icon that sends free books each month to children from birth to their 5th birthday.

In some states, the Republicans have complained and said some of the books are not age appropriate. In Kentucky, they went from griping that some of the books aren’t printed in the United States to not explaining exactly what their trouble is.

They just cut the budget and didn't say why.

Currently, Kentucky spends $2.5 million a year on the program – sharing the cost evenly with local Imagination libraries in each of the state’s 120 counties.

The most recent effort to kill the program here has come with a state legislative conference committee proposing to slash the state’s contribution from 50% of the cost of the program to just 33% – a move that could cause the state’s local organizations to shut down.

That’s absolutely sinful in a state where more than half the children aren’t ready for kindergarten when they enter school.

The Imagination Library helps kindergarten test scores

According to testing performed on incoming kindergarteners during the 2024-25 school year, only 46% of Kentucky 5-year-olds got a score of 70 or above on a test that asked things like their name, address, date of birth, whether they knew the alphabet, whether they could count to 30 and whether they knew the difference between the front cover and back cover of books.

The last question is an indicator of whether the kids are exposed to books at home. Some aren't.

Unfortunately, the state Department of Education doesn’t keep question-level data that would show how many kids couldn’t tell the difference between the front and the back. That’s too bad, because I suspect it would be enlightening. And frightening.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library appears to help with this. According to reporter Stephanie Kuzydym, kids who take part in the Dolly Parton program have higher kindergarten readiness scores than those who don’t.

I looked at the list of books being distributed and can’t figure out why anyone would complain about the subject matter of them.

For the younger kids, it’s largely very simple books about counting and animal noises and colors and simple words. For older kids, the books have themes like friendship and self-reliance and nice little stories I would have loved to have read to my daughter when she was younger – like the one about someone trying to hire a rooster to wake everyone.

Most of the books feature animals as their main characters. I didn’t look at all 75 or so books on the list, but among those I reviewed, I didn’t see a single one that dealt with sex – either gay or straight – or genders or anything that seemed likely to offend.

Some of them deal with kindness. If that’s too woke for you, I’m not certain you can be helped. A few are bilingual, which I guess could send the Hispanic haters into a tizzy.

And many of the books are, in fact, printed in the United States, despite the earlier complaints from Kentucky State Sen. Michael Nemes.

The Imagination Library's value outweighs its cost

The benefit per dollar is amazing.

The program costs the state $2.5 million per year and for that, the program provides 12 books a year for 138,000 children from all demographic groups – it doesn’t matter what color, religion, gender the children are, and the amount of money their parents make isn’t a barrier.

That figures out to about $1.51 per book – for the thrill a kid gets from getting a package in the mail and the learning they get from reading the book with their parents.

And unlike a library book, the book belongs to the kid, and they’ll be able to read their favorite ones over and over instead of having to return it after a few weeks on their shelf.

It’s cost effective. It provides books to kids in all socioeconomic groups, and it increases their readiness for kindergarten. And for many, the books can start a lifetime love for learning.

It seems like the only reason not to like it is if you love the poorly educated.

And you want to keep them that way.

Joseph Gerth is a columnist for the Louisville Courier Journal, where this column originally appeared.

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