The Indiana State Teachers Association: Biting Off Its Nose To Spite Its Face

By Rob Janicki
You know the political world in America is really screwed up when liberals turn on each other with an irrational vengeance to be exercised to the political death.  Let the following case serve as a warning to conservatives.  Turn on your own in some fit of pique for lack of conservative purity and suffer the consequences.

[...]  Occasionally an organization does us all a favor and exposes just how morally bankrupt it is. The Indiana State Teachers Association did just that recently.

In a self-defeating hissy fit, and in a clear effort to punish a Democrat who has occasionally strayed from the union on education reforms, ISTA’s leaders have endorsed a conservative Republican state senator who opposes nearly every one of the organization’s positions.  [...]

Hopefully, this illustration will sink in for conservatives.  Politics is the art of negotiation and compromise.  Ronald Reagan said it best, "Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all."

Republicans may not have nominated the conservative presidential candidate we might have hoped for, but Romney's the candidate and for conservatives to give anything but their best effort in getting him elected is simply an act of self destruction.  Apparently Indiana teachers haven't learned this lesson.

[...]  It’s another reminder of increasing intolerance in modern-day politics, wherein partisans and special-interest groups insist on ideological purity, pushing both parties further to the fringes along the way. It’s the kind of thinking that sends moderates such as Richard Lugar into forced retirement and turns off the vast American middle, which looks at politics with increasing disdain.  [...]

If conservatives want to win, they must be willing to yield on tactics to some degree and from time to time.  Conservatives need moderates and independents as much as liberals need these groups.

[...]  In this case, the teachers union has endorsed state Sen. Brent Waltz over his Democratic challenger, state Rep. Mary Ann Sullivan, in what is expected to be a tight battle for a district that includes parts of Marion and Johnson counties. Waltz gained the endorsement even though he, unlike Sullivan, has supported education funding cuts and opposed an expansion of full-day kindergarten. He has voted for a host of education reforms the union opposes, including a voucher law that ISTA so despises that it backed a legal challenge to it.  [...]

When hate rears its ugly head, nothing good can result.  Read the entire article, enjoy the self inflicted pain of the Indiana teachers for the moment, but be warned.  Learn from the lesson of these Indiana Democrats or possibly fall into the same trap.