By Elois Zeanah
President, Alabama Federation of Republican Women
Long-time AEA boss and head of the Democratic Party, Paul Hubbert, had a parting shot for the Republican Party. He brazenly asked Democrats to run as Republicans in the 2012 elections. By running under the banner of the Republican Party and getting elected, Democrats could get back to the business of controlling the political agenda. Ah, the subversive nature of stealth politics: gain power through duplicity.
Hidden agendas are common in politics. But AEA boss Hubbert is a master of the art. As head of AEA and the Democratic Party, his agenda was anything but transparent. While claiming to represent teachers and students, Hubbert all the while worked against education reform to gain power for political bosses. As Representative Mike Hubbard pointed out in weekly columns while Chairman of the Republican Party, Hubbert:
- routinely blocked efforts to reform public education,
- put salaries for administrators first and needs of students last,
- killed bills to protect teachers by giving them free liability insurance to shield them from lawsuits, to reward good teachers with performance-pay bonuses, to weed out bad teachers through tenure reform, and to provide competition in public schools by allowing charter schools, etc.
Hubbert cleverly manipulated public opinion and meddled in Republican primaries by motivating Democrats to flood Republican primaries as crossover votes to pick the weaker GOP candidates to run against Democrats in the general election. His latest call to action to Democrats is to get them to run in Republican races in 2012.
Beware of stealth candidates whose goal is to win Republican races to occupy state and county positions to “take back” the Democratic agenda under the Republican banner. If we remain vigilant, we can give this “occupy movement” a black eye!
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