Having worn out his state, Ryan Walters finds a new lost cause through which to do damage, get paid, stay on television
No, he hasn’t resigned yet.
Grandstanding at what you’d think to be his final Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting on Thursday, he began a sentence with, “As long as I’m in this office …” which has all the makings of punking the entire state and not resigning.
Nonetheless, it appears we’re a day or days away from Ryan Walters’ joining his next lost cause, because lost causes are what he traffics.
Even as a Republican state superintendent backed by Republican supermajorities in both state legislative houses, he still had to invent enemies, causes and forces upon which to fight.
There was porn in schools, he said, but there wasn’t and even if there might have been, nobody’d given it any thought until he began telling everybody there was.
The teachers unions are terrorist organizations, he said, all the while presenting no emails, memos, manifestos or any evidence revealing their intentions to turn Oklahoma students into left-wing, over-woke, long-hair, multi-gendered, drag-queen-becoming radicals.
Good teachers have long tried teaching students to think for themselves, to be curious, thoughtful and without bias and their unions may well have supported that and crazies like Walters may well have mistaken it to be grooming, but that doesn’t make them right, only stupid, which is their own fault, not teachers.
Despite what he said at Thursday’s state board meeting, he must be on the way out because he went on Fox News late Wednesday night to announce he’d soon become CEO of Teacher Freedom Alliance, a teacher union alternative and offshoot of the Freedom Foundation, whose website, if you go to it right now, features a picture of six suited white men standing around a table at which Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds a just-signed document.
I don’t know what the document is, but I’m sure it’s a terrible idea.
So, Walters told Fox News he was leaving his state superintendent’s job; about the same time Teacher Freedom Alliance posted his photo on Twitter welcoming him into his new job; according to a Freedom Foundation press release his first day at his new job will be October. 1.
Yes, I think we’re rid of him.
Back to lost causes.
Do demagogues set out to be demagogues or do they just become them because it turns out they crave the attention, the fame, the hero-of-their-own-story role and the money it can all turn into?
In no place can you monetize bad intentions and charisma like America, especially among the not-that-educated masses who’ve been made to believe the sky’s falling already.
The trick, though, is not winning.
You wonder if Walters was secretly relieved when a 4-4 U.S. Supreme Court tie meant no public charter online virtual Catholic High School, an ambition the archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the diocese of Tulsa have since abandoned.
Because had the charter been approved, his whole religious-freedom-under-attack line might have to have been forfeited.
When he announced Bibles in every classroom, or a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk, he knew he’d face resistance and never get the funding on the former, nor the cooperation on the latter.
But defeat suited him because it meant more time on Fox News and other right-wing media, not to mention in the imagination, hearts and minds of salt-of-the-earth Oklahomans he’d radicalized to his side.
He was their defender against a world coming for them, their faith, their values, never mind it wasn’t happening, the Constitution protecting all of us.
The state auditor had lambasted him, the attorney general had opposed him procedurally and attacked him politically and the governor had given up on him, a pain in the ass he’d become exhausted defending.
All of it served Walters’ aims and needs until it didn’t, until his act became too tired, his friends became enemies, he’d lost majority support in his own party, leaving no office he could run for and win, no path to redemption in the state that made him.
Enter the next lost cause.
Here was Walters speaking to Fox News’ Trace Gallagher Wednesday night.
“We’re going to destroy the teachers’ unions. We have seen the teachers’ unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools.
“We are one of the biggest grassroots organizations in the country. We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers’ unions once and for all.
“So this fight’s going national and we get our schools back on track. We will not allow any further union control.”
As reported by The Oklahoman’s Murray Evans, the Teacher Freedom Alliance claims to have 2,617 member teachers.
Some army.
As of the 2022-23 school year, says the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 42,000 public school teachers were employed in Oklahoma alone.
“Liberal’s worst nightmare is about to come true,” tweeted Walters teasing his Fox appearance, failing to put his apostrophe in the right place along the way.
Really?
He’s going to take over education in America with 2,600 like-minded teachers?
The ultimate lost cause.
But I’m sure it pays regular.
Click on that picture of Sarah Huckabee Sanders surrounded by six white men and you’ll hear this:
“The Freedom Foundation is not your average Think Tank. The Freedom Foundation is a battle tank.
“Our job is to defend the rights of public employees against the nation’s biggest bullying government unions. Government unions are the largest single funder of the radical left in America.
“They take money directly out of the pockets of hard working teachers and other public employees to impose their extremist agenda, which now includes advocating for socialism, defunding the police and sexualizing our children with their sick gender ideology.”
Just the content and tone to bring a nation together.
Walters will fit right in.
If we’re lucky, there’s an office waiting for him on the Freedom Foundation’s campus, located in Olympia, Washington.
What will we do without him?
Personally, insanity extracted and outrage lessened, I’m bound to lose a few readers.
A trade I’ll take every day.
Far more important:
A state department of education that brings back the experts, gets fully staffed, does the regular work to support students and teachers, that adds value throughout, that’s a-freaking-political.
A state board of education that reinforces that work, debates in good faith, that’s de-politicized, works for students, families and teachers, that’s no longer poisoned by the blind ambition of its leader.
Exponentially raised teacher morale.
Kevin Stitt gave him to us.
Legislative Republicans refused to move against him.
We should remember that.
But he’s leaving.
Rejoice.
Good riddance to “pick me Donald” Walters.