Chris Lawrence:

As a black, conservative activist in southeastern Wisconsin, I am often invited to speak to various groups on how we expand our base, grow the conservative movement, and reach out to communities that do not vote for conservatives in large numbers. I recently spoke about this very topic at a Dane County GOP Pints and Politics. As I told the activists there, the solution is understanding the first rule of politics: showing up. I learned this rule as I got my start in conservative activism.

However, prior to learning the lesson of showing up, I was not someone who was born into conservativism. In fact, I didn’t even personally know a conservative. I graduated from a Milwaukee Public School in 2005, grew up in a liberal city, and had no concept of what a Republican or a conservative was. But you know what? I also had no concept of what a Democrat was, other than that I was supposed to be one because I am young and black – and that is just the way the chips fall.

My first interest in politics arose out of then-President Obama’s reelection efforts, beginning in 2010-2011 after the Tea Party came to power. I was a young student in college with a family, and politics began to interest me. I started watching MSNBC and the late progressive, Ed Schultz, and his nightly cable news show. He, like me at the time, was a champion for President Obama. I even once volunteered for Milwaukee liberal State Senator Lena Taylor. While I was not a member of the Democratic Party, I was certainly a supporter and voted for Democrats. For a brief time, I was also a small donor and helped register voters for President Obama.

My opening to the Republican Party began as I took interest in who the possible opponents were to President Obama, which led me to watch the Republican debates. Those debates included Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and a few other notable Republicans. I watched all of them, and as the debates went on, I took interest in the Republican candidate who went after Republicanism. That candidate was Congressman Ron Paul. He opened my eyes to true conservatism – aggressively cutting spending, cutting and even removing government agencies and departments, an America-first foreign policy, and holding Republicans to account for their failure to do these things when they controlled government – policies similar to those supported by the Freedom Caucus and conservative leaders like Congressman Jim Jordan today.

Ron Paul provided a stark, clear contrast between conservatism and liberalism. After that, I saw few differences between the other Republicans on stage to the Democrat I was supporting. At that point, I jumped on the Paul train and never looked back, leaving my liberal past behind me.

My conversion was happening during the same time of the infamous recall election of then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The recall began in November 2011, at the very time I was going through my own political conversion. The only thing that prevented me from signing the recall petition was timing. That is the only reason you will never see my name on the recall petition.

This brings me to why I’m writing this article. The only way for the conservative movement to grow is for people like my former self to hear and be exposed to a conservative message. That requires showing up. But it also requires accepting converts into the conservative movement and supporting converts to conservatism who run for office on a conservative agenda.

I have been watching the Republican Primary in the 3^rd Congressional District – a seat Democratic Congressman Ron Kind currently holds. There is a young conservative candidate running, Jessi Ebben, who shares a similar story to mine. Jessi Ebben is a convert to conservatism, and her campaign has been endorsed by rock-solid conservatives in the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Jim Jordan, Debbie Lesko, and others. These are the same conservatives who not only fight against big-government liberalism but big-government Republicanism. The Freedom Caucus has been the greatest supporters of President Trump and has stood by him even when some in the Republican party has been slow to defend the President. I have met many others like Ebben and me. I have learned that converts to conservatism are some of the greatest supporters and defenders of the President and our movement.

Ebben’s story slightly differs from mine. Her conversion to conservatism happened after the recall election, and she signed the recall petition. Like just about everyone, in college, I was just beginning to think critically. And I’m sure the same is true of Ebben. It is foolish and self-sabotaging for Republicans or conservatives to punish people for converting to conservatism, and for signing a recall petition as a young college student – especially when they can eloquently describe why they are a conservative today.

More important, outright rejecting converts to conservatism is a path to building a permanent minority. The only way for the conservative movement to grow and win elections is to accept – and actually seek out converts like me and Jessi. I generally don’t get involved in elections out of my area, and I am not getting involved in this race, other than to say we need to build a young, energetic, conservative movement and not concede the future to progressivism.

I am all for primaries being vigorously contested on the basis of ideas, but the outright rejection and badmouthing of people for views they held before converting to conservatism will only lead us down a path of losing future elections to the likes of Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and the far left.

John Daniel Davidson:

It’s not enough that public school teachers and the college professors who train them are increasingly prone to teaching leftist absurdities like “2+2=5” or presenting the mendacious 1619 Project as legitimate American history. Teachers unions are now trying to blackmail the entire country into meeting a set of leftist political demands for reopening the schools this fall, using COVID-19 as their excuse.

Of course, the pandemic certainly presents challenges for re-opening schools, but other sectors of society have managed to rise to the occasion over the past several months to keep the country running. Grocery stores clerks, truck drivers, warehouse workers, and of course police, firefighters, doctors, and nurses—all have kept working, sometimes under tough conditions and sometimes at great personal risk.

Then there are teachers unions. More than any other group during this pandemic, teachers unions have shown themselves to be abjectly selfish, hyper-political, and totally intransigent about teaching during the pandemic. They are willing to lie about the science behind COVID-19 transmission and shamelessly stoke fear to advance their partisan agenda. Just about the last thing these unions seem to care about is educating children or helping the country get back on its feet.

On Monday, an alliance of teachers unions and leftist groups in dozens of states staged a “National Day of Resistance,” issuing a series of demands that they say must be met before their members will return to the classroom. What do they want? Rents and mortgages canceled, a “massive infusion of federal money” from “taxing billionaires and Wall Street,” moratoriums on new charter schools and voucher programs and standardized tests, and of course “police-free schools,” among other things.

Some teachers unions have gone a step further. In New York City, one group is demanding teachers not be required to return to school until a minimum of 14 days have passed after any new COVID-19 cases, claiming their lives are at risk if schools open (despite evidence to the contrary in Europe and Asia). During protests Monday, hundreds of NYC teachers marched with handmade coffins and a guillotine, chanting wording to slogans like “children can’t learn if they’re dead.”

Elsewhere in the country, it’s more of the same. In Massachusetts, the state’s second-largest teachers union is demanding remote-only instruction. In Austin, Texas, the teachers union has issued a lengthy list of demands including no in-person instruction until mid-November at least, a guarantee of full pay with no layoffs or furloughs, and all employees having the right to refuse to return to work if they feel unsafe. Earlier this month, a large teachers union in Los Angeles demanded everything listed above as well as things the city’s school district has no power to do, like the passage of Medicare for All, a California wealth tax, a federal bailout of the school district, and defunding the local police.
Beyond these nakedly political demands, many unions want their teachers to get paid for not working. According to a report last week in The New York Times, some unions are trying to limit the amount of time teachers have to spend teaching online each day, all while getting paid in full.

All this amounts to political blackmail. The teachers unions know that millions of parents can’t afford to stay home from work to educate their kids, nor can many afford private school or private tutors. They think they have leverage—and in many places they do, if only because city and state elected officials are unwilling to stand up to them.

What all this presents, for leaders willing to see it, is an opportunity to bust the teachers unions and give power to parents and families. Instead of acceding to the unions’ outrageous demands—many of which have nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with politics—elected officials, either at the state or local level, could issue vouchers to families and let them decide how best to educate their children this fall.

Specifically, they could create education savings accounts, which simply give parents a savings account dedicated to their kids’ education. The state deposits the child’s public education dollars into the account and parents can use it for various things like online classes, a private tutor, private school tuition, whatever. Especially during the pandemic, it’s a nimble way to help people fit their child’s education to specific local circumstances.
This idea isn’t new but it does have new urgency given the extortion scheme teacher unions are running. It’s especially important that parents of underprivileged and special-needs students—who have fared the most poorly with remote learning—be given a chance to find in-person instruction for their kids.

Those who claim to care about such students should be forced to choose a side. Do lawmakers care more about appeasing teachers unions or ensuring our kids get an education? We’re about to find out.

Someone I know observed that had Gov. Scott Walker not gotten Act 10 into law, Wisconsin schools already would have been closed and Wisconsin students condemned to an entire school year of ineffective (or worse) online teaching. And yet, given all the Recallarama crap Walker and the GOP went through, arguably they didn’t go far enough, and instead they should have eliminated public employee unions, especially teacher unions.