My wife and I are "winter  Texans." We stay five hours from our two sons in metro-Dallas. We are in the Hill Country of Comal County--44 miles from the Alamo, 35 miles from San Antonio airport, perched above  the Guadalupe River's Canyon Lake. We live on the corner of Buckhaven and Doe where deer roam freely across our land.  Here is  a report on recent Texas politics.

Robert H. Offutt of San Antonio is a pediatric dentist with a 1974 medical degree from Baylor University. Since the early 1990s Offutt has been one of 15 elected members of  the State Board of Education. I spoke with him in February [2000] and other Republican candidates in the March primary elections.

Dr. Offutt is a stand-out for straight talk, ideas and deeds. He halted
removal of GRAMMAR books from public schools and reintroduced both phonics-based spelling and SPELLERS to classrooms. He axed textbooks listing homosexual hotlines and displaying co-ed condom shopping exercises. Offutt also fought brainless math textbooks teaching students to "explore" equations, not solve them.  One "rain forest" ALGEBRA TEXTBOOK showed poet Maya Angelou reciting at a Clinton inauguration. Her poetry exemplified PARALLELISM in sentence structure--not notably helpful to kids doing algebra homework.

Dr. Offutt and his wife have five children. He has been President of the
Texas Pediatric Dental Association. His educational district covers 25
Texas counties. In his view public education must acknowledge and support parents as the primary educators. Offutt should have been a shoo-in for party re-nomination and  primary re-election in a heavily conservative part of Texas stretching northwest from San Antonio. But he lost two to one. Why?

Dr. Offutt disputes that Governor George W. Bush has done great things for education. Offutt thunders that Texas education is in terrible shape. He therefore campaigned for Steve Forbes as the wisest Republican on educational issues. Offutt liked Forbes's family-oriented approach and his faith that America's sick government-run schools need more competition from private education.

The San Antonio daily EXPRESS-NEWS killed Offutt's candidacy by
editorializing that, because he was not  a player on the Bush team, he
deserved to be defeated by Dan Montgomery,  an unknown  Republican competitor.  For Montgomery believes that  George W. Bush is "an excellent education governor."

Offutt is conservative, effective and brilliant. His medical specialty puts
him in caring  contact every day with children and parents. But that was not enough for Texas Republicans. A Republican candidate must either fall in line and argue that, thanks to Governor Bush,  public education in Texas is great--or be shunned.

In a 1930s' classic cartoon two Cockneys sit on a wall watching the armed might of the British Empire march, roll,  float and fly by. One says: "Gawd help anyone who spits on the flag today!" In Texas, most Republicans  are in similar awe of the political muscle of George W. Bush .

-OOO-

for INDEPENDENT TORCH