Responding to Constantin Querard

by David Safier

I wrote a post yesterday taking Constantin Querard to task for his double standard in an email I quoted in a still earlier post. And I wrote that, once I had opened the Pandora’s box of critiquing Querard’s comments, I wouldn’t be able to stop until I worked my way through the list.

So consider this a continuation of yesterday’s post.

By way of background, Querard is a consultant for right wing Republican candidates, and I pre-judged his political positions from those taken by the candidates he works with. That was unfair of me. At my suggestion, Querard expressed his personal beliefs on a few issues in an email, which I quoted verbatim, so now it’s fair for me to respond to his ideas.

First, let’s look at Querard’s views on education:

Obviously, I’ve never called for less money for public education … I believe that choice in education will save the kids AND the public schools, although my principle concern is for the kids. Too many have already been robbed of a brighter future by failing schools. Folks who argue that choice will kill public schools are implying that, given a choice, parents won’t send their kids to public schools. That is a rather damning indictment of public schools by their own defenders.

When Querard say he wants more money for private school vouchers — that’s what “school choice” means when it’s used by his candidates and by John McCain — it means there’s going to be less for public education, unless the Arizona government has a bottomless pile of money I don’t know about. And since something like 80% of private schools nationwide are religious schools, that means tax dollars would be funding religious education. That’s a very bad idea. So no, the fear isn’t that all children will abandon public schools. It’s that those already in private schools and others whose parents would place them in private schools anyway when they turned five, would be supported by tax dollars we don’t have, and many of those dollars would help erode the wall between church and state.

Querard’s view on the environment:

I love clean energy and live pretty green myself, but I’m opposed to mandating standards.

It’s lovely when good, like-minded people do what they can to clean up the environment. I try to do my part as well. But without government regulation mandating standards, voluntary good will won’t do much to save us from the health problems and potential global disasters that will result if we continue to neglect the environment. Saving the planet from ecological destruction is a vital function of government today. Anyone who doesn’t believe that doesn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation, or figures the rapture is coming soon anyway, so why worry?

And speaking of government’s role in society, here is Querard’s view:

And I want a government that works and does its job. The bigger it gets, the worse it runs, and no one really disagrees with that. Government does a lot of stuff it should not be doing and it does so badly and at great expense. That’s a shame because it consumes resources from those things that government should actually be doing, like providing for our safety/defense and providing a safety net for the truly needy.

As a matter of fact, I do disagree with the notion that “the bigger [government] gets, the worse it runs.” I want government to get a hell of a lot bigger in the area of health care. And environmental protection. And protections against unsafe food and unsafe products. And protections from dangerous working conditions. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, I also want bigger government in the area of financial regulations — you know, so we don’t have another major economic meltdown any time soon. As for what constitutes being “truly needy”: Reagan promised when he cut back on social programs in the 80s, he wouldn’t cut any holes in the safety net. In fact, he tore it to shreds. The Reagan years were the first time in my life I saw homeless people wandering our cities in large numbers and read about more and more families being ground down by poverty with no relief in sight. So, though we both want a “safety net,” I think our definitions of the term are miles apart.

I guess all this means Constantin Querard and I will to continue to agree to disagree. And I’m going to continue to believe the agenda of the candidates he consults for is not only wrong, but dangerous for Arizona and the U.S.