2024 will not be like 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/desant...e-of-moms-for-liberty-cdb89fc?mod=djem10point DeSantis, Trump and Other 2024 GOP Campaigns Take Notice of Moms for Liberty Members are shaping a new Republican Party platform on education NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.—In recent weeks, Tara Wood has introduced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a gathering of conservative activists, brought people to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s campaign launch and is talking to the Trump campaign about meeting with the former president. Wood is president of the Charleston County, S.C., chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nationwide organization that has become an influential force in the GOP presidential primary. The group, which didn’t exist during the 2020 race, has become the loudest voice advocating for greater parental involvement in schools. Members are helping shape a new education platform for the Republican Party in 2024. “The moms in this country, they’re going to save America,” said Wood, who has a 14-year-old daughter and a 28-year-old stepson. She quit her job as a real-estate agent to focus full time on her efforts to change what students are taught in schools. Moms for Liberty is technically nonpartisan but largely attracts conservative women. What started as a grassroots entity of moms working to change their local school boards’ votes on coronavirus restrictions and curriculums has morphed into a nationwide network with more than 100,000 members and 275 chapters. Members are pushing to revamp the U.S. education system with policies aimed at limiting teachings on gender, race and sex in schools; banning books they deem inappropriate; and placing limits on transgender students in school sports. GOP presidential candidates are trying to tap into Moms for Liberty’s powerful networks to gain an edge in states that hold early nominating contests, including South Carolina, which is third behind Iowa and New Hampshire. Candidates have courted the group’s leaders and members, inviting them to key campaign events and holding listening sessions over pizza and barbecue. And, after intensive lobbying efforts by the group, some top Republican hopefuls have reflected their proposals in campaign platforms or legislative efforts. <snip> Moms for Liberty doesn’t plan to endorse in the GOP primary. Candidates will have to court its members individually or in small groups, like the one gathered over coffee on a recent spring day outside of Charleston. These members of the Berkeley County South Carolina chapter of Moms for Liberty described in interviews why no candidate is their clear favorite. Those who want Trump back in the White House say it is because they view him as the strongest fighter, and they believe he would get their education priorities implemented if elected. Those lining up behind DeSantis say he has the record—including signing a bill restricting teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in public school—and has a better chance at winning a general election. “Trump is the only one who has the chutzpah to be able to do away with that bureaucracy,” said grandmother Peggy Lassanske, 76, referring to the education department and government. Lassanske voted for Trump twice, put out yard signs and made phone calls for him in 2020. She has not committed to any candidate and wants someone to earn her vote. April Coleman, 49, with three teenagers, said she has a “Trump girl” hat and Trump flags she can pull back out if he is the nominee. But she is going to support either DeSantis or Scott because she worries the former president is too divisive in a general election. “I just want to win,” she said. Christi Dixon, 54, a mom of four kids between ages 14 and 31, chairs the Berkeley County chapter and is undecided on whom to support, though she has been heartened to see candidates “recognize that the movement for parental rights has gained traction and it’s gonna be important in the next election.” Moms for Liberty is a nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors, and founders say it is funded by donations and merchandise sales. Two political-action committees run from the group are focused on school board and superintendent races. DeSantis has held listening sessions over pizza and barbeque with Moms for Liberty members in the general election battleground states of Michigan and Georgia. Earlier this year, he met with Moms for Liberty founders to discuss endorsements for school-board candidates and spoke at their summit last year. Trump’s team offered a chance for members of Iowa chapters to take a photo with him and reserved special seating for them at an event. Vivek Ramaswamy, founder of a biopharmaceutical company, has held town-hall gatherings with Moms for Liberty members in Iowa and South Carolina. Ramaswamy said he signed the group’s parent pledge, a promise to push the issue, “to provide empowerment to parents and to moms in particular across the country who are concerned about their kids’ education.” The concept of changing what kids are taught in schools has had mixed success in a general election. Tiffany Justice, a Moms for Liberty cofounder, said roughly half of 270 candidates endorsed by her group won their seats in the 2022 midterms. An April Wall Street Journal poll found that 59% of GOP primary voters favored withholding federal funding from schools that teach concepts related to systemic racism, while 33% of the general electorate backed such a move.
It's funny how conservatives have trained me to distrust any group with "liberty" in the name. Other positive-sounding terms now with sinister overtones are freedom, patriots, and America. I like all those things, but if someone else tells me they're for them, I stay away.
@basso moms for liberty is one of the most destructive groups in the nation, please don't tell us you support those wackos
doesn't matter whether I support them; they're a force in the republican primary that didn't exist in 2020. they'll be a force in the general as well.
They will, in a sense...since they'll be the lunatics out there screaming about more of the culture war nonsense that tends to not win in the general for the GOP. So, let the the Karen's scream.
I wish they gave a bigger **** about their kids performance in education over educating them on how to perform. There's only one prom queen and football MVP. My sister's school district in Austin burbs has a lot of white families move away because they don't like their kids competing with South Asian and East Asian families. Supposedly they're worried their kids feel discouraged and not empowered from the stronger emphasis on education the other kids have. Eight of the top ten were South Asian and the valedictorian was East Asian. Sounds kinda familiar to the articles posted in this forum about certain education being taught as patriarchal or rooted in a colonialist past, a subtle bigotry of lowered expectations but enforced on an ad hoc level by people with means to do it
could you elaborate on this? first I've heard of white parents pulling their kids out of a school over fears of competing academically.
By "liberty", they mean just putting endless restrictions on things. Liberty to not be allowed to read various books. Liberty to not be allowed to learn or talk about certain topics.
They may as well be called "The Karens that don't want any kids to learn anything they don't understand"
Looks to me like an astro-turf organization. Founded by some well-connected people and they echo much of Ron DeSantis' own talking points. They've expanded very rapidly geographically in a short amount of time. Suggests to me they're getting bankrolled by a couple of very rich politicos that want to make it seem like DeSantis' war on education is a grassroots movement. And, who knows, it might be a fake-it-until-you-make-it thing, and a year from now ten million karens really will genuinely care about these things because MFL told them they should.
This is the kind of thing my group, American Patriots for American Liberties and Freedoms First will stand against.
