Romney: I think Secretary Duncan has done some good things. He’s the current Secretary of Education. I hope that’s not heresy in the room. But he, for instance, has a program called Race to the Top which encourages schools to have more choice, more testing of kids, more evaluation of teachers. Those are things I think make some sense. But for me, get that back to the state level.
The last sentence makes clear that while Romney supports some of the ideas behind Race to the Top, he thinks those educational policies ought to be handled at the state, rather than federal, level — which mirrors the traditional conservative view.
We should note that in 2010, Massachusetts won $250 million in Race to the Top funds (though Romney wasn’t governor at the time); and Texas, under Perry, is one of several states that have never competed for the grants.
We should also note that Romney hasn’t always been against federal education initiatives. When Romney last ran for president, he said during a Republican debate on May 15, 2007, that he supported President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.”
Asked for an instance in which “learning from experience led you to change a position that is less popular with the Republican base,” Romney responded:
Romney, 2007: One is No Child Left Behind. I’ve taken a position where, once upon a time, I said I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. That was my position when I ran for Senate in 1994. That’s very popular with the base.
As I’ve been a governor and seen the impact that the federal government can have holding down the interest of the teachers’ unions and instead putting the interests of the kids and the parents and the teachers first, I see that the Department of Education can actually make a difference. So I supported No Child Left Behind. I still do. I know there are a lot in my party that don’t like it, but I like testing in our schools. I think it allows us to get better schools, better teachers; allows us to let our kids have the kind of hope that they ought to have.
And one last note, Romney wasn’t the only candidate on the stage to ever say something nice about Race to the Top. In the Sept. 7 Republican debate in California, Newt Gingrich said, “I liked very much the fact that it [Race to the Top] talked about charter schools. It’s the one place I found to agree with President Obama.”
Romney’s False Rocket Claim
Romney attacked Obama’s stance on Israel, but one claim went too far:
Romney, Sept. 22: The president went about this all wrong. He went around the world and apologized for America. He — he addressed the United Nations in his inaugural address and chastised our friend, Israel, for building settlements and said nothing about Hamas launching thousands of rockets into Israel.
Romney is referring to President Obama’s first-ever address to the United Nations in September 2009. It is true that Obama criticized Israel for building settlements. He said, “[W]e continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” But Romney’s claim that Obama said “nothing” about rockets is untrue. Obama not only said, “We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel,” he made specific reference to suffering caused by rocket attacks:
Obama, Sept. 2009: We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It’s not paid by politicians. It’s paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night. It’s paid for by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own.
Furthermore, Obama again denounced the rocket attacks only the day before the GOP debate. In his most recent address to the United Nations on Sept. 21, 2011, he said:
Obama, Sept. 2011: Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them.
And it’s worth noting that official U.S. disapproval of Israeli settlements dates back before Obama. In June 2008, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Israel’s plan to build 1,300 homes in East Jerusalem was “simply not helpful to building confidence” in the peace negotiations. She also said that “the continued building and the settlement activity has the potential to harm the negotiations going forward.” Israel’s plan to expand settlements in June 2008 also received criticisms from the Bush White House and the United Nations.
Perry vs. ‘Romneycare’
Perry exaggerated when he claimed that Romney’s own economic adviser called the Massachusetts health care plan “an absolute bust.” The adviser, R. Glenn Hubbard, never used that phrase in the paper he co-authored last year, and his criticism dealt only with the impact on employer-sponsored insurance premiums, not the entire plan.
In that same exchange, Perry was correct that Romney edited his paperback version of “No Apology” to remove a reference to the Massachusetts plan serving as a model for the nation. But he went too far when suggesting that Romney would like to impose his state’s health care plan on the federal level. The evidence shows that Romney saw his plan as a potential model for other states to replicate, but tailored to their own unique situations.
Perry: Speaking of books and talking about being able to have things in your books, back and forth, your economic adviser talked about Romneycare and how that was an absolute bust. And it was exactly what Obamacare was all about.
As a matter of fact, between books, your hard copy book, you said it was exactly what the American people needed, to have that Romneycare given to them as you had in Massachusetts. Then in your paperback, you took that line out. So, speaking of not getting it straight in your book sir, that would be a –
Fox News’ Megyn Kelly: Governor Romney?…
Romney: I actually wrote my book, and in my book I said no such thing.
Romney did not address the claim about his economic adviser, but we will.
Read the rest of FactCheck.org's analysis of the debate at their site.
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