Michelle Rhee: My Break With the Democrats

[HiPointDem]

13. Democrats flee StudentsFirst, cite conservative policy stance

Last edited Wed Feb 6, 2013, 08:18 AM - Edit history (1)

“Rhee purported to be the face of a bipartisan movement to “transform education,” while simultaneously battling Democratic teachers unions and appearing chummy in photo ops with conservative Republican governors like Rick Scott (Fla.) or John Kasich (Ohio).

All the while, a small cadre of influential Democrats stood behind her, helping her craft messages on things like her positions on unions (that they are entitled to collective bargaining on salary issues), and trying to fend off attacks from the progressive community (one in particular thwacked her explicitly for her right-wing contacts). But in the last few months, these Democrats — including the group’s vice president of communications, Hari Sevugan, as first reported by education blogger Alexander Russo — have left the group, ceding control to a group of new hires, including president Kahlil Byrd.

Dmitri Mehlhorn, the group’s former COO, has left to lead Bloomberg Law. Mike Phillips, who served as Rhee’s chief of staff for communications, took a leave of absence this fall to work on Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-Conn.) campaign, but ultimately never rejoined. Tali Stein, a former Hillary Clinton fundraiser who led StudentsFirst’s development, left two months ago to focus on other projects. Ximena Hartsock, a Democratic lobbyist, also left.

“There were known to be some significant differences on political strategy and policy matters, especially in StudentsFirst’s approach toward unions and partisanship,” said ao be named in order to preserve working relationships.”

http://www.rheefirst.com/democrats-flee-studentsfirst-cite-conservative-policy-stance


Rhee says she is no longer a democrat; possibly because her cozying up to murdoch, koch, scott walker, etc. has made that claim increasingly untenable.

Remember Michelle Rhee? She has stripped Tennessee teachers of their collective bargaining rights. She likes to pretend that she’s a moderate, but, her record proves otherwise. She played a role in passing an anti-union bill and even co-authored an op-ed with Former Republican Senate Leader Bill Frist.

She is the former Chancellor of DC Public Schools whose record has been debunked by a major cheating scandal. She left DC and opened StudentsFirst with major donations from Wall Street tycoons, including Rupert Murdoch. She now travels around the country and works mainly with conservative Republicans like Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley to (as I mentioned above) limit collective bargaining for teachers, institute private charter schools and promote private for-profit cyber schools.

Rhee recently attended a ceremony MC’d by Foster Friess, who just happens to be the bag of cash man bankrolling the Rick Santorum SuperPAC. She and her husband accepted an award at the Joe Foss Institute, an organization that has very close ties to the NRA and some other lovely right wing groups.

Yes, there she is, with a Cheshire Cat grin, posing with the Koch-loving, Islam-hating, Santorum-backing, Tea Party Patriot MC Foster Friess.

Let’s spice this up with a Friess quote:

Image from http://www.ksvoboda.com/?p=1410

“The Kochs are a national treasure. They’re true patriots.”

And just for bad measure, here’s Foster Friess doing his best to scare us silly with his introduction of the Islamophobic video, Obsession...

This is the club of which Michelle Rhee is an honored member...

http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/02/09/guns-rick-santorum-the-koch-brothers-islamophobia-and-michelle-rhee/

and democrats appear to be deserting rhee, possibly because the corruption is boiling over to the point where it can't be hidden from the public much longer.