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spending for the Department of Education and to eliminate the Department altogether by wide
margins and these proposals permitted Democrats to depict the Republicans as hostile to
education.
The extent of public displeasure with the conservative agenda on education was
revealed forcefully in the 1996 presidential election, when voters ranked education at the top
of their agendas and favored Clinton over Dole on the issue by more than a two to one
margin. Dole’s defeat—after having embraced a conservative platform—contributed to a
growing recognition among many Republicans that the party’s stance on education and other
key issues had been politically costly and that it needed to develop a more appealing domestic
philosophy and policy agenda to compete with Clinton’s popular “Third Way.”26 By
opposing both redistribution and federal programs to equalize opportunity during the 1990s,
Republicans were portrayed effectively by Democrats as mean-spirited, and this public
perception was widely seen as playing a major role in their electoral defeats in the 1992 and
1996 presidential elections. (See Appendix 3 for details on public perceptions of the ability of
the major parties to address education.) The stage was thus set for a reconsideration of the
longstanding Republican opposition to energetic national leadership in education reform
during the late 1990s. The 1994 GOP midterm victories, continuing Republican control of
Congress, and the conservative attacks on the federal role in education, meanwhile, helped
Clinton in his efforts to move the Democratic Party to the center on education and other social
issues. Between 1994 and 1996 education became a decisive electoral issue and the liberal
26 At a meeting of Republican Party leaders convened by the RNC after the election, closing the gender gap was
emphasized as essential to the political future of the Republican Party. The Polling Company, a Republican
consulting firm, declared the education issue to be “a key component of the gender gap.” Texas Governor—and
future president—George W. Bush remarked at the meeting that “the Republican Party must put a compassionate
face on a conservative philosophy…The message to women…is we care about people…There is no question that
from a political perspective, he [Clinton] stole the education issue and it affected the women’s
vote…Republicans must say that we are for education.” As cited in Dan McLean, “GOP Poised to Launch
Offensive on Education” The Hill December 10, 1997.
Convention