I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis. There's a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. Florida Governor Jeb Bush has found it's true.
When California anti-affirmative action activist Ward Connerly asked for Bush's help engineering a similar ballot initiative in Florida, Bush declined. But Bush created an alternative he called "One Florida," a middle-of-the-road approach to university admissions that gave a college place to the top 20% of each high schools grads. Liberal columnist Clarence Page and State Senator Daryl Jones, head of the Senate Black Caucus, all liked it.
Four months later, Jones and other affirmative action zealots were calling Bush a dictator and a white supremacist. Liberals used the banner of the Civil Rights movement as a shield for partisan attacks. A march was led on the capital by feminist Patricia Ireland and – never one to miss a TV opp — Jesse Jackson.
And all of this, I stress, to protest a governor who tried to carve out a sensible, middle-ground approach to a thorny problem. Bush probably wishes he'd just kept his mouth shut.
Those are my ideas, and at the NCPA we know ideas can change the world. I'm Pete du Pont. Next time, MSA success stories.