August 30, 2010
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Ron Sparks Weak Candidate, Needs to Concede Now
Via The Birmingham News:
After weeks of playing nice and agreeing that Alabama deserves a better future, the candidates for governor are starting to show how different they are. At a forum in Arab on Thursday, Republican Robert Bentley and Democrat Ron Sparks disagreed about the role of government in our lives.Bentley opposes a lottery. His response, though, went beyond the question of whether a lottery is the best mechanism for funding college scholarships.
“Since when did it become the job of the government to provide a college eduation to every child?” he asked. “That’s not the government’s job. That’s your job,” he told the crowd.Sparks supports a lottery to fund college scholarships for every Alabama high school graduate who makes decent grades and stays out of trouble. Without it, he said, some deserving students would not be able to afford a college education.
“Not every child grows up in an “Ozzie and Harriet” home,” Sparks responded. “There are some families where mom and dad do the best they can but it’s not enough.”
If Sparks really believes his rhetoric, he needs to concede immediately because he hasn’t promised enough. Why should those who have been hardest hit (working families, women, children and minorities) by Obamanomics be forced to make their house payment, their car payment, their cell phone bill, their cable bill and their vacation? Sparks is too weak on this issue.
