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How The Fordham Foundation Is Like Hillary Clinton: They Both Refuse To Apologize

By Alexander Russo — March 01, 2007 1 min read
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There’s only so long you can maintain an incoherent position let the blog-gnats keep biting at you before you have to swat them down, even if you’re a big bad Washington think tank. (I mean “bad” in the good sense, as in powerful.)

And so, barely beating the happy hour rush, Fordhamites Finn and Petrilli sent over a new commentary in which they, far as I can tell, re-explain their highly nuanced feelings on NCLB and describe how misunderstood they’ve been.

Now this is fun.In essence, this little piece tells you to forget that Mike Petrilli handed in his NCLB pin (coulda got big bucks for it on eBay, Mike) and called NCLB “beyond repair” in a highly publicized NRO piece. Forget that Petrilli pushed national standards, not NCLB reform, on the law’s 5th anniversary.

That’s way over-simplified, you guys. Be fair.

In a nutshell, Finn and Petrilli want a “do-over” on NCLB -- and on explaining themselves. They were temporarily blinded by NCLB’s charms and only recently came to see its flaws. It’s not a flip-flop, though. It’s a “return” to original principals. They are still for NCLB, always were, and are glad it happened. They just don’t want it any more. I mean, they liked it before, but that was a mistake. But they’re not going to apologize. And they still believe what they always believed. That hasn’t changed.

Get it? Pretty confused nuanced stuff, at least for my pea-sized noggin.

All I can tell is that they’re explaining, but they’re not accepting responsibility for the confusion. All I know for sure is that they’re going to regret the line comparing their stance on NCLB to Hillary Clinton’s embattled position on her Iraq War vote.

Whoever thought that one up owes us all a round. And guess, what, it’s just about that time. My guess: It was Checker himself. Drinks on Checker!

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