Special Education

Bloggers Weigh in on the Debate

By Christina A. Samuels — October 16, 2008 1 min read
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Lots of chatter out there about last night’s debate. Here’s some blog entries that I dug up:

Charles Fox, who writes the Special Education Law Blog (which is linked on my blogroll), has heard enough. Quote: “If Senator McCain’s voting record with President Bush was not enough to disqualify him for the Presidency, then his use of children with special needs as a political tool certainly rules him out once and for all.”

The bloggers at MOMocrats, no surprise, aren’t buying it either. Quote, from a poster who calls herself “LawyerMama:" “McCain/Palin--If you’re going to help special needs children, tell us how. If not, shut up and stop using it to play the sympathy card.”

Swift and Change Able
‘s author wasn’t pleased with McCain. Quote: “Last but not least, Obama called the McCain-Palin bluff on special education by asking them to put their money where their mouths are.”

Domenico Montanaro at CNBC’s “First Read” blog had some questions. Quote: “McCain also said they want to help find a cure. But how? The [National Institutes of Health] budget has been slashed in the past eight years. Does McCain-Palin propose additional funding, particularly for autism or Down’s research?”

Matt Moon at The Next Right, liveblogging the debate, says that McCain came up with just the right response to Obama during one of their exchanges about autism. Quote: "...Obama responded to McCain’s description of Palin by praising Palin and then saying that to deal with things like autism, more money needs to be spent. What does McCain ask? Exactly the right question: why is it always about more spending?”

I have to tell you...I’ve spent a good half hour or so combing through the blogosphere, and I’m having a hard time finding voices in support of McCain’s comments, or his disability policies. Rather, a lot of the bloggers I’m seeing are using words like “pandering.” And there’s a consistent pattern of people believing he was outright mistaken about the nature of Trig Palin’s disability.

Let me know what I’m missing, readers, and I’ll link good blogs here. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from the Oct. 15 broadcast of The Today Show, which talks about the positive feelings some families of people with Down syndrome have for Sarah Palin.

A version of this news article first appeared in the On Special Education blog.