As Republican Party leaders weigh future campaign strategies after their disappointing midterm results in 2022, they should carefully consider whether it’s worth continuing to push K-12 classroom controversies about critical race theory (CRT) and gender at the state level. While substantive education issues are important to voters, leaning heavily into classroom culture wars hasn’t won over large percentages of swing voters like Republicans expected. And it’s also bad policy.
To be sure, some of the Republican Party’s top performers in the midterms cruised to re-election after signing laws restricting public schools from teaching “divisive concepts,” including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
