MSNBC Examines Romney Bid

MSNBC asks "As ’08 race shapes up, is Romney for real?" Romney seems to be gaining traction, with his "respectable" finish at the SRLC and his support for education reform. We’d like to see him go further and call for outright school vouchers, but hey, this isn’t too bad an item when we are desperate for Mass. blog content!

At a straw poll conducted by the Campaign Hotline at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis a few weeks ago, Romney finished with a respectable 14 percent, coming in second to native son Sen. Bill Frist.

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In his AEI speech, Romney argued that the way to higher educational performance is through charter schools, greater parental involvement, higher salaries for superior teachers and teachers’ unions which have been diminished in power.

With a Power Point presentation he used data from his state to show that spending more money per pupil in public schools or mandating lower student-to-teacher ratios does not correlate with better standardized test scores.