If you don’t believe me check out this political ad from Alabama. Robert Byrne was in a Republican primary contest for governor of Alabama, but the teachers unions didn’t want him to win. So they “gave $1.5 million to 10 PACs, which in turn gave nearly $1 million to True Republican PAC. Joe Cottle, a lobbyist for the teachers’ group, is the treasurer of five of the PACs, and Rudy Davidson, a former education lobbyist and a contributor to A VOTE, was treasurer of four others.”
Fueled with laundered teacher union money, “True Republican PAC” ran the following ad accusing Robert Byrne of believing in evolution and doubting that every word of the Bible was true:
The Alabama Education Association, the local affiliate of the NEA, admitted to funneling this money to True Republican PAC despite the fact that the NEA has repeatedly declared its support for the teaching of evolution.
Truth, consistency, educational excellence, honesty, the well-being of children — none of this matters to the teacher unions. The only thing that matters is winning so that they can extract as much money from the public as possible.
The teacher union-funded ad has attracted some funny parodies. Bill Maher fails to correctly describe the origin of the ad, but has this howler:
And as long as we are making fun of incredibly ignorant and embarrassing political ads from Alabama, which makes me feel less bad about the incredibly ignorant and embarrassing ads in Arkansas, check out this one by another gubernatorial candidates, Tim James:
And now check out this parody:
Oh. And in case you were worried, the teacher union-backed candidate for the Republican nomination was the one who won. Gives you confidence in democracy.
(Update: I can’t find the original Tim James ad without the editorial comments inserted, but this gives a a good idea of what the original ad looked like.]
Posted by Jay P. Greene 
Jay P. Greene's Blog 