Dennis Roddy: Voucher backtrack another calibrated move by Shapiro

Cynicism abounds in government. It’s where cynics go to win big.

So the indignant surprise that Gov. Josh Shapiro went back on his word to Senate Republicans over scholarship vouchers for kids in failing schools is both understandable and meaningless. The passion of public policy is wasted on the mathematics of the true politician, and there is no politician truer to the name than Josh Shapiro.

Anyone who has observed Shapiro knows he calculates risks and benefits with steely precision. I have heard it said of him that he is so utterly calibrated to politics that he might have been created in a lab.

Shapiro obtained the expensive programs he sought — including record spending on public schools — by earnestly announcing that he fully favored the $100 million voucher-style scholarship program. Shapiro appeared on Fox News to tout his support.

Then, faced with a recalcitrant state House, Shapiro promised to line-item veto the scholarship money.

The scholarship program was virulently opposed by the House Democrats, a wholly owned subsidiary of the PSEA and AFT. While the budget as written expanded basic education underwriting for public schools by $796 million, the inclusion of a separate $100 million for kids to opt out of failing schools violated a basic premise of the PSEA credo: any dollar incapable of falling into the union treasury has no place in their world.

By midweek, Shapiro was blaming the Republicans for the mess, saying they failed to close the deal with a House Democratic leadership that already had excluded House Republicans from negotiations.

Going back on his word costs him little in this situation. People are so accustomed to politicians lying that they only penalize them on style, and nobody performs the Dance of Betrayal with more panache than Josh Shapiro.

Every time someone cries “broken promise,” Shapiro can point to the record-­setting repairs that reopened I-95 for a public too amazed to ask what it cost. He knows people will respond more readily to a drivable surface than to a program to help a kid they never met from a place they’ve never been.

The question now moves to what responses are possible, which of them are desirable and whether any of them are worth the effort. After all, revenge usually means someone already accomplished something.

So the Senate Republicans know the problem, they know their opponents and, insofar as they trusted him in the first place, they know their betrayer. What they don’t know is whether to attempt to find a way to get even or a way to pass the scholarship program. Shapiro is unlikely to regain their confidence in the near term. Making him sue for peace requires an upper hand they no longer have. The budget is passed. The line is drawn — rather literally, through a $100 million appropriation.

Republicans must decide if they want to force Shapiro to honor his word and get that scholarship program passed in short order or play the long game by reminding the world at every available turn that this governor’s word is no good.

Dennis Roddy is a retired journalist now working as a Republican consultant.