The War on Grassroots Conservatives Who Refuse the False Conservative Label on Vouchers

When the American Federation for Children dropped glossy mailers across Tennessee labeling Rep. Jody Barrett as “Benedict Barrett,” it was a masterclass in political gaslighting. Barrett, who represents House District 69 and is now running for Congress in District 7, had the audacity to do what conservatives always say lawmakers should do: he listened to his voters. His constituents rejected Governor Bill Lee’s universal school voucher plan, so Barrett voted no. For that act of representation, House leadership retaliated by killing all of his legislation, and the out-of-state money machine swung into action, painting him as a traitor to President Trump.

The truth, of course, is that Trump’s school choice proposals look nothing like Bill Lee’s so-called “Freedom Scholarships.” President Trump repeatedly emphasized tax-credit scholarship programs, where individuals and businesses could redirect a portion of their tax liability into scholarship funds for families. These programs rely on private giving and donor incentives—a market-driven mechanism that does not grow the size or reach of government. By contrast, Tennessee’s program is a direct government subsidy, using state tax dollars to cover private school tuition for students—many of whom are already in private schools and would have been regardless of the voucher.

This distinction matters. Conflating the two is not a misunderstanding; it’s purposefully duplicitous. Critics of universal vouchers have pointed out that rebranding these schemes as “choice” is little more than political theater. Nationally, groups like AFT (American Federation of Teachers) have called state voucher plans “shamelessly disingenuous,” a way of laundering entitlement-style subsidies under a conservative label. Although the AFT has historically aligned with Democrats, even they have managed to recognize what voucher programs in places like Tennessee and Arizona truly are—entitlement-style subsidies. And of course they would; that’s the left’s stock-in-trade.

In Tennessee, the effect is clear: vouchers don’t create new options for families, they just shift public money to private institutions. If you wouldn’t call a taxpayer-funded toll reimbursement a “choice lane,” you shouldn’t call a taxpayer-funded private school subsidy “school choice.”

That’s why it rings hollow when establishment Republicans accuse lawmakers like Barrett of betraying Trump by voting against these bills. The reality is that Trump’s plan was structurally conservative—grounded in personal agency, voluntary giving, and market competition—while Lee’s is structurally progressive, rooted in taxpayer-funded entitlements. Pretending they are the same, is nothing short of gaslighting thinking, informed conservatives who instinctively rejected the concept.

And this deception only works if voters aren’t paying attention. The entire strategy behind these attack ads and glossy mailers is to prey on the uninformed voter—the person who sees “Trump” stamped on a flier and assumes the message is true. It relies on conservatives being too busy, too trusting, or too overburdened to notice that the establishment is actually promoting a program that looks far more like welfare for private schools than a conservative reform. The branding is clever, but the substance is rotten.

In fact, the Tennessee Freedom Scholarship is the very embodiment of entitlement creep. For decades, conservatives warned against government “universal” programs—universal income, universal healthcare, universal housing—because they were understood as progressive expansions of state dependency. But slap the word “choice” on universal vouchers, and suddenly establishment Republicans want us to believe it’s conservative. It isn’t. True conservative reform requires three non-negotiables:

• Personal agency in education decisions, not state-managed inducements.
• Fiscal competition, where private giving drives quality, not bureaucratic subsidies.
• Cultural autonomy, including religious freedom free from government strings.

Tennessee’s Freedom Scholarship fails every test. It uses public dollars to artificially induce families into “choosing” private schools, subsidizes tuition for families who would have paid it anyway, and entangles private schools with the very state oversight conservatives have long warned against. That isn’t reform; it’s redistribution.

None of this is accidental. In District 7, the establishment in the form of farm money pacs has already lined up its preferred successor: Rep. Lee Reeves. Reeves wasn’t just any freshman legislator—he was handpicked by Governor Bill Lee to help drag the voucher bill across the finish line. And when he ran for office, the national super PAC machine kicked into high gear. Some of the largest contributors to his and a handful of other races in Tennessee in 2024 were The American Federation for Children, Americans for Prosperity and Club For Growth (Jeff Yass) who collectively poured nearly $1 million into Reeves' race, flooding the district with ads, mailers, and operatives. For that staggering investment, Reeves won by relatively slim margins, proving that even nearly unlimited resources couldn’t erase grassroots resistance. But for the establishment, the money was well spent—because Reeves could be counted on to help deliver the votes Lee needed.

Meanwhile, conservatives like Barrett, who stood with their voters against the voucher scheme, were branded as traitors, their legislation torpedoed in retaliation. This isn’t about Trump, conservatism, or choice—it’s about power. It’s about the donor class and political machine protecting their investments, even if it means gaslighting voters into believing welfare-by-another-name is a conservative principle.

The bottom line is simple: universal vouchers are not conservative. They are entitlements dressed up in free-market language, designed to shift taxpayer dollars into private systems under the guise of reform. And when political mailers start calling grassroots conservatives “Benedict Arnolds” for voting against them, it’s not conservatism that’s being defended—it’s the grift.

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