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Republicans are once again passionate about their long-time love school vouchers, believing that the idea of "school choice" is a key to winning over minority voters. But you know who often doesn't like school vouchers? Republicans from rural areas.

A number of prominent members of the GOP have spoken about vouchers recently, largely in the context of addressing poverty and inequality. Politico documents a number of them: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, state representatives around the country. "It’s a winning issue for us," the GOP's outreach director to African-American media told Politico. "We’re going to be talking about educational opportunity in every state."

Receptions in those states will vary. In statehouse battles over the past several years, it has been an alliance of Democrats and rural Republicans that have opposed expanding or implementing vouchers. For the same reason: vouchers pull resources from schools that need every dollar they can get after years of scaling back.

The debate over vouchers is usually centered on urban schools, since it provides the Republicans' dream pitch: A failing local school has parents of every color and creed looking for alternatives. Siphon money from the big government education pool, and let parents decide if they'd like to use it toward a private or charter school. School choice. It appeals to those dissatisfied urban parents — urban parents who, the demographics tell us, would usually vote Democratic.

"Failing" is a relative term, of course. But there's no question that public schools — like all components of government — are struggling with reduced budgets. According to a Census Bureau report that came out last year, 2011 marked the first year in four decades that per-student spending in public schools declined — but that data wasn't adjusted for inflation. That year, 65.6 percent of spending was from local property taxes, but the amount from the federal government dropped 2.5 percent from 2010 when adjusted to 2013 dollars. That's a constriction that is part-and-parcel with the Republicans' higher-priority message: less government spending. As the graph at right shows, federal education spending in 2013 dollars dipped not quite as severely in the 1980s — during the tenure of Ronald Reagan. Break the schools, offer a fix.