Conservatives like phonics, because they want to go back to the past. They smell, they taste, they listen and they look. They love to be cuddled and rocked. They are constantly discovering their own body. Some 'Hot-house' educational methods try to force babies to ignore most of this.
School continues with such practices as children get older.
To understand the danger of such methods, one must look at the way information is processed in the brain. Take the word dog . Most children's perception of what a dog is will start with the impressions they get in early childhood, e.g. barking noise, a licking tongue that's wet, sharp teeth and paws with nails, rapid and heavy breathing, a penetrant smell, four hairy legs, a wigly tail, etc, etc. All these different impressions are spread out over different senses and together they make up what constitutes a dog. Similarly, the sun is a visual image that moves during the day, but the sun also gives heat and light.