Rand Paul Says Common Core Will Kill Jeb Bush in the Primaries. He's Right.

Now that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is
“actively exploring” the possibility of running for president, his
likely Republican competitors are actively exploring ways to
discredit him. Sen. Rand Paul took the first shot on Tuesday,
asserting that Bush would have trouble prevailing in the GOP
primaries due to his support for the Common Core State Standards.
Paul told
The Washington Post that Common Core would be a “big
problem” for Bush.

I expect that Paul is right. Very right. Common Core is
set of national curriculum standards that the federal government
strong-armed states into adopting. The standards erode local
autonomy over education policy and are extremely costly to
implement. They have also produced plenty of confused teachers,
parents, and children—and are anathema to the conservative
base.

It’s true that Mitt Romney managed to win the nomination despite
having an unpalatable former position on his election’s pivotal
issue—Obamacare. But Romney managed to hedge his previous support
for the program by insisting that he never would have taken it to
the federal level. Bush, on the other hand, isn’t hedging his
Common Core support one iota. He remains the most high-profile
supporter of national education standards on the right.

Anyone who expects rank-and-file conservatives to overlook the
issue is underestimating the extent of anti-Common Core sentiment
among the electorate. Bush’s support for Common Core won’t help him
much with independents or liberals, either, since the standards
aren’t very popular with those groups.

Given how badly Republican primary voters want politicians to
take a stand against Common Core, I don’t think the dreaded spectre
of another Bush vs. Clinton showdown is a reasonable fear.

More from Reason on Common Core and the Republicans

here.