Nice Trick

Turning something of your own party's creation into a "wedge issue" that benefits you rather than your opponents, that is.

Apparently Republicans think they can do that with "Common Core," a set of controversial education standards created by the Republican-dominated (29 states to 21 for the Democrats) National Governors Association.

The linked New York Times article implies that the Republicans' Common Core project suddenly became "bad" when US president Barack Obama decided he liked it.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised -- they did the same thing with ObamaCare, the key feature of which (the "individual mandate" was proposed by Republican president Richard Nixon in 1973, proposed again by Republican congressman Newt Gingrich in 1993, and implemented in Massachusetts by Republican governor Mitt Romney in 2007, but then somehow magically became the worst thing evah when the Democrats actually got it done nationally.

Of course I oppose both Common Core and ObamaCare because I support separation of school and state and separation of health care and state, preferably via abolition of the state. But it would be nice if the Republicans could find bad ideas to oppose without having to invent those ideas in the first place.