2016: Ted Cruz 'Emphatically Opposed' to Common Core

“I don’t think the federal government has any role dictating the content of curricula. I think education is a state issue and a local issue, and ideally at the local level, because that way parents can have direct input and control of what’s being taught to their kids,” Cruz said on Tuesday after he addressed the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators, according to Radio Iowa's O. Kay Henderson. “If you or I disagree with what some bureaucrat in the federal Department of Education says, you can’t change that. You don’t have an influence on that.”

He praised the "terrific victory in the Iowa legislature protecting the rights of homeschoolers" that Iowans won last year. That law allowed homeschoolers to teach their children without submitting lesson plans to their school districts. Cruz said that kids and the Constitution should be bipartisan in addition to protecting the "right of every parent to raise his or her child."

He also said he would vigilantly guard against efforts that would undermine the rights of parents before saying that Americans must "do everything humanly possible to avoid ratification" of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. He said nothing in international law or "nothing in any treaty should be used as a backdoor vehicle to undermine the rights of every parent here to raise your children consistent with your faith, your good judgment, and the love you have for your children."

"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton

"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

Truth is, if people were paying attention, running against Common Core and Obamacare should be enough to sweep the Senate in 2014, increase the margin in the House, and win the Presidency in 2016.

Unfortunately there are one-issue voters and low-information types on both sides. But it is very good to see someone of Cruz’s stature standing firm against this atrocity.

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he was “emphatically opposed” to federal Common Core standards after he keynoted an event for Iowa's influential homeschoolers in which he said that school choice "is the civil rights issue of the 21st century."