Republicans Oppose the Common Core Republican office holders played a central role in the thirty-year process that forced the country to finally focus on repairing its generally mediocre public school system. Education minded governors like Lamar Alexander of Tennessee were early to the cause. And as President, George W. Bush pushed through the No Child Left Behind Act. As such, the G.O.P. should be taking pride in the rigorous new Common Core education standards that have thus far been adopted by 45 states. After all, as Michael Petrilli of The Fordham Institute has written: The standards "are rigorous, they are traditional - one might even say they are "conservative." They expect students to know their math facts, to read the nation's founding documents, and to evaluate evidence and come to independent judgments. In all of these ways, they are miles better than three-quarters of the state standards they replaced. But just last week, the Republican National Committee came out strongly against the standards and is pressuring the states to renounce them, on federalist grounds. And in an unfortunate turn of events, the state legislature of Alabama is considering a bill that would back away from the standards as adopted by the state board of education. The R.N.C."s ill-advised attack on the Common Core has placed it in conflict with the business community in general and specifically the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with more than $7.3 trillion in annual revenues and nearly 16 million employees. The Roundtable shows no sign of wavering in its enthusiastic support of the Common Core. The group's education and workforce committee is led by Rex Tillerson, C.E.O. of Exxon, which has already posted a strong statement. Watch their advertisement promoting the core below: