Peter Greene intermittently watched the Republicans debate education in a friendly setting created by Campbell Brown and the American Federation for Children, both representing privatization and union-bashing perspectives.

He concluded that the GOP has an education problem. Their positions are incoherent, aside from the obvious fact that they are eager to get rid of traditional public schools.

The love teachers, but hate their unions and want to get rid of them. They seem to think that unions are run by space aliens and are somehow disconnected from the teachers they allegedly represent. They love teachers, except for all those very bad ones who cause poor kids to get low scores.

But mostly unions are bad because they make us follow all these rules and pay teachers money and keep teacher job securities in place, and our great teachers don’t want any of those obstacles to doing their jobs. We teachers apparently love it when we can be paid whatever and lose our jobs at any time for any reasons. Love it.

They love local control except when they don’t. They love state takeovers of schools and whole districts but that has nothing to do with their love of local control. They love the idea that states can take schools away from districts and turn them over to private entrepreneurs because…well, because choice trumps local control.

They hate red tape, but they love accountability which requires lots and lots of red tape.

Yesterday confirmed what I have suspected, which is that if a GOP candidate talks about education for more than sixty seconds, the raft of self-contradictions come floating in. Standardization is bad, but students should all do the same thing. Local control is great, except when it should be eliminated. Teachers are great. Teachers suck. No federal overreach, but complete accountability for tax dollars.

This is going to be a long primary season. Let’s hope the Democrats can do better.

Now, here is the problem and you can bet Peter Greene will address it. The Democrats have an education problem too. It is called Race to the Top, which looks like the evil twin of the evil No Child Left Behind. They love standardized tests because no one will know that there are achievement gaps unless they are measured yearly. They love charters because…well, just because. They don’t love vouchers but they prefer not to talk about it. They love teachers, and the ones they love best are the ones who can produce the highest test scores year after year.

Which party is more incoherent?