I have wanted to write a big post on why George, and Republicans in general, are incapable of governing when in power but just haven’t found the words. It is so moch more than the typical "we are good, they are bad" schtick you hear from the radio. But Kos had a really bang-on post about it the other day. The full thing is worth a read. Money Quote:
This is it — the reason Republicans can never govern. You have an entire party based on an ideology that says government isn’t a solution.
So if you take over, and you actually govern well, you have shown that government can be a solution. In short, you have completely discredited the ideology upon which your party is based.
In this piece (the Goldberg piece in the New Yorker I referenced in my previous post), Newt is portrayed as a fiery insurgent who failed in the majority because of the challenges of governing. The sense I get is that Newt learned a lesson from his failed speakership, as opposed to DeLay, who never learned his lesson.
Republican orthodoxy is a great way to get elected when in the minority. There’s always plenty of government waste, inefficiency, and corruption to campaign against, to paint government as a drain on the taxpayer’s wallet. The problem is, governing like a Republican just exacerbates those problems. If Republicans don’t care about government, they have even less incentive to make sure that the money is well spent and that government programs work. So they become even more inefficient, more wasteful, and more corrupt. Heck, it’s almost a moral imperative that they screw up. The past two decades have borne that out. (And what better examples than appointing a horse lawyer to run FEMA, or Bush’s incompetent and unqualified appointments to head the World Bank?)
Source: Daily Kos: Republican Implosion: Newt’s assault on his party
Cognitive Dissonance 