WSJ: How Dysfunction Helps the GOP-The party says its own mistakes prove government can't work.

[kpete]

* OPINION: THE TILTING YARD
* JULY 1, 2009

How Dysfunction Helps the GOP
The party says its own mistakes prove government can't work.

By THOMAS FRANKr

'Remember the $400 hammer? How 'bout that $600 toilet seat?" asks a Conservatives for Patients' Rights TV commercial criticizing President Barack Obama's health-care plan. "Seems when Congress gets involved, things just cost more."

As it happens, I do remember the incident of the $436 hammer, the one that made headlines back in 1984. And while it may "seem" in hazy retrospect as though it showed how "things just cost more" once those silly liberals in Congress get started, what the hammer episode actually illustrated was a very different sort of ripoff. The institution that paid so very much for that hammer was President Ronald Reagan's Pentagon. A private-sector contractor was the party that was pleased to take the Pentagon's money. And it was a liberal Democrat in the House of Representatives, also known as "Congress," who publicized the pricey hardware to the skies.

But so what? Myth is so much more satisfying than history, and with myth the competence of Washington actors from 25 years ago doesn't matter any more. Nor does it matter which arm of the federal colossus did what. Republican or Democrat, White House or Congress, they're all part of a monolithic, undifferentiated "government" that acts according to a money-burning logic all its own.

The myth has been getting a lot of play from conservatives in recent weeks as the debate over health care has heated up. The message, as always, is that government can't do anything right.

MORE:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124640443679876503.html...

[Tempest]

1. P.J. O'Rourke

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

[Soylent Brice]

2. damn if that's not the truth. n/t

[question everything]

3. Of course, they don't have any problem with the way the government

has ruined the lives of so many Iraqis, caused the killing and injuries of so many Americans during the past 6+ years and for what?

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.