Tragic Indeed

This morning, Lew wrote:

“In some ways, this is the continuing of a terrible trend of the Bush years. Many good young people from conservative backgrounds, with excellent educations and decent political values, went to work for Bush under the impression that they could make a difference. There was change as a result, but it was not government that changed, but the young people who went to work for it. “

I remember during the first Reagan administration how many “conservative” organizations that had “opposed big government” for years suddenly began lining up at the trough for grants – not earmarks, but grants from the countless programs that were funded every year by Congress.

As an apparatchik with Jesse Helms, I was trying to defund those programs altogether. Need I say that they are all alive and well, and funded more abundantly, today? And, also needless to say, that those “conservative” organizations that sought funding would not raise a finger to help in the defunding effort?

Talk about being an Eskimo (oops, Inuit) floating alone on an ice floe!

As the Reagan Administration got under way, Stan Evans said it best: “Conservatives come to Washington knowing that it’s a sewer. Trouble is, most of them wind up treating it like a hot tub.”

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8:30 am on September 2, 2008