Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey write today in WaPo about Where We Went Wrong wherein he asks:

Where did the revolution go astray? How did we go from the big ideas and vision of 1994 to the cheap political point-scoring on meaningless wedge issues of today — from passing welfare reform and limited government to banning horsemeat and same-sex marriage?

And he answers:

The answer is simple: Republican lawmakers forgot the party’s principles, became enamored with power and position, and began putting politics over policy.

Which I think is pretty much on target and why I dubbed the 109th the “Actonian Congress” three weeks ago.

Now, I do think that Armey over-romanticizes the GOP of 1994, but he does get the basics more than correct: there was a far more coherent set of legislative ideas in the early days of the “Republican Revolution” than there currently is. Indeed, the current GOP is often called extremely ideological, however when it comes to the Congressional Republicans at least, I just don’t see it. Where is the coherent set of guiding principles that explains the behavior of those actors? I would submit that they may comprise the most partisan Congressional leadership (especially in the House) in some time, but “ideological” strikes me as the incorrect word. And by partisan in this case I mean that the guiding principle is retaining power for the party–party über alles and all that (including over the supposed core values of the GOP, like fiscal responsibility and small government).

Indeed, in that vein:

Now spending is out of control. Rather than rolling back government, we have a new $1.2 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit, and non-defense discretionary spending is growing twice as fast as it had in the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, Social Security is collapsing while rogue nations are going nuclear and the Middle East is more combustible than ever. Yet Republican lawmakers have taken up such issues as flag burning, Terri Schiavo and same-sex marriage.

They’re fooling only themselves.

Indeed.