Conservatives Are Right: Government Doesn't Work ...

Conservatives believe that government doesn’t work. They may be on to something, because "our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it," writes Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal. Yet the GOP candidates tell us "the only answer" is to elect conservative Republicans yet again. “‘Cynicism’ seems too small a word for this circular political fraud,” writes Frank. “One reaches instead for images of grosser malevolence.”

But "in the three-ring circus of conservative blame-evasion," the election is "only one act." House Republicans were shooting down George Bush’s bailout, instead proposing that “voluntary private capital” should clean up the mortgage-backed securities mess, while levying a fee on those securities. One economist called the plan “significantly insane,” likely to cause “a world-wide financial panic.” (More conservative stories.)