There's two cons working in any scam. One is the con the con artist sells themselves, so they can act and react appropriately, and pump up their enthusiasm for the task at hand. It's a "sleight of mind" trick.
So what con do the Republicans operate under? I like to think of it like that previous monument to hubris, arrogance, and complete disregard for reality known as the British Arctic Expeditions of the nineteenth century.
To the Flipmobile!
The Northwest Passage was not conquered by sea until 1906, by a Norwegian, Roald Amundsen. The extraordinary amounts of money, unbridled enthusiasm, and a considerable weight of human suffering thrown at this project had not succeeded for the British.
Reading accounts of these failed expeditions with a more knowing eye reveals a simply astounding amount of cluelessness. Assured of success simply by virtue of their being Britons at the height of their Empire, they set out for the most pitiless sections of the globe by taking their Victorian accouterments with them and ignoring the advice of people who, after all, only lived there.
They would dress in flannel and wool, instead of the skins worn by the Native Americans. Wool at least has the virtue of providing warmth when wet, though the heaviness of wet wool garments would sap strength when most needed. They would wear mittens and caps that were made for the winters of the British isles, not the Arctic regions. They brought food in lead sealed tins, though the heat involved would destroy vitamin C, and salt their fresh meat for later eating, even though the Native Americans told them salted meat likewise would not give them the nutrients they needed.
They brought victrolas, plush couches, and libraries, taking up room that should have gone for coal and provisions. They set sail too late in the season, took the wrong routes at the wrong times, and constantly, consistently, were trapped in the ice.
Now comes the terrible endgame; eating lichens scraped off rocks with fingers crippled by frostbite, lying still to conserve energy under their fancy comforters which were not enough to keep them warm, and slowly falling apart from scurvy, which eradicates all the connective tissues of the body before killing. Unless they simply died of starvation, staved off in the usual, horrible, final act that was only whispered by the survivors... cannibalism.
And, as we know now, it is only Global Warming that is opening the Northwest Passage. At that time, it would never be a viable route.
Thus it is with the Bush administration. The con they sell themselves to keep going? The Arctic Fallacy of Government Without Government. Just as the British Arctic Explorers told themselves they knew more than the people who lived there, the modern Republicans tell themselves they know better than people who actually Govern.
But, like the body without vitamin C, this is a policy which will only result in everything falling apart.