You knew it was bound to happen someday, as the failure of 30 years of power grabbing and crony coddling finally got them the regime they dreamed of - one of their own organs would finally cry "enough" on something that cuts at the core of their ideology.
And no, we're not talking about the now customary slaps at the hypocrisy and failures of the social conservative fringe - this time we've gotten to the failure of the "we want small government", alleged pro-business contingent.
It took an inexplicable arms contract to a company in the hands of a kid with a MySpace (or was it facebook?) page to finally make it manifestly obvious and worthy of commentary.
Conservatives and Their Carnival of Fraud
Frank opens up with a bang:
I wonder if, back in the rosy-fingered dawn of our conservative era, all those Adam Smith-tied evangelists of "limited government" had any idea that they were greasing the skids for a character like 22-year-old arms dealer Efraim Diveroli?
The man then goes on to eviscerate the conservative movement on a topic it never, ever wants to self-reckon with, so it never talks about it:
How could a kid barely able to buy beer secure a nearly $300 million defense contract? It will be interesting to find out. Maybe Mr. Diveroli's story will be the one that finally fixes public attention on the carnival of fraud, waste and profiteering that characterizes our system of government-by-contractor. Maybe it will finally persuade us to ask our politicians why it is that they hire Blackwater to do the job of the Marines and pay Kellogg Brown and Root to arrange the logistics for the Army wherever it goes.
And maybe it will finally call into question one of the greatest shibboleths of conservative governance. Although contracting-out has been celebrated by big thinkers from both parties and although it has been practiced in some form or other since the earliest days of the republic, an ideological commitment to outsourcing is one of the signatures of conservative rule.
Lots of good nuggets and criticism in there about how the privatization system that was supposed to weed out inefficiency became a tool to reward supporters.
But wait - are you ready for the money shot?
The days when conservatives railed against red tape and shrieked for efficiency in Washington now seem like a lifetime ago. When they finally got the opportunity to put their theory into practice, conservatives contrived instead one of the most wasteful systems ever seen.
It is time for a new Grace Commission, this one examining the sordid history of privatization in all its details. President Barack Obama should launch it on day one.
On the pages of the WSJ, no less.