Democrashield.com

It’s a simple fact. Republicans can’t govern.

I don’t need to point to their failures in the past several years–by now I’m sure you have the entire shameful list memorized, from Iraq and Katrina to the PATRIOT Act, habeas corpus, Jack Abramoff and the U.S. Attorneys scandal.

Why does the GOP do such a bad job when put in charge? Sadly, this isn’t about a few bad apples spoiling the bunch–this is about an ideology that is inherently against good governance.

Remember what Ronald Reagan–the patron saint of modern conservatism–once said: “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.” That’s the issue in a nutshell–Republicans don’t believe government can do any good. They see no reason to govern well, because they don’t think it will help anyone.

It’s common sense. You won’t do a good job at something you feel is inherently immoral. For example, you wouldn’t expect a vegetarian to cook a world-class filet mignon, right? Not because they can’t–if they tried, they could probably do decently well–but because they believe it’s wrong. Republicans feel that using the government to help people is wrong, so they won’t do it.

In the end, conservatives create a self-fulfilling prophecy: they think government is bad, so when they’re put in charge of the government, they do a bad job.

We Democrats see it differently–to us, government is a tool that can be used to help people. We see government as inherently neutral, only as good or as bad as the people who run it.

That’s the major difference between the two parties–Democrats want to get elected to make America better; Republicans want to get elected for the sake of getting elected.

And now that the GOP is in the minority, we see them continuing their shameful legacy of poor governance: throwing roadblocks up in front of every piece of major legislation we Democrats try to pass. Solving Iraq? Blocked. Improving SCHIP? Vetoed. The GOP  blocks good legislation just to stop the government from helping people.

The solution? Don’t elect Republicans. Until they ditch their outdated, dead-end, Reagan-era dogma and realize that government can be a force for good, they don’t deserve to be put in charge of it. Otherwise, all we get is an endless cycle of conservatives predicting failure, then conservatives causing failure–personally, I’d take the problem-solvers over the doomsayers, any day.