perhaps republican politicians, operating from a business ethos that asserts the unrestricted accumulation of profit (as long as it's, ahem, legal) is inherently virtuous, could not pass up the "business opportunity" presented by the washington circus.

conservative politicians are not that different from liberal ones, always ready to justify departures from their philosophy with noble abstractions. actually, i think i would probably prefer a true libertarian, free market polis than the current hybrid chaos that exists now. but i can guarantee that will never happen. As er once pointed out, not only is this as impossible to legislate without violence as "from everyone according to his abilities, to everyone according to his needs", but because politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, and ESPECIALLY businessmen, are simply too damned greedy and crooked. its not so much their ideology, they carry it in their blood, like syphillis.

true, the social programs devised by liberals to serve the people are too often hijacked by their managers for personal gain, but the political reforms proposed by conservatives to correct this flaw are mostly smokescreens to conceal the fact that what they really want, and what we'll actually get, is business as usual.

footnote: see soros, "the agency problem".