A radical reversal on light bulbs won’t shake the foundations of the republic, but it’s indicative of a party that is unmoored from both philosophy and substantive politics. Republicans today are defined not by what they are for but almost exclusively by what they are against. And they are against just about everything — including many things they used to be for. Like a code-red transplant patient, Republicans increasingly reject the tissue of their own proposals and their own reasonable history…

The problem here isn’t hypocrisy, which abounds at all points on the political spectrum. It’s that Republicans have abandoned market-based solutions in favor of no solutions at all. They’ve traded in their traditional small-government philosophy for anti-government rage, generally doing their level best to look like yahoos whenever cameras are near.

In reality, there are very few Joe the Plumbers among the largely wealthy, educated and professionally successful members of the House and Senate Republican caucuses. Yet these politicians are so afraid of their noisy anti-government, anti- intellectual wing that they fear expressing support for even the most limited government — the kind that can fix a highway or keep a bridge from falling down (forget about building Hoover Dam or creating a national park).