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Damn! I wish I had remebered this earlier! This from the pen of John Boehner three years ago:

Even though we share many ideological similarities, Republicans are not libertarians. Libertarians are generally more hostile to government involvement of any kind on any level; Republicans share this antipathy to the extent that wherever and whenever possible, power (wrongly usurped in the first place by Democratic leaders) should be devolved from the federal government to the hands of states and localities.

But Republicans also are far from being purely conservative. A conservative would like to see the government shrink; a Republican does too, but -- in acknowledging political realities (a new defensive posture after September 11th for one) and the multitude of stakeholders in government after years of liberal control -- has often had to settle for simply slowing its rate of growth. Republicans have accepted such realities as the burdens of majority governance.

If I ever see Boehner, I plan on bringing this up and asking if the GOP ever even succeeded in "slowing its rate of growth."

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John Boehner