It was 1995.
The Republicans had just won control of the U.
S.
House of Representatives.
I was walking through the Capitol, in Washington D.
C.
An observer of human nature could not help but take note of the circus.
It was the season of immaculate conversions.
No, not of a religious nature, but political.
There were so many earnest staffers and agency bureaucrats staggering around, swearing, "I was always a closet Republican, really, honest!" Republicans were on top of the world.
The old Democratic lobbyists sat huddled in mass, wringing their hands and discussing how to recover from Republican victories.
These folks wined and dined the old political regime for decades.
They reveled in the pain inflicted on Republicans by their former partners in pork and political hedonism.
They had bought more liquor, ate more BBQ and hosted legislative outings to more questionable clubs than they could count in pursuit of the largess so prevalent in the corrupt atmosphere in Washington.
Many of them ran to the Republicans offering bags of money.
It is all they knew how to do.
In the midst of it all, the Republicans were working day and night to implement "The Contract with America" they ran so successfully on.
Meanwhile, the agency heads and their political proteges were meeting with newly elected Republicans and their transition managers, desperately seeking some Republican friend who would say a kind word about them.
These guys pushed a revisionist version of history, and some did it well.
"Well, I tried to mitigate the impact of Clinton's awful policies as best I could and maintain my job.
We were waiting and praying for the Republicans!" These declarations were spewing forth from the same people who aided and abetted Democrats every step of the way.
These were some of the same guys who lied to Republicans until the end and slept in the enemy camp.
It was enough to make a grown man cry or otherwise physically ill.
The Republicans apparently felt a need to keep some of these folks who knew how to make the trains run on time.
Well, sort of.
They felt the need for some institutional knowledge to help them over the hump of transition and new governance.
However, the entrenched bureaucrats knew that, and some of the worst violators were out playing to that need.
Some of the same people who hid money in agencies and played tricks with the books counted on continuing their games with the new kids on the block.
Their goal was to keep the infrastructure of Democratic power brokers as intact as possible until this "aberration" corrected itself.
They marched around the Congress from transition team to transition team.
Humble, helpful.
Why, they were just dedicated public servants who wanted to help and to serve if they could.
The sad part is that many survived because of political naivete and because of the political inbreeding so prevalent in Washington that crosses party lines.
These people were masters of obfuscation and blocking, slowing progress.
They helped create the labyrinth of rules and regs that served only to give them power.
They would not give up that power if kept.
It is how they had survived.
The Republicans could not keep them, heed their counsel, become seduced by big government, and succeed.
Republicans forgot they wanted to revolutionize government, not just engage in cosmetic tinkering around the edges.
Some became content to just eliminate the worst of the abuses and go back to a sort of pre-Clinton era with a modicum of moderation as the order of the day.
So after an initial flurry good efforts on the Contract, business as usual prevailed as power began to corrupt.
George W.
arrived cementing the GOP's place as the big government party of the "right," now managed by neocons, not real Paleo Conservatives.
Then, it all came tumbling down.
You cannot say you are different, and then look just like the other guys.
I told a story of walking through a graveyard near the Capitol as I came upon a headstone.
The inscription read, "Here lies a politician and a statesman.
" I turned to my friend and said, "I didn't know that they buried two people in one grave.
" I hoped I could retire that joke when the Republicans arrived, but I couldn't.
If only they had drunk deeply from the well of conservative principle, and inoculated themselves with doses of character before the virus that infected the Capitol seduced them.
If you had cleaned house, Grand Old Party, your reign might have been long and fruitful for the people.
You forgot that when the Allies rode into Berlin, the roads were littered with uniforms and helmets of the old regime.
It was hard to find anyone who was not for liberty and real reform.