Conservatives have a special fondness for government waste. As I pointed out leading up to the Fiscal Cliff, John Boehner seemed to think there were wasteful government programs, he just needed Obama to tell him what they were. This goes along with polls that shows that the American people want to cut government spending. But when asked about specific programs, they always want to continue funding those—in many cases they want to increase that funding.

There is one exception. Americans want to cut foreign aid. Of course, that wouldn’t do much because foreign aid is generally a bit less than 1% of the federal budget. But Americans think it is much higher. An American Public Opinion poll from two years ago found that the median American thought that foreign aid was 25% of the budget. So there you have it! In the minds of most Americans, we could balance the budget and then some (Quite some!) if we just stopped handing money out to people who hate us.

This kind of thinking is pushed by the conservative movement without actively lying. It is the reason we have Republican politicians constantly talking about “waste” without mentioning what the waste is. It is just a given that the government wastes money. When they do, they present spending on projects that sound wasteful but almost never are.

This process unfortunately dates back to a democrat, William Proxmire, who gave out the Golden Fleece Awards from 1975 to 1988. Much of the supposed waste that Proxmire noted was good and even critical government spending. He, like his modern day conservative heirs, liked to go after research contracts. It is often easy to dismiss as crazy a piece of research based only on its title.

Last year, “Michael” at End of the American Dream wrote, 30 Stupid Things The Government Is Spending Money On. But there are many other lists to be found throughout the conservative media ecosystem. What’s really interesting is that it contains “wasteful government spending” claims that I’ve heard make the rounds this week:

As it turns out, this program is using video games that have their own social and economic systems to study some social science problems. This is fairly standard stuff. A lot of economists use these programs to study markets. They are in effect large computer models with lots of free research subjects. Now, I can’t say that the research is a particularly great use of money. I don’t know, because I haven’t be able to find more than the briefest of summaries of it. And this makes me think that the conservatives who are complaining about it know no more than I do.

But I do know about other things. The article complained, “The U.S. government spent $200,000 on ‘a tattoo removal program’ in Mission Hills, California.” Here’s the problem: this is part of a gang prevention project. Gang members get out of jail and want to go straight. But they have all these gang tattoos. (In one case, a young man had “Fuck You” tattooed on his forehead!) Does this sound like government waste? It sounds like violence prevention to me.

Some of the items do seem ridiculous. Take for example, “The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.” Of course, as usual, it sounds worse than it is. This is a program to “establish and evaluate whether an alcohol and HIV intervention center can assist in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS among sex workers in China.” Now maybe that money isn’t worth spending. We could discuss that. But we can’t do anything if the conversation stops at: government teaching prostitutes to drink responsibly, te he!

And some of the “waste” is just pathetic. A great example of this: “The U.S. Postal Service spent $13,500 on a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.” There are several problems here. First, $13,500? Really?! That’s the best they can come up with for the “30 stupid things”? But it’s worse, because the government didn’t pay for that dinner. The USPS is independent; the government doesn’t fund it at all. And finally, that dinner was for potential corporate customers—a completely legitimate expense.

What all this shows is that the conservative movement wants to imply that the government is this hugely wasteful institution. The data just don’t indicate this. So they mislead and even lie. It is shameful.

Ross Douthat had some interesting things to say the other day, Rand Paul, Realism, and Republican Reform. It is mostly about how Rand Paul, in terms of foreign policy, is a non-interventionist (His best quality!) but is trying to re-brand himself as a realist like Colin Powell.

The problem that Rand is having is that in the Republican Party, no one listens to him because he doesn’t think the best thing in the world is spending all our money on the military and going to war as often as possible. By becoming a realist, he can make more acceptable arguments like, “Sure we could go to war with Iran but it would cost a lot of American lives and money.”

Republicans Don’t Like Reality-Based Foreign Policy

I’m sure you’ve already caught the problem with this approach: Republicans are just as much against reality-based foreign policy as they are against non-intervention. Douthat rightly notes that Republicans don’t have a general foreign policy platform.

Instead, they just have gut feelings: military spending is good; Iran is bad; Israel is always right; and, of course, “We’re number one!” Douthat claims that the party could be sold on a realist platform, but that it requires that people like Rand Paul actively sell it.

Why Douthat Is Delusional

What Douthat is missing about Republican foreign policy thinking is the same thing Ezra Klein missed about Republican economic thinking: all the things they care about are not created equal. Above all else, Republicans want a foreign policy platform that tells them that America is the best and baddest.

They don’t particularly want to go to war with Iran over vague Israeli ideas that a country in the region might someday have a nuclear bomb like they themselves have. They just want to make a big deal of the fact that if America goes to war with some country, that country is fucked (regardless of all the recent lessons from history).

It is good that Douthat is talking about ways that the Republican Party could actually change as opposed to just talk nicer. But his hopes are bound to be dashed, for the same reason that everyone else in the party only wants to deal with cosmetic changes. The main thing that drives Republican voters is the thought that America has gone hopelessly wrong. This requires dramatic changes. And the voters are no closer to accepting a realist approach to foreign affairs than they are measures to make the economy more egalitarian.