Alas, the follow-through was lacking.

Scozzafava and Armey were invited for a segment pegged to last week's news that the national G.O.P. may adopt a sort-of litmus test for future Republican candidates, requiring them to support eight of ten agenda items to receive official party backing.

They were the perfect guests for this topic, with the Armey-assisted destruction of Scozzafava's campaign in the 23^rd District serving as a preview of the implications of such a purity test.

An extended back-and-forth between them would have vividly illustrated the purity vs. pragmatism debate that is now gripping the G.O.P. - and that Armey's side is clearly winning. It also would have been fun to watch. Too bad the format didn't allow for any direct interaction between them.

Scozzafava, for instance, told host Harry Smith that she would have scored seven out of ten on the proposed purity test.

"I had the opportunity to review the list this past week," she said. "And I would've been at seven out of ten. If people looked at my record and understood how I felt about a lot of the federal issues, I think they could see that I was for lower taxes, lower government spending."

Here, a response from Armey - followed by a rebuttal from Scozzafava - would have been useful. Does he agree that Scozzafava would have scored seven out of ten (the threshold that, at least according to Armey, a candidate would need to reach to qualify for party support)? If so, then why was he so adamant about opposing Scozzafava (and, thus, jeopardizing the G.O.P.'s chances of hanging on to the 23^rd District seat)? And if not, then which agenda items does he think she is inaccurately claiming to support?

Such an exchange might have revealed something about the substance and psychology of Armey's movement, which could claim more "moderate" Republican scalps in the months ahead. Most of the other supposed heretics being targeted by the right offer the same basic defense that Scozzafava pursued on Sunday, claiming that their views actually overlap with the right on most issues.

There is some quantitative evidence to back this up. For instance, Lindsey Graham, whom many on the right view as another Scozzafava, actually boasts a lifetime rating of 90 from the American Conservative Union. But Graham was recently censured by Republicans in his own state for being insufficiently conservative.

The right's hostility toward Graham, Scozzafava and other perceived sell-outs (like Florida's Charlie Crist) seems disproportionate when you consider their overall bodies of work. This suggests that emotion plays a strong role in the purity movement - that the willingness of any Republican to show public flexibility on an emotionally-resonant issue (like Graham working for an immigration compromise or Scozzafava supporting abortion and gay rights) is by itself enough for the right to declare that Republican a traitor to the cause.

But after Scozzafava made her seven-out-of-ten assertion, Smith asked a new question of Armey, about whether the right's efforts in the 23^rd could be considered a success. A reasonable question, no doubt, but one that left Armey painting in broad strokes. Scozzafava, he said, had always been a "bad fit" for the race and that she'd been "dropping like a brick" even before Doug Hoffman decided to run on the Conservative Party line.

"The fact of the matter was even the Democrat was running against her as a big

spender," Armey offered. "She was a bad fit for that race. Had there been an electoral primary process, she wouldn't have won the primary, she wouldn't have been the candidate, and the Republican would win that race."

It wasn't until several minutes later, after Smith bantered with the segment's other guest, former R.N.C. Chairman Ed Gillespie, that Scozzafava was able to speak up again. She'd actually been ahead by seven points in mid-October, Scozzafava asserted, when "all of a sudden" national conservatives "flooded the market, distorted my record." On what specific issues her record was distorted wasn't discussed, and the segment ended moments later.

Casual viewers were left with only a vague sense of why Armey and his allies were so vehemently opposed to Scozzafava - and why, by extension, ideological discipline has suddenly become the G.O.P. base's driving cause.

But this is a phenomenon that will play a major role in next year's elections. By inducing a dialogue between Scozzafava and Armey, "Face the Nation" could have explored how much of it is rational and how much of it is emotional. Instead, we got more principled-sounding rhetoric that doesn't really tell us much of anything.

"We're just following the tour," Davis, who is from Cincinnati, explained. In the last two weeks he's been to Birmingham, Orlando, Houston and Baton Rouge. "It's been a little slow."

Davis told me he has "naturally a football vendor" and, at age 50, has been peddling things for the last 43 years. But he thought the tea parties would be more lucrative than the Steelers, so he gave it a shot. I asked him if he believed in the message.

"No, I don't. Some of what they say offends me," he said, gesturing over to a representative of the Lyndon LaRouche PAC holding fliers of Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache. Davis is black, and said he thought this was racist. But business is business.

"I believe in the American way: pure capitalism," he said. "Buy low, sell high."

The rally started under a cloudy sky. Several big rigs (one said "Truckin' for Jesus") followed the marchers down State Street blowing their horns.

I was in town visiting a friend who works at the Capitol here, and we checked out the rally after a quick visit to his office. The message of the party was generally that government was out of control, deficit spending will destroy us and that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell as well as Obama and Pelosi need to go. We didn't stick around to hear Dick Armey speak, but I did get this video of right-wing-rhyme-smith Hi Caliber. He did three songs, including "Patriotic People."

Favorite line: "Things are getting out of control, like Joe Biden's hair."

But the ex-governor--a moderate, particularly by national standards--took Chairman Mike Long aside and asked if he could say a few words: he wanted to declare his endorsement for Doug Hoffman, the Conservative's candidate to replace John McHugh in Congress.

"I folded right away," Long told me.

Pataki's message was simple: Hoffman can win, and he is the best hope of Republicans and Conservatives to be a vote against the Nancy Pelosi.

"He will fight for our proud servicemen and women at Fort Drum, our dairy farmers in Lowville and our manufacturers in Plattsburgh," Pataki said in a statement. "And Doug Hoffman can win."

This underscores the problem for Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, the moderate (or liberal, depending on your slant) Republican who has the party's nomination to replace McHugh: as conservatives in her party openly break for Hoffman, there is no counter-rally from the moderate wings, which like Pataki are succumbing to pragmatism or sitting on the sidelines.

"Look, the Republican Party is undergoing an identity crisis in New York state, and this groundswell for Hoffman has got the moderates kind of shell-shocked. They're reeling," said Bill Nojay, a Republican talk show host in central New York.

The race has stirred that identity crisis, on both the national level and the state level. In New York, where Nelson Rockefeller set a standard of socially liberal Republicanism, the comparatively moderate partisans picked Scozzafava. But the state party--now under the leadership of Ed Cox--is looking to purify itself ideologically. When Cox accepted his chairmanship in suburban Albany, he didn't mention Scozzafava by name. He has raised funds, but has also noted that her selection took place before his time.

"We're coming into this rather late in the game, our team. But we're certainly trying to be as helpful as we can," said Tom Basile, executive director of the Republican State Committee. Cox was in Syracuse Thursday spinning for Scozzafava after pre-recorded debate, and "appeared at" an event.

I asked John Faso, a more conservative Cox confidant and the party's last gubernatorial candidate, where the moderates were.

"I don't know. You can make the argument, but...I don't know where they are. I just don't know," he said. He supported "the Republican candidate" with $250 and said "I hope the Republican wins the race."

On the national level, Scozzafava doesn't fare much better. Her support of same-sex marriage, abortion rights and card check has turned off many. Eleven congressional representatives endorsed Hoffman Thursday, joining former House Leader Dick Armey. Two of the party's potential presidential nominees--Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty--are openly backing Hoffman.

Tom Reynolds, the former representative from Western New York, said that's because "people are looking to be noticed or patted on the back or the head." A distinction has to be made between conservative officials and the swelling conservative movement. "John Boehner is certainly a conservative Republican, and so is Eric Cantor. Both of them have supported Dede from day one. As has Pete Sessions, from Dallas, Texas--I sat next to him for six years in the Rules Committee, so I know how conservative he is," Reynolds told me.

But the movement--whipped up by Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin and media outlets like Red State and the Washington Times--is with Hoffman.

It is to be crossed at one's peril, Reynolds said, noting that conservatives have helped swing the Republican Party into power in recent years the same way moderates swung the party into power in the 1970s. Plus, there aren't many moderates to help. McHugh was one third of New York's Republican delegation, and Representative Pete King has endorsed Scozzafava. (Representative Chris Lee has not taken a position, and was unavailable to talk about the race, a spokeswoman said.)

Reynolds said he's supporting Scozzafava, "the party's nominee." All of the elected Republican legislators from the district--Bob Oaks, Will Barclay, Joe Griffo, Teresa Sayward, Janet Duprey--are working supporting Scozzafava's campaign, as is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But with the larger forces aligning against her, there is clearly trouble.

"We've got a race here in the North Country that's somewhat been hijacked by outside interests," she said, frustrated, in a conference call earlier this week attacking her opponents unwillingness to debate. In response to this article, her spokesman Matt Burns offered this statement: Anyone endorsing either Doug Hoffman or Bill Owens obviously isn't looking for a candidate who knows the issues confronting the hard-working people of the 23rd Congressional District. "Dede Scozzafava is the only choice for voters looking for a candidate who truly understands the issues and will fight for them in Congress.  The sad but true fact is Dede's opponents have been bought and paid for by special interest money from outside the district. Bill Owens and Doug Hoffman will have to repay those debts with their votes in Congress -- and that will cost us all."

Long, meanwhile, was gloating.

"He's the first, I guess you could call him 'establishment Republican' in New York to go for Hoffman," Long said of Pataki. "I suspect others will follow."

"So I say to my many conservative friends who suddenly decided that whether they're from Minnesota or Alaska or Texas, they know more than the upstate New York Republicans? I don't think so," said Gingrich, who is backing Hoffman's Republican opponent, Dede Scozzafava.

The former House Speaker's decision to single out, by home state if not name, Palin and Pawlenty makes perfect sense: they both loom as candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination that Gingrich would like for himself, and they've both used their support for Hoffman to boost their own standing with the national party's right-wing base. So why not take a shot?

But Armey, the former metropolitan-Dallas-area congressman Gingrich clearly was referring to when he mentioned Texas? He left the House seven years ago and, at 69 years old, isn't about to run for president in '12 - or ever. So why tweak him?

The answer could lie in one of the more intriguing and bizarre soap operas in recent congressional history - a failed bid by 12 years ago by a group of House conservatives to oust Gingrich as speaker.

An authoritative history of the coup, which came to light only after it failed in July 1997, has never been assembled, but every version - except his own - paints Armey, who as majority leader was then the second-ranking Republican in the House, as a key player. Not that he was alone: three other members of the G.O.P. leadership, Tom DeLay, John Boehner, and New York's Bill Paxon, also played roles, and the main agitating came from a band of several dozen "revolutionaries" - ultra-conservative members of the House G.O.P. class of 1994.

The insurrection was inspired by ideological and pragmatic considerations.

To many House conservatives, Gingrich was guilty of betraying the uncompromising spirit of the 1994 revolution that had swept Republicans to control of the chamber for the first time in 40 years. Even though they endured enormous grief for forcing two government shutdowns in 1995, these conservatives were miffed when Gingrich decided to cut his losses and strike a deal with President Clinton.

A trio of class of '94 conservatives, Oklahoma's Steve Largent, Indiana's Mark Souder, and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham (now, ironically, maligned as insufficiently conservative by many Republicans), spent months in early 1997 quietly building support for a move against the speaker.

They also gained support from Republicans who had simply concluded that Gingrich was a political liability. From the moment Republicans won the House in '94, Gingrich had overshadowed all of them, often for unpleasant reasons - like the $4.5 million book advance that he secured just after the election (and that he finally renounced after weeks of distracting headlines), his suggestion at the height of the government shutdown that shoddy treatment on Air Force I was one of his motives, and a years-long ethics probe that concluded in early '97 with a $300,000 fine (which the speaker paid by borrowing money from Bob Dole).

The plot against Newt became serious when the four House Republican leaders - Armey, DeLay, Paxon, and Boehner - met with the backbenchers in early July, without Gingrich's knowledge. Accounts vary, but it's generally agreed that things began to unravel when Armey - who believed that he would claim the speaker's gavel if Gingrich were toppled - was told that he was too polarizing to secure the top slot. The plotters apparently preferred Paxon, who had run the House G.O.P.'s campaign committee in '94 and 1996 and who, as a thanks, had been awarded a new leadership spot by Gingrich.

Word of the maneuvering soon leaked to the press, at which point Armey vehemently denied any involvement - a posture he has maintained since, even as his story has seemed to shift. Paxon, who was appointed to his leadership post by Gingrich (as opposed to the others, who were elected by the G.O.P. conference), ended up taking the fall, submitting his resignation to the speaker days later - and then, seven months later, stunning the D.C. world by announcing that he'd leave Congress.

Gingrich lasted as speaker for less than two more years, forced out a month after the 1998 midterm elections. By most accounts, he blamed DeLay and Paxon for the coup more than Armey - but the incident shattered any trust and cooperation that existed between the two. Armey managed to hang on to his majority leader's post until he left the House in 2002, but he never had a chance to grab the speaker's gavel.

It may well be that Gingrich had other reasons for thinking of Armey when he spoke out on Monday night. But maybe, even a dozen years later, the memory of the coup-that-almost-was isn't far from the front of his mind.

At the apex of the tea-party movement, aside from such Fox revolutionaries as Rupert Murdoch, there is a well-funded organization known as FreedomWorks, headed by a former politician named Dick Armey. His past career should be instructive to any starry-eyed citizens who believe that they have at last found the true right-wing revolutionary path.

Back when the Republicans first gained control of Congress more than a decade ago, Mr. Armey, a former economics professor at a small Texas college, was hailed as the author of the Contract with America and led the Republicans as House Majority Leader until his retirement. Having risen to power on the strength of a "tax revolt" against President Bill Clinton's first budget, which raised rates on the wealthiest Americans to trim the enormous deficit he had inherited from the first Bush administration. That summer Mr. Armey warned of an economic apocalypse - and his party won the midterm election before his predictions could be proved utterly wrong.

As anyone with a functioning memory should know, the Republicans under the leadership of Mr. Armey and his cronies Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay proceeded to rack up excesses in spending and boodling that made the old Democratic Congressional leaders look quite stingy. When he was asked once why he and his G.O.P. comrades were chomping so much more federal pork than the Democrats ever did, he replied bluntly: "To the victors go the spoils."

Like so many supposed populists in Washington, Mr. Armey packed his own golden parachute when he left Congress. At the same time that he took over the leadership of the "grassroots" group that eventually became FreedomWorks, he also joined a major corporate lobbying firm.  The website of DLA Piper, one of the capital's biggest bipartisan law and lobbying outfits, boasts of Mr. Armey's influence among his colleagues. As it happens, he specializes in homeland security, a major growth industry with billions wasted annually on corporate boondoggles. After all, his final legislative masterwork was to chair the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, and he was the prime sponsor of the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security. Of course, he isn't listed as lobbyist, but instead is called a "senior policy advisor."

As for FreedomWorks, which has claimed a national membership of some 700,000 conservative activists, its operations have long smelled of Astro-turf, or artificial grassroots. Most of the money that funded Mr. Armey's activism in the past was provided by tobacco, pharmaceutical and banking interests - and there is no reason to think that has changed.

Nor is the ideological bent of the tea party's host in any sense new. When last heard from in 2005, Mr. Armey was busily conjuring phony grassroots support for Social Security privatization. That effort led to a notorious episode involving a FreedomWorks employee who showed up at the Bush White House, where she was introduced as a "single mom from Iowa" endorsing the president's private-accounts scheme.

Buzzing beneath the furious rants of the tea-party protests, it is not hard to hear the same old right-wing rhetoric about taxes and deficits and the same old schemes to cut the taxes for the wealthiest citizens, deregulate the economy and despoil the environment. The difference between the heyday of Mr. Armey and now is that we have suffered the results of those policies in practice and reject them. The appeal of the Republican Party and conservatism as a movement are lower than ever.

Months of furious propaganda on talk radio and Fox News has achieved nothing so far, according to nearly every survey. Barack Obama's approval ratings remain close to 66 percent, with most Americans trusting him and believing that the country is on the path to renewal. This president has long benefited from ineffectual and discredited adversaries - and Mr. Armey is no exception.

So let’s dismiss the myths and get back to the facts.

At the top of the myth list is the Republican faith in tax cuts, particularly those designed to benefit wealthy investors.

Ignorance and mythology are out-shouting facts and wisdom in public discussion of President Barack Obama’s plan to stimulate the depressed economy. Excessive airtime is devoted to the prejudices of cable hosts and radio personalities who regurgitate ideas they barely understand and who haven’t entertained an original thought since the Reagan era. Urgent action that could prevent enormous suffering and damage is delayed by all the same old agendas that have dominated Washington for the past three decades.

So let’s dismiss the myths and get back to the facts.

At the top of the myth list is the Republican faith in tax cuts, particularly those designed to benefit wealthy investors. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that for every problem, conservatives have a consistent solution that involves reducing corporate or capital-gains taxes, or lowering the top rate, or instituting a regressive flat tax or consumption tax. (They like spending, too, on certain favored contractors, notably in the defense sector, that donate generously to Republican and right-wing causes.)

But the argument for tax cuts—unless they are targeted toward lower-income workers, who will spend them immediately—is contradicted by recent history and basic economics. As Moody’s forecaster Mark Zandi has pointed out repeatedly, what creates the greatest stimulative effect is putting cash in the hands of people who must spend that money immediately, namely the poor and working families. The smallest stimulus is created by tax cuts, and in particular the capital-gains and corporate tax reductions most beloved by conservative Republicans.

It is worth recalling that the last time Congress debated these fundamental questions came during the winter and spring of 1993, when Republican members unanimously rejected President Bill Clinton’s first budget. Back then, Dick Armey, a Republican representative from Texas and former economics professor, warned that Mr. Clinton’s proposed increase in the top tax rate would lead to economic disaster. Those predictions were echoed by every right-wing politician and talking head and soon proved utterly wrong by the historic growth rates of the Clinton years.

Now we hear Mr. Armey offering the same kind of predictions about the Obama stimulus plan—and he is treated as a sage rather than a dolt who bet the ranch on his ideology and lost.

Another persistent myth denigrates spending on food stamps, unemployment insurance, tuition aid and similar programs as “welfare” that doesn’t promote growth. According to this argument, assistance to the poor doesn’t qualify as “stimulus” because it doesn’t create public assets such as roads or bridges. But the real purpose of fiscal stimulus is to boost demand in the economy and prevent the bottom from dropping out under prices for goods and services—in short, to forestall a deflationary spiral. Giving money to families that will purchase things immediately is the best kind of boost, as both Moody’s and the Congressional Budget Office have noted in recent studies.

It is true that we need to make real investments in transportation, energy, education and technology for the future—and that our future fiscal difficulties will be eased if we make those investments now. Yet the most immediate need is to promote demand, which will restore confidence and encourage investment. 

What we ought to learn from this episode is that extreme inequality reduces national economic stability. The falling wages of working families forced them to rely too much on credit to maintain and improve their standards of living. Restoring the American dream means putting a floor under family incomes and reducing the gap between the richest and poorest, not only for the sake of simple justice but because that is the most reliable economic policy for the nation as a whole.

jconason@observer.com

Her Feb. 5 speech at a dinner meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) underlines the subliminal mistrust in which she is held by some. This account in the Internet edition of The Jerusalem Post makes the point. The site quoted her as saying that “US policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. As I have said for a long time, no option should be taken off the table.

“But the United States should first try to engage Iran in dialogue,” she continued. “I’m not sure anything positive would come out of it.” That should have been enough to satisfy AIPAC, but perhaps it wasn’t. The Jerusalem Post went on to opine:

“Observers say Clinton has made strides as a vocal supporter of Israel during her six years as a senator, even though she still may be a tough sell to those who have not forgiven her embrace and kiss with Suha Arafat in November 1999—just after Arafat had accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian babies.”

How far this vocal supporter, once installed in the White House, would go to wipe away the memory of that kiss is anybody’s guess, but a politician’s interest and the national interest can be two very different things. If Senator Clinton may pose a problem for those who will be invited to vote for her, she is hardly the first and not the worst.

Take the example of Dick Armey, the House Republican Majority Leader from 1995 to 2003. When queried by Dave Montgomery of the McClatchy Newspapers on whether he voted to go to war in Iraq, Mr. Armey replied: “I did, and I’m not happy about it. The resolution was a resolution that authorized the president to take that action if he deemed it necessary. Had I been more true to myself and the principles I believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the whole adventure vocally and aggressively. I had a tough time reconciling doing that against the duties of majority leader in the House. I would have served myself and my party and my country better, though, had I done so.”

This man was no backbencher, some hick Congressman nobody had ever heard of and paid no attention to; he was the Republican Majority Leader. We can speculate that, had Mr. Armey done what he thought was right for America, though perhaps wrong for the Republican Party, his country might have been spared Iraq, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives lost and the unquantifiable misery endured by millions.

It is entirely possible that if Mr. Armey had “been true” to himself and “opposed the whole adventure vocally and aggressively,” George W. Bush might well not have been able to have his war. Certainly, it would have been politically much more difficult to attack and invade Iraq with his own House Majority Leader against him—not to mention the other Republican members who would have followed Mr. Armey’s lead. They, joined with anti-war Democrats, might have defeated the war resolution.

Mr. Armey has retired from Congress and, it appears, from the slime business in favor of public breast-beating. Senator Clinton is still active, voicing no such regrets as she does the weasel chant of the contrite, formerly pro-war Democrats who, like her, voted for the Iraq invasion: “Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn’t have voted that way,” she said.

The next big military event may come without the President asking Congress to vote beforehand. This, of course, would be an attack on Iran—but only because we will have been so sorely provoked that nothing less than a month or two of aerial bombardment will do.

Every day brings new accusations against the Iranians from Washington, more unsubstantiated stories of alleged Iranian hostile activities, more effluents pumped out of the think tanks about Iranian plans to take over the Middle East. Here and there, a sensible voice tries to make itself heard to tell us what the probable consequences (all bad) of American armed aggression against Iran would be.

So maybe it is time for another vote in Congress. This might be a binding resolution aimed at preventing George W. Bush from military action against Iran.

It couldn’t be done in the Senate, where Mrs. Clinton has too many like-minded colleagues. It could, however, be done in the House. Nancy Pelosi is no Dick Armey: She does do what she believes in—when she is not doing herself political harm by asking for private jet-airplane service from the Pentagon.

She could and she might lead an effort to pass a resolution which would declare to the President that if, in the next six months, he attacks Iran, his doing so will be considered a “high crime,” as the term appears in Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution. The resolution would state that if the President does commit such a high crime, impeachment proceedings would immediately be started.

Only the House can impeach. It doesn’t need the Senate to concur, so such a threat is a real one. Whether or not the impeachment goes anywhere past the House Judiciary Committee, the proceedings are a nightmare for any President. Everything in the White House must stop in order to deal with the committee. It is no idle threat, and yet a resolution like this one, which takes effect for only six months, is limited and reasonable. If, after six months, the furor over Iran hasn’t died back, the resolution can be renewed.

The question boils down to how many Hillary Clintons and how many Dick Armeys there are in the House. Can a majority be found who will, in Mr. Armey’s phrase, serve their party and their country by doing what they know is right, instead of what is safe and easy?

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey sees the non-binding House resolution opposing the Iraq troop increase as a defeat for the Democrats.

Discussing the 246 to 182 vote, which included 17 Republican defections, Armey said, "The White House is doing good then, if they held it to 17. I think they felt if they could keep it to 20 or below then they are in good shape. I think that settles the deal."

"They didn't get enough of a show of Republican votes, so that it will drift into the category of little-noted-no-longer-remembered," he said.

The Democrats have convened an unusual Saturday session of the Senate in an attempt to make sure that doesn't happen.

--Jason Horowitz

The real menace is posed by some of the country's most powerful politicians, who remain enthralled by a defunct ideology and engorged with corporate campaign contributions.

The ideology is right-wing extremism, characterized by an aversion to active government, financed by corporate special interests and personified by the likes of Tom DeLay and Dick Armey. Using their authority to stifle swift federal action, Republican Congressional leaders are daily demonstrating how intellectually unfit they are to cope with the current crisis. (At least that's what they had been doing until they fled the Capitol for safer precincts.)

Improving airport security is among the most pressing tasks of the United States government, and it didn't take long for the Senate to cast an extraordinary unanimous vote in favor of federalizing most of those functions. Such quick, united action on a controversial matter is almost unknown in that body, where both pride and philosophy tend to preclude unanimity. But the bill that passed without a single nay in the Senate has been hog-tied in the House of Representatives for weeks because Messrs. DeLay and Armey cannot rely on members of their own caucus to vote against it.

Having realized that popular sentiment strongly supports the Senate position, the two Texas 'wingers predictably called upon corporate enforcers to muscle their colleagues. On Oct. 21, according to The Washington Post, Mr. DeLay "summoned nearly 20 lobbyists from the airline and airport security industries to the basement of the Capitol." There he instructed them to urge members to reject the Senate bill in favor of his own legislation, which would mandate the continued employment of private security firms under federal scrutiny. When they balked, his deputy reminded the lobbyists how rapidly the House leadership had rammed through the outrageous $15 billion bailout last month.

Among those present at Mr. DeLay's closed meeting were representatives of the newly organized Aviation Security Association, a lobbying outfit formed by the companies which have so badly botched these responsibilities and now fear losing their lucrative airport contracts. Presumably nobody had the poor taste to mention the frightening federal review of Argenbright Security, the country's largest airport-screening contractor. Even after Argenbright was found guilty in federal court of hiring convicted felons to screen baggage at Philadelphia International Airport, and even after the disaster of Sept. 11, investigators for the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration found the company in violation of federal regulations at 14 airports this month. One passenger at Dulles Airport in Washington got past the Argenbright screeners with a concealed pocketknife on Oct. 12 (just nine days before Mr. DeLay's lobbyist pep rally). Immigration investigators found that seven Argenbright screeners at Dallas–Fort Worth Airport were illegally working in the United States.

The Argenbright case poses conceptual difficulties for those who persist in arguing the absolute superiority of privatization-unless, like the House G.O.P. bosses, they remain hypnotized by soft-money checks and the latest handout from the Heritage Foundation. It's hard to say which of these influences is worse; but in combination, they threaten to forestall not just airport-security improvements, but many other urgent measures to protect public health and safety.

Consider the issue of money-laundering by terrorist networks such as Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. Until Sept. 11, the Bush administration had resisted international efforts to crack down on offshore-banking centers that facilitate the secret movement of illicit funding around the world. Despite continued opposition from the banking lobby, the White House shifted toward a saner view as New York's own financial center lay in smoking ruins. But Time magazine reports that Messrs. DeLay and Armey, with support from right-wing think tanks and banking lobbyists, "thwarted efforts to include an anti-money-laundering bill" in the recent anti-terrorist legislative package. If liberals were caught doing anything similar, they would be accused quite reasonably of giving comfort to the nation's enemies.

The point is not, however, to denigrate the patriotism of the right. It is simply to suggest that slavish worship of the market and demonization of government are damaging to the national interest. There are no "free-market" solutions to the weaknesses of our financial, transportation and public-health systems that can so easily be exploited by our enemies. Thoughtful conservatives like John McCain and the editors of The Weekly Standard are able to grasp this quite obvious fact. The American people appear to understand this, too. Those who have sworn to defend them should open their minds or step aside.

The cliché that the malleable Mr. Bush will be guided by more sensible (or sentient) advisers, for example, is turning out to be yet another fashionable Washington stupidity. Thanks to such seasoned tutors as Condoleezza Rice, the former fraternity president has already disrupted American relationships with Russia and the European Union. (He didn't invent that moronic proposal to pull American troops out of the Balkans all by himself, did he? That brilliant idea came from Ms. Rice, the Clarence Thomas of foreign policy, who was sent out to "clarify" the other day.)

Then there was Mr. Bush's belated confession that he indeed plans to take one trillion-also expressed as $1,000,000,000,000-from the anticipated federal surplus to fund his Social Security privatization scheme. His math is always fuzzy, so don't ask him to tell you how he will replace those 12 zeros when the time comes to send checks to the next wave of retirees. Lawrence Lindsey or some other rented Republican economist is working on that problem right now. The answer probably won't be available until after the election (and be warned that you might not like it, since it will either mean raising taxes or cutting benefits).

The list of Dubya's flubs, inanities and deceptions grows longer every day. The intellectual dishonesty of Republicans who claim to regard their nominee as an adequate national leader is a kind of scandal in itself.

How much damage can Mr. Bush really do by himself, anyway? As Texas governor, the man reportedly only works about half a day, and presumably that's during the odd year when the legislature actually shows up in Austin. Which is an apt reminder of another problem portended by a Bush restoration-namely, the empowerment of two terrible Texans, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey.

Just as national Republican leaders picked dumb but charming Dubya as their most promising prospect to regain the White House, Messrs. DeLay and Armey selected the amiable but somewhat dim Dennis Hastert to front for them as Speaker after they defenestrated poor Newt Gingrich-whom they had never regarded as a "true conservative." But it is that pair of villains who really run the Congress, and it is their ominous agenda that has been frustrated for the past few years by President Clinton. With him finally out of the way, the Republican House leadership must be anticipating a clear path for "true" conservatism in a Bush administration.

What would this trio from Texas do in power? Take every appalling proposal that is part of the Bush election platform, imagine the same thing but considerably worse, and that will serve as an approximation of what is to come. President Dubya will be required to negotiate budgets and legislation with the Congressional chieftains. Assuming that Messrs. DeLay and Armey remain the bosses of the Hill after Election Day, the Bush agenda will be pushed even further to the right.

In short, expect compassionate conservatism minus the compassion. A tax cut that goes mostly to the wealthiest of the wealthy? Yes, although without any of the paltry few bucks Mr. Bush has promised to the working poor and middle class. A "reform" of Medicare that consigns more elderly people to the untender mercies of "health maintenance organizations"? Absolutely-but please don't bring up the patients' bill of rights or prescription-drug coverage again. A plan to privatize Social Security and turn the surplus over to Wall Street hustlers? Sure. Just forget that impossible pledge to preserve benefits for everyone. And what of Mr. Bush's $5 billion literacy program and all his rhetoric about leaving no child behind? Don't be ridiculous.

Of course, the ambitions of a Bush-DeLay-Armey regime would range far beyond the constraints of this year's debates. Opening the Alaskan wilderness to the oil industry, as Mr. Bush says he will do, merely symbolizes what he and his Congressional comrades could perpetrate over the next four years. The actual abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency may be beyond their reach. But they will most assuredly gut the E.P.A., the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and every other agency that defends consumers, workers and wildlife from corporate destruction.

Social policy will be remade by such zealots as Marvin Olasky, the wacky ex-Communist guru of the religious right. Gun controls will be dismantled according to the dictates of Charlton Heston, a dangerous nutcase who hinted the other day that the Vice President deserves a "lynching."

At a New York fund-raiser for Ralph Nader, a well-meaning movie star remarked fatuously that "We survived Nixon and we'll survive Bush." Unfortunately, it isn't the survival of millionaire populists that's at stake in this election.