One of the more convenient aspects of hewing religiously to a particular extreme ideology is that such ideologies rarely get tested in the real world. Thus they make convenient foundations for opposition to established norms and processes and especially convenient foundations for opposition to “government”, which as all adherents of extreme ideology (right or left) know constitutes the source of all that is wrong with the world, or at least their little parts of it.

And though politicians who appeal to the basest instincts of these extreme ideologues may even get their votes and their support initially, the tendency is always to drift away as the realities of governing a diverse population pull political leaders more toward the center or those political leaders abandon their extremes once they’ve fulfilled their usefulness (i.e. as effective demonizers of the opposition).

Nixon, once the darling of extreme conservatives of his day, went to China and gave us environmental policies that would make a 21st Century environmentalist happy, both of which soured his conservative credentials among rightwing extremists. Clinton, once having captured the rapture of even the far left, immediately moved to center, pushing NAFTA and engaging in only minimalist support for any substantive environmental policies while wooing corporate support at the expense of labor, saw his liberal credentials soured with even many mainstream liberals and progressives.

But now we have a situation we haven’t faced in our country in my lifetime, or my father’s lifetime. While we have had effective single-party control of much of government before we haven’t had such a “Perfect Storm” scenario as to have the most extreme elements of a particular niche ideology within a political party control all the branches of government, from the White House, to Congress to the Supreme Court along with Statehouses and their legislatures around the country.

For the first time an extreme ideology has to put up or shut up, has to actually put their extreme policy positions into law and then make them work. We’ve been hearing since the Carter years that the radical conservativism that first gained traction during the Reagan years was the “adult” solution to all our country’s woes, economic, social, political, governmental and international. There was little ammunition to rebut these wild claims because, even during Reagan/Bush/Quayle it really was never put into practice, it made for nice rhetoric on Sunday talk shows and newspaper editorial pages but it never actually threatened to become law and practice.

But now it has, and as Scott Shields points out very succinctly over at MyDD this morning, it has failed monumentally.

While I have no doubt that Kristol is right to say that a growing number of conservatives lack confidence in the Bush administration to effectively manage the basic functions of government, I think the problem goes deeper than Bush administration incompetence. The situation we find ourselves in right now serves as the ultimate test of Republican governance. From President Bush on down to the lowest ranking Republican in the House, Rep. Jean Schmidt, the Republican Party controls the federal government. This has been the case for the better part of the last five years, with a brief period in which the Democrats, held tenuous control of the Senate, thanks to Republican defector Jim Jeffords.

The fundamental failures of government therefore cannot be simply chalked up to George W. Bush’s personal incompetence. The problem is that Republican governance doesn’t work. Every theory the modern Republican Party bases its policies on has failed the test of realistic implementation. Lower taxes on the wealthy will create jobs and increase revenue? Wrong. People all over the world value Western-style Democracy over nationality? Wrong. Self-regulation of business will be more effective than government regulation? Wrong. And the list goes on.

This administration which bases its every policy move on the most extreme conservative ideology imagineable, has failed at literally everything it has attempted. It will become harder and harder for the ideologues to say their way works because we now have, painted in blood and illustrated with the lives of innocents, incontrovertible evidence that the very basic assumptions of conservativism are simply wrong.