They say an elephant never forgets. Perhaps they should say that a Republican never learns. Republicans refuse to learn from their own mistakes. Republicans refuse to learn from their opponents successes. They ever remain people of faith, no matter how often reality slaps them upside the head with the facts.
To illustrate this point, consider the eternal Republican enmity toward federal regulations and regulatory agencies. Is it new? Hardly. Here is how one extremist Republican of long ago put it in accepting his party's nomination in 1964:
We are plodding at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse.You would think that LBJ was running a Stalinist, centrally planned economy complete with gulags from a ridiculous rant like that. Remember that Barry Goldwater made these remarks at a time when the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were progressive pipe dreams, Medicare and Medicaid didn't exist and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration still lay in America's future. This appeal to the Republican faithful at the convention that nominated Goldwater to run against LBJ in 1964 wasn't directed at the enormously successful regulatory and programmatic innovations to come. No, the GOP was still fighting back against the New Deal.