Dirty Republicans

One other aspect of Republicanism that I forget to mention in a previous post: They really like being crooks.  I was reminded of that reading this of corrupt defense contractor Mitchell Wade in TPM Muckracker:
But employees say it was more: they both admired his ability to play people, and were disgusted by how stupid was his almost pathological need to be dishonest. "He could have done everything legally and been a billionaire," said one former executive. "But he always wanted to cut corners."

But it’s not just him.  That’s just the way that Republicans like to do things.  If they can do something honest or dishonest, they’d prefer the dishonest way.  That’s just the way they roll.  It’s not enough to get ahead; you’ve got to get ahead in a tricky way.  That kind of thing just appeals to people.  I kind of understand that, as I’ve always had a penchant for doing things in an economical or lazy way; and sometimes go way out of my way to do things the “easy” way.  

And that’s how they are about dirty tricks and cheating.  It’s the icing on the cake.  It’s not enough to win; they’d rather win dirty.  They’d rather deceive.  Sure, playing dirty and deceiving are necessary for them to enact the agenda they want; but they’d do it in any case.  Heck, it could be argued that they picked their agenda based upon the need to deceive.