Demagogue

Here is a bit more from the Pew Research Center poll I posted on yesterday.

Nearly half of all Americans - 45% - thought government does a better job than it gets credit for; about the same number (47%) said that government is almost always "wasteful and inefficient." There was a similar split over the efficacy of government regulation - 49% believed it is necessary to protect the public interest, while 41% said it does more harm than good.

But Democrats and Republicans no longer differ on these questions as they did through the 1990s. As recently as 1999, there were gaps of about 20 percentage points between the parties on both of these values; and throughout the 1990s, responses to these questions were important predictors of voting preference.

So either government has gotten far more efficient since the mid-90's, right around the time the Republicans were plotting their takeover, or Republicans have stopped carping about how inefficient the government is, now that they control it.

I'll let you decide which is the most likely scenario.