Remember how the Republican Party abandoned its principles during the Bush years — the hundreds of billions they borrowed from communist China to pay for government programs and war supplementals, because, as Dick Cheney said, “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”; remember their disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, followed by their 180-degree flip-flop in 2003 on their firm opposition to nation building in 2000; their corrupt and incompetent fiscal mismanagement; their passing a law in March 2005 to force the federal government to intervene in the Terri Schiavo end-of-life case, a bill Bush rushed back to Washington from his Easter vacation to sign; the legal shenanigans deployed by top GOP officials, including, among many others, Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales as well as George Bush and Dick Cheney in order to avoid responsibility for their own malfeasance and ineptitude; and on and on?

Now, even though they’re not yet back in power, Republicans are already tossing conservative principles overboard. In an effort to pander to their tea-bagger base, they are in a full-court press to force the government to intervene in the construction of the Park 51 Islamic center near New York City Hall, also known as the (not at) Ground Zero (not a) mosque.

But don’t take my word for it — I’m the sort of partisan progressive-liberal Democrat that makes Glenn Beck cry like a little baby. Here is a conservative, Josh Barro, writing for the National Review’s website, a gold-plated bastion of right wing propaganda and spin, calling out his conservative brothers and sisters on their willingness to shove principles aside to stop the dang mosque:

1. Use political appointees to stop the project: As is common in Manhattan, the owners of Park 51 only hold title to half the mid-block lot where the facility would be built. ConEd, a local utility company, owns the other half and is leasing it to Park 51 until 2071. Rick Lazio — the Republican candidate for governor now whom Hillary Clinton trounced in her first U.S. Senate bid — has said, if elected, he’ll pack the Public Service Commission, the board that oversees ConEd, with Republican hacks who will do his bidding and vote to stop the deal.

BARRO: Of course, a private firm should not ordinarily need approval from political appointees to sell its property. We accept greater regulation for utilities like ConEd because their monopoly position could allow them to exploit consumers — so the PSC is supposed to oversee ConEd with an eye toward protecting ratepayers… Set aside the fact that ConEd appears to be contractually obligated to sell. A PSC decision to block the sale would not be about protecting ratepayers’ interests. (Indeed, the fact that ConEd agreed to a century-long lease on the property demonstrates that it is not essential to serving customers.)

2. Order the federal government to intervene: Some on the right are suggesting forcing the federal government to declare a vast swathe of the Financial District around Ground Zero a historic preservation site. Speaking as a former resident of the area, these people simply do not understand how Manhattan is laid out. Neighborhoods are tightly defined — just crossing a narrow street takes you from Chinatown into Little Italy or from Greenwich Village to SoHo. To locals, Ground Zero is a discrete area composed of the footprint of the World Trade Center plaza, which, trust me, is quite a large space. It’s in this footprint that sunken memorial gardens are being built.

BARRO: First of all, Ground Zero is a construction site. Four huge office towers are in development there … Indeed, the government has thrown a ton of money at financing the redevelopment, which had been stalled in part by weak demand for office space Downtown. Second, the proposed [center] would not be located “at” Ground Zero, but two blocks north of it. So, any federal overlay that restricts development would have to cover not just Ground Zero but an area around it. Again, it is hard to come up with a policy rationale: this area is part of one of America’s busiest office districts, characterized by over a century of high-rise development and redevelopment, which we hope to see continue. It’s hard to see a justification for “preservation” other than as a pretext to interfere with the mosque … (Besides which, when zoning or similar restrictions are used as a pretext to block a religious institution, that violates the First Amendment.) Conservatives rightly bristle at the federal government’s micromanagement of land in the American West, with the highest profile example being the closure of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. So why should we invite the feds into land use review in Manhattan? What New York allows to be built in its Financial District is not the federal government’s business.

Do conservatives really want to set a precedent for the federal government telling religious institutions where they can and cannot build? As a secular progressive who believes in the separation of church and state, I do not.

3. Washington (and Wasilla) know best: Barro doesn’t mention it, but the neighborhood zoning board voted 28 to one to approve construction of the center. Outsiders see it as a mosque, but it features meeting and sports facilities open to all, so locals see it as a neighborhood amenity.

BARRO: In short, people are overestimating the extent to which this building will interact with, or be noticeable from, the World Trade Center site. And this brings us to why I disagree not only with those who would use the power of government to stop the mosque, but also with the NR editors and others who urge private anti-mosque action. In general, my presumption is that it’s OK for people to build what they want on their property, with the burden on opponents to show why that’s such a bad thing. The proper question is not “Why here?” but “Why not here?” So much of the complaint about the mosque has centered around the idea that, because hijackers acting in the name of Islam attacked the towers, Muslims should maintain a respectful distance. But the developers of Cordoba House (why do I even need to say this?) are not terrorists and did not attack the towers. Placing a burden on all Muslims to keep their institutions out of the Financial District is unfair.

Conservatives supposedly oppose outside interference and favor local control — unless, of course, they are the outsiders who are interfering in a local matter. See how that works?

As a former New Yorker, one aspect of this controversy that I find amusing is that it must be bursting the bubble of millions of Gothamites who believe that New York is the center of the universe and so everyone everywhere naturally understands how things work there. It must be frustrating to hear people say that Park 51 is at Ground Zero, when, in fact, it really truly is not. It’s not really in any brand-name neighborhood — a little to far south to be TriBeCa. From locals’ perspective, it’s one block west of City Hall Park, which is why the street it’s on was named Park Place.

Josh Barro explains it like this:

As an aside, I think that some of the concern over this mosque, especially among people who do not live in New York City, is based on a misunderstanding of the geography of Lower Manhattan. This is an area that had significant high-rise development before New York imposed setback requirements and floor-area ratio maximums (limits on how many square feet of building you can put on a lot). As a result, the area is denser and more canyon-like than Midtown. This means you can be two blocks away from something without any sense that you’re near it. City Hall is four blocks from Ground Zero, but you’d never stand there and think “I’m right near Ground Zero.” There is even a strip club three blocks south of Ground Zero, but nobody seems to have noticed that it is sullying the memory of the place.

But Barro is wasting NRO’s bandwidth (as I am here, I know) because this controversy is now well past rationality. We’re deep into the phase where facts simply do not matter.

That’s a shame because if Park 51 is shut down — and at this point, it’s hard to imagine how the developers can withstand the well-funded forces arrayed against them by powerful conservative elites in Washington and, yes, Wasilla — this will be viewed around the world as another instance in which America politicians have shunted aside our lofty ideals and constitutional principles in favor of expediency — specifically by fanning the flames of voters’ bigotry and fear in order to help Republicans win back Congress this year.