For years, some of us have joked about GOP conservatives being a “Beltway Mafia,” but little did we know they take the moniker seriously.

Republicans, last Thursday’s Washington Post reports, have ousted Democrats from the top lobbyist jobs in Washington, D.C., rather like Don Fanucci ousted Vito Corleone from his job at the Italian grocery in favor of Fanucci’s nephew.

The GOP, however, doesn’t have the Black Hand’s savoir faire and style. They’re more like pigs jostling for a spot at the trough.

“Nearly a decade after Republicans launched a campaign to oust Democrats from top lobbying jobs in Washington,” The Post reports, “sometimes through intimidation and private threats, they are seizing a significant number of the most influential positions at trade associations and corporate government affairs offices – and reaping big financial rewards.”

Big firms such as “General Electric, Comcast, Citigroup and many other Fortune 500 companies have hired Bush administration officials and former GOP congressional advisers for top lobbying posts.” And, the paper says, “a Republican National Committee official recently told a group of GOP lobbyists that 33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans, according to someone who attended the meeting.”

GOP tactics in this “K Street Project” have landed Rep. Tom Delay, the world’s most famous right-wing bug killer, in hot water with the oxymoronic House Ethics Committee. Democrats also want an probe of GOP pressure on another industry to hire a former Republican hack.

Even corporate Hollywood may hire a Republican to run its lobby group. Significantly, the remuneration for these jobs is lucrative. One pays $750,000 a year.

Most of these Republicans bill themselves as conservatives, although conservatives once espoused limited, constitutional government. Then again, one doesn’t get paid 750 grand to lobby for limited government.

In other words, Republican conservatism is inversely proportional to the size of the paycheck. But Republicans can’t get that paycheck until they have learned the ropes in government itself.

Conservative only in the sense they spend a little less money than Democrats, Republicans expand government as congressmen or bureaucrats, then, having worked on the inside, easily waddle through the revolving door to K St. When a big company or industry lobby group dangles a fat paycheck, the conservative Republican oinks.

The principle of limited government goes out the window. Suddenly, that useless agency in the Energy Department is crucial to national survival. Special legislation isn’t such a bad idea. Formerly wasteful government contracts and subsidies miraculously benefit the public weal.

And don’t think Republicans would expand government solely for the benefit of American freeloaders. They’re big in the “foreign agent” business. For huge fees, foreign agents shill for other countries and seek subsidies for them, a job that requires registration with the Justice Department.

Foreign agentry is a lucrative job for soldiers in the Beltway Mafia. Ten grand a month buys a lot steak and salad at The Palm.

But back to the barnyard. Republicans and Democrats are just differently colored pigs rolling in the same sty.

Thus, reform is impossible. To those who say we must vote for Republicans because they are the lesser of two evils, the answer is this: The lesser of two evils is evil.

Both must be destroyed. The sty must be drained.

Syndicated columnist R. Cort Kirkwood is managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. His e-mail address is: [email protected].