Above is a pretty curious sight: Republicans using every parliamentary trick they’ve got to try and delay the passage of the health care bill. Of course, it didn’t work, and the whole incident seems an awful lot like an ineffective temper tantrum.

Which, as of late, has more or less been the right-wing modus operandi. Take, for example, the minor Tea Party freakout in DC the day before. Complete with out-there Holocaust comparisons that are almost too self-evidently ridiculous to be offensive.

The thing is, all of this nonsense produced a better bill. After all, imagine if the Republicans had taken on the role of the Blue Dogs–vowing to cooperate with the Democrats in crafting the language, and then gradually weakening it into an unrecognizable lump. Instead, they paid lip service to bipartisan cooperation, and then promptly made it as obvious as possible that the only acceptable bill to them was none at all.

This in turn freed the Democrats of any obligation to deal with them as a real force in the legislation-crafting process. The bill’s still not perfect–just look at the gaping, pus-filled blister on its surface known as the Stupak amendment–but that’s largely because of the Blue Dogs. A bill with meaningful Republican input would look significantly weaker. In fact, it does; we call it the Senate bill.

As long as the Republicans continue to frame every single battle as the ultimate struggle of good and evil, and refuse to actually participate in the political process, they’re going to keep losing fights. Because sure, blind obstructionism in the Senate can stop a lot of stuff from happening, but it can only stop so much. And in the meantime, every goal that you don’t achieve looks like a crushing defeat if you insist on framing it as the most important struggle of your lifetime.

The funny thing is, for the people who call themselves conservative, all of this wailing and shirt-rending doesn’t reflect a very conservative disposition. Real conservatism would embrace incremental, achievable goals over preening theatrics and outright refusal to make the smallest of concessions.