In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster last summer, one of the Republicans’ more successful tactics for deflecting responsibility for their own incompetence was to label any criticism as an attempt to “play the blame game.”

Hold fire until later, they said, scolding Democrats and the media — there would come a time for assigning blame but right now there are more pressing concerns, such as getting help to victims in the Gulf Coast. (Never mind that most of the victims were suffering because of the government’s failure to provide help early on.)

And, predictably, the time for assigning blame never really came. Despite a few hearings in Congress, Pres. Bush and his team escaped having to take full responsibility for the lives lost and property destroyed due to their disastrous response.

Today, in the wake of the Foley sex scandal, the GOP is fully engaged in playing the blame game. Here is just a partial list of who they are blaming for GOP Rep. Mark Foley’s X-rated emails to 16 year old boys:

• Gay people: Possibly the most outrageous claim is that the House leaders were reticent to go after the very closeted Rep. Foley’s behavior because they feared being labeled “gay bashers.” This is laughable since gay bashing is what Republicans do. Laws designed to discriminate against gay people are principal planks in the Republican Party platform. In fact, Pres. Bush would likely have lost the 2004 elections if his political team hadn’t seen to it that there was a gay-bashing initiative on the ballot in Ohio that year.
• Democrats and the media: Rush Limbaugh and others have blamed Democrats for holding Foley’s emails and releasing them five weeks before the election as a coordinated scheme to topple Republican control of the House. The problem with this scenario is that Brian Ross at ABC, who broke the story last week, says his source in the House was a Republican.
• Each other: In a sure sign of disarray, both Majority Leader John Boehner and Rep. Tom Reynolds, chair of the NRCC, are blaming Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Why is the conservative ideology such a sham? One of the Republican Party’s talking points about itself is that it is the party that advocates taking personal responsibility. But they never do. Whatever goes wrong is always someone else’s fault — meaning the “liberal” media and the Democrats, of course.

As any parent could immediately discern from this playground squabbling, all of this fingerpointing ultimately leads to one conclusion: They are guilty, guilty, guilty.