Jonah Goldberg:

Failure to indulge these building sprees is routinely blamed on the right's anti-government ideological dogmatism. The irony is that there's not that much ideological opposition to worthwhile public works projects. There's some, but most objections are much more consistent with the old-fashioned country-club-style fiscal conservatism everyone claims to miss. The white elephants are just too expensive to build, and they often seem to be aimed at disguising wealth distribution, either to favored unions or to favored donors.