After Mitt Romney’s humiliating defeat in 2012, many pundits explicitly or implicitly agreed with bloger Ted Frier who wrote that the GOP had deteriorated into a party of ” elderly conservative whites who year by year are a shrinking share of the national electorate.” And it’s true. How do I know? The last-ditch war over light bulbs. As a result of legislation passed during he Bush administration, The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, incandescent light bulbs that fail to meet higher energy efficiency standards are on the way out. The new standards were phased in, first 100- and 75-watt bulbs bit the dust, and starting this month the popular 60- and 40-Watt bulbs will not be replaced store shelves after they are sold out. Republicans have been fighting this event tooth and nail. There’s been efforts at legislation such as Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-S.C.) bill, H.R. 3818 which attempts to repeal the ban. And now victory of a sort – the new omnibus appropriations bill contains a rider that will defund efforts to enforce the new standards. Of course, American manufacturers have, in anticipation of the new rules, almost completely ceased manufacture of the less efficient bulbs, but, with no prospect of enforcement, such bulbs could conceivably be purchased from foreign suppliers and sold in the U.S. to the folks who just can’t let go.

Stopping the new rules, believe it or not, has been one of the GOP’s leading priorities. When it first came to my attention in 2011, I wrote:

Did you scratch your head when the GOP House, faced with a deteriorating economy, decided to concentrate their energies on light bulb standards a few weeks ago? Did this suggest nothing so much as the crankiness of some of your elderly family members who curse as they try to figure out how to circumvent car seat belts, wax furious when they can’t smoke in restaurants, and carry on about the fools who buy “five-dollar” cups of coffee? …

Yup. You know just who it is who can’t let go. Geezers. I hate to say it because I think – technically at least – I qualify as one, but most of the carpers are undoubtedly geezers. Represented by the GOP, a.k.a. Geezers Only Party.

I noted back in 2011 that there’s more to the great light bulb war than how we get our light. What’s in play is the same impulse Charles Blow was talking about when he wrote that “Republicans are trying to hold back a storm surge of demographic change with a white picket fence.” The GOP plays to a constituency filled with nostalgia for a past that is changing; desperate to hold back a future they don’t understand and fear. Is it any wonder that the future of a GOP so constrained is itself imperiled?

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This is what passes for “thinking” at the leading conservative “think tank,” the Heritage Foundation.

Earlier this week [May 2013], the Heritage Foundation’s executive director sent a letter to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging them to avoid introducing legislation and to, instead, focus attention on White House “scandals.”

…we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the internet sales tax or the FARRM Act, which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another “circular firing squad” article.

…Rather than scheduling such legislation for consideration, we urge you to keep the attention focused squarely on the Obama administration. As the public’s trust in their government continues to erode, it is incumbent upon those of us who support a smaller, less intrusive government to lead.”

There it is: the naked truth about the Republican Congressional “agenda,” brought to you straight from the “heart” of the Republican strategy machine: Don’t waste time on actual legislation. Don’t discuss issues. Pay no attention to your job description. Don’t do anything that might be construed as “governing.” Don’t talk about the merits of any issues. Instead: Create scandals. Hold hearings. Investigate. Investigate again. Point fingers. Distract the public from the issues that really matter to them. Destroy Obama. Wreck government. But for gawd’s sake, don’t deviate from the party line, don’t reveal any differences of opinions among yourselves, and don’t legislate. That could be dangerous.

You can read the full letter here.

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I’m not young. And I’m not a Republican. So, Ann, you’re calling the wrong number. But I do appreciate the call—because it helps me remember what we’re up against in the 2012 election, and beyond. And gives me a chance to remind myself of what an obnoxious, alpha, mean-girl, snotty sorority sister you are. [Case in point: During the third Presidential debate of this election, you sent out this outrageous tweet:

I’m not even going to try to enumerate the ways in which this tweet is offensive.

But I digress. Back to the robocall.

After throwing around some numbers and statistics about the woeful  state of the economy—which is 100 percent the fault of President Obama, according to Coulter, I learn about what she calls Barack Obama’s “exciting” [her word, delivered with dripping sarcasm] plan for America.

“Barack Obama will turn America into a bankrupt, European, socialist nanny state,” says Coulter. “So, this is our one chance to defeat Obamacare. If we don’t, that’s it. Obamacare will be here to stay, andthat will be end of American freedoms and liberties.”

“If Barack Obama is re-elected,” she goes on, “the future is dim. America as a land of opportunity and freedom will exist only in the history books.”

And now the [bizarre and inappropriately targeted] pitch for me to join the Young Republicans. “When I think of today’s young people, I weep that you did not come of age as I did during the Ronald Reagan years of peace and prosperity.” She weeps! Where’s my box of tissue when I really need it?

“Our 2012 Vice-Presidential candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan, is a member of the Young Republicans,” she notes.  [And if that doesn’t inspire me, what would?]

The call finishes with a call to action, which I will most definitely heed: “If you want to stop these calls, dial 1-855-530-7774.” Call it. Press 3 to be placed on the do not call list. But then again, doing that will stop me from receiving future calls from Ann. And that would be sad.

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Something I don’t understand about GOP logic, if it can be called that, is the idea that public workers are just a useless drain on the taxpayer. If that is true, aren’t private sector employees a drain on their employers? Somewhere along the line, we started believing that some of the hardest workers on the planet don’t deserve the few benefits they are—less and less–offered and, especially in the case of public workers, that there’s no return on our investment.

A short list of public works: paved roads, education, health care, security, environmental and fire protection, clean water, sanitation, disaster relief, libraries, safe work environments, consumer protections, mail, safe food, civil rights, and freedom. These are just a few things all Americans enjoy and prosper from but they don’t get done on their own. Just ask the people whose job it is to get them done.

Things Republicans don’t mind spending billions on: athletes, talk radio hosts, television pundits and personalities, political attack ads, campaign contributions, super PACS, corporate welfare, war, deregulation, Wall Street executives, and lobbyists. In what way do any of those things benefit us, both as individuals and as a civil society?

I think Romney best summed up the right wing disconnect during a speech in Iowa when he said of Obama, “He wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

Mitt Romney and the Republicans have a very intriguing and selective idea of what constitutes “helping” the American people. Much of their economic policy is centered on protecting the exponential growth of wealth into the hands of the top one percent. They seem to have convinced nearly half the voting public that the very rich have all earned their wealth rather than inherited it, while poor people are poor because they are lazy, unemployed, and entitled.

Republicans tell us that poor people and “irresponsible” homeowners are to blame for the abysmal economy, and that the very rich are job creators who should not be bothered with the health of the economy during tough times. Those positions are in stark contrast to Romney’s own record of mass layoffs, corporate welfare, extraordinarily low tax rates, and life of innumerable opportunities.

The fact that their words are not in harmony with their actions doesn’t seem to bother the right wing. Across the country, politicians at the state level—like Scott Walker—are pushing austerity measures and extreme budget cuts through the works. Republicans on the national stage are calling for an end to earned benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Speaking on The Colbert Report on Monday, Paul Krugman warned that continuing on this path is sure to lead us into another great depression. Not to be confused with a recession, he says, though he contends that we are currently in a smaller depression. Furthermore, he points out that we could end the depression simply by hiring back all the public employees the GOP has laid off.

Here is a particularly interesting exchange between Paul Krugman and Stephen Colbert:

“Europe is in big trouble right now. They made a terrible mistake, which is one currency without one government and they compounded that by having a lot of the wrong policies,” Krugman told Stephen Colbert.

“But Obama is a socialist and Europe is a socialist system. And so Europe is just a preview of what will happen to America, right? You want to turn America into Europe’s economic problems,” Colbert presses Krugman.

“What European country did conservatives love before the crisis? What was the highest ranked western country on the Heritage index of economic freedom? What was the country with the lowest corporate tax rates? It was Ireland. Ireland has done everything.

“Ireland is Romney economics in practice: they’ve laid off a large fraction of their public work force, they’ve slashed spending, they’ve had extreme austerity programs, they haven’t really raised taxes on corporations or the rich at all. They have 14% unemployment, 30% youth unemployment, zero economic growth; Ireland is a demonstration. I think Ireland is America’s future if Romney is president.”

What Krugman told a Colbert audience is the reality we all know and live in. Republicans would have us believe in some fantasy, an alternate reality where corporations are people with human rights; the very wealthy are long-suffering job creators who can’t create jobs and pay taxes at the same time; and smaller government means making all of your reproductive and marital decisions for you.

I really don’t want to live in a Republican fantasy. Do you?

Image: Unemployment line in Dublin, Ireland

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