Crazy GOPs

The Republicans. Ah, the Republicans. Go ahead: You almost feel a little sorry for them. Sure, there’s disarray after any lost election, and while “shellacking” is the more presidential description for what the rest of us—especially here in California—might term a “manifest butt kicking,” the Republicans are lost. Lost between the tea party and the Latino vote; lost on climate change, even as it finally rises up the national agenda; lost on how even to keep score as the election concluded.

And so they throw a couple of punches in the dark at Susan Rice, and they dig in their heels on fiscal issues as if all that's old is new again. And then there's Bryan Fischer.

He's the director of issue analysis for government and public policy of the American Family Association and, according to Raw Story, monologued on his radio show about how he got a birthday present as a tyke, one that he did not like, and he said so aloud. “The person that gave me gift was there. … And it just crushed that person. It was enormously insensitive of me to do that.” Fischer continued: “And you think, that's kind of how we're treating God when he's given us these gifts of abundant and inexpensive and effective fuel sources. … And we don't thank him for it and we don't use it.”

Not only does that notion turn SUVs into little churches with big tires, it also means we can’t be grateful to God for genetically modified organisms, being man-made and all. Which is a tiny irony, as Proposition 37 and its discussion of genetically modified foods was one place where Manifest Butt Kicking didn’t occur, at least not in the same direction. While Michael Pollan stated famously for The New York Times that what “we will learn on Nov. 6 is whether or not there is a ‘food movement’ in America worthy of the name,” the measure went down harder in Sacramento County (43 percent to 57 percent) than it did in the state (48 percent to 52 percent).

On October 1, polls had Prop. 37 leading 3-to-1 after the onslaught of ads, in which the Yes on 37 campaign was outspent 5-to-1 in what many consider a dirty campaign, and the tide turned. Such tactics don't spell the end of a movement, only a skirmish. Mother Jones noted that similar battles are predicted by ballot in Washington and in the state houses in Oregon, New Mexico and Maine. It's a dinner party, the night is young, we're far from dessert. And that ain't lost.