The Lords of Nyet

What are the Republicans drinking? Or are they all smoking opium smuggled in from the fields of Afghanistan? Or is crystal meth their drug of choice, the substance that makes them so obstinate and stupid?

From Washington DC to Sacramento, from the Federal stimulus to California’s budget fiasco, the Republicans are the party of No, Nada, Nope, Never and Nyet.

In the midst of the worst economic meltdown since the early 1930’s – a meltdown caused by pig-headed Republican policies that even the Oracle, Alan Greenspan, now admits were nothing more than smoke, mirrors and blind faith in the Free Market Gods – all Congressional Republicans have to offer is more of the same. More tax cuts. More lavish spending on weapon systems that will not rid the world of Islamic terrorists. More shredding of the social safety net and attacks on those dreaded “entitlement” programs like Medicare and Social Security.

More hocus pocus, in other words.

Out here in California, the Republicans are even more crack-addled and brain numb. For more than 100 days, Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate have held the budget process hostage, staunchly refusing to face the fact that a projected $41 billion deficit cannot be erased by spending cuts alone. While the Governor and Democratic leaders have toiled in the trenches to devise a mix of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to save the state from insolvency, Republicans have simply refused to go along because many are wedded to nonsensical pledges never to raise taxes under any circumstances.

Never. Ever. Never. Ever. One hand on Bible, the other over heart, read my lips and bow before bronze statues of Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh. We can’t cross Grover or Rush because they will tell everyone on the screwball Right that we’re Liberals and Socialists. And then we won’t be able to hop from the Assembly to the Senate and then to a Constitutional post…not that any of us are seeking a career in Government
...no, no, we believe in the sanctity of the Free Market and the glory of Private Enterprise, but someone has to protect the people from the Democrats and their never-ending lust for tax increases and Big Government.

Never, ever, because Republicans know that it only takes one or two crusaders to derail a dysfunctional budget process that requires an onerous two-thirds majority to pass a dime’s worth of tax increases.

The new Republican leader, Dennis Hollingsworth, elected just over twenty-fours hours ago to replace a colleague deemed too pliable, is a staunch anti-tax crusader, not to mention a mathematics whiz who seems to believe that spending cuts alone can wipe out the entire $41 billion shortfall.

Nobody knows how the Republicans will accomplish this feat of fiscal alchemy, or why they have waited 100-plus days to divulge their master plan to free California from the shackles of “big” government. Will they shutter our prisons, close our schools, padlock our parks and recreation areas, seal our harbors and ports, and decree that society as we’ve known it is over and from here out it’s every man, woman, child, dog, cat, parakeet and zoo animal for himself or herself?

Hell yes, survival of the fittest, Lord of the Flies.