Since it was posted yesterday, I have been both horrified and fascinated by the results of this DailyKos/Research 2000 poll of Republicans. It’s impossible to cherry pick the results from the list to make my point because so many of them are so very distressing. Andrew Sullivan posted a great explanation of what this is about:

It has a parallel in the way in which non-violent Islamists have doubled down on medievalism as they feel an overwhelming sense of their own failure to succeed in modernity. There is a profound insecurity and dysfunction in these subcultures which cannot make the transition to modern life and thereby surrender more totally to the ancient past and to hatred of those who succeed. The hatred of Obama – a clearly decent and obviously Christian man – is not about him. It’s about them. It’s about their resentment of a man who has integrated his own identity and made a place for himself in a pluralist world. They cannot do that – so, like Palin, they invent a world of ancient virtues and moral absolutes that they routinely fail to live up to in reality. I mean: look at Palin’s family and Obama’s. Whose is the more traditional? And yet Palin is allegedly the avatar of family values – and Obama is a commie subversive.

I just don’t know what you do with a person who believes that ACORN stole the 2008 election on behalf of a foreign-born socialist who hates white people and should be impeached. These same people are ready to ban openly gay teachers from public schools unless they agree to teach the book of Genesis in science class. I don’t think education is the answer.

I beat up on the Republicans a lot, but I want to point out the alternative budget proposal put forth by Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan. His proposal eliminates the deficit and takes care of the entitlement crisis. It does so by eliminating Medicare and giving seniors vouchers they can use to buy health insurance. If health insurance premiums go up at a higher rate than the voucher amount, it will fall to seniors to make up the difference. His proposal is not something I’d support, but it is an honest attempt to engage with the budget problems the country faces long term, which is more than you can say for most of what Republicans put forth. He argues in favor of his proposal in this interview with Ezra Klein.

Every day we see a lot of boneheaded proposals from Republicans at every level of government, arguing that taxes are too high and that government spending is basically a big waste. Most Republicans seem to be content to argue that we should cut taxes and eliminate the deficit, and also that military spending should be held at the same level or raised, and, more recently, that Medicare cuts are off limits. There doesn’t seem to be any concern over whether this philosophy is in any way coherent.

Colorado Springs is helpfully providing a working example of Republican governance at work, which the rest of us can learn from. The Denver Post has the details:

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled. The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

The list goes on in the article.

Colorado Springs has the same problem as government at every level. The recession has driven tax receipts way down and employee benefits continue to get more expensive. It seems to me that liberals and conservatives seem to share largely the same expectations of what services shout government provide, but Republicans believe that the amount of taxes the government collects are not relevant to that level of service.