I may not agree with all their wacky views, but I can understand conservatives getting in their typical purple-faced tizzies over things like gay marriage and keeping government out of our lives.
These are bedrock conservative issues.
Yes, the party that’s opposed to government intervention is ceaseless in its defense of personal liberty until it comes to issues like who’s rocking whose bed.
But when did conservatives become so opposed to conservation?
I’m, of course, referring to the latest conservative bogeyman, the compact fluorescent light bulb.
Conservatives say they are evil. They say they are destructive. They say they threaten the very fiber of American society.
It makes me nostalgic for days when they used to say things like that about Osama bin Laden.
Yes, these are dark days for light bulbs.
When I heard there was an innovative new light bulb that could save Americans on average $85 a month, I reacted the way an old conservative would have.
I thought, “This will let me conserve about $1,000 a year on electric bills.”
That I vowed to lavish the savings on donations to ultra-liberal organizations like the Sierra Club didn’t diminish the initial conservative motivation.
When exactly did the conservative movement begin to lose its mind?
The federal energy legislation that has them frothing was championed and signed by George W. Bush in 2007. It didn’t infuriate them then.
Was it when they were revealed to be so wrong about each and every aspect of the misguided $3 trillion Iraq War, the most costly and wasteful government program in American history?
Was it when they realized that eight years of conservative rule didn’t lead to panacea, but led instead to the election of America’s first black president, a man they despise?
The debt ceiling crisis has all the experts terrified -- and Michele Bachmann’s not an expert.
Not me.
Here’s what’s going the happen: Fiscally-minded grown ups of the conservative movement are going to begin exerting pressure to get a deal done. It’s already happening with Mitch McConnell.
Republican negotiators are going to cave because President Obama’s looking like the adult here.
Then Tea Party conservatives will do what they do best: They will become furious, only this time the sum of their wrath will be directed at inter-party allies.
That means the party will nominate the most extreme candidate from the most dysfunctional slate of presidential aspirants either party has ever considered.
The best candidate, the one who could engage voters from both parties, is Mitt Romney, a man so earnest he makes me wish I could get him drunk and passed out long enough to draw Sharpie eyebrows on his forehead before his next candidate debate.
But he’s a magic underpants-wearing Mormon and that won’t fly with primary voters in places like South Carolina.
If his complexion was just a shade darker they’d be demanding he produce his birth certificate.
That’s why I’m comfortable predicting the nominee will be reactionary Texas Governor Rick Perry. Yes, the man who recently mentioned seceding Texas from the union will soon be campaigning to run the country he considered abandoning.
Perry recently signed a law exempting Texas from the Bush energy and light bulb standards and is seeking manufacturers who -- yee! haw! -- come to Texas to open a plant making bulbs the old-fashioned Edison way.
The idea was mocked by Bob Keefe of the Natural Resources Defense Council that argues on behalf of conserving our resources.
“It’s pretty unlikely any manufacturers are going to be rushing to Texas to make a product based on technology that’s 125 years old, is highly inefficient and is something the majority of consumers have widely said they’d don’t want.”
He’s saying it’s not a very bright idea.
It’s just what we’ve come to expect from a movement that’s increasingly being led into the darkness by a bunch of inefficient dim bulbs.
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