Ohioans Want Renewable Energy, Republican State Senator Gets Sarcastic

The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an article dated October 13, 2007, on a poll that was taken for a group called Environment Ohio on whether Ohioans would support Ohio setting a requirement that energy suppliers get a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources. According to the article, this was the result:

The support for renewable energy cut across political lines. For example, 71 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats said they would support a renewable standard.

Support for the standard was just as high in rural areas, 80 percent; small towns, 81 percent, as in large cities, 84 percent.

By a nine-to-one margin, those surveyed said their legislator's support of a renewable energy standard would be a positive in their vote decision.

More than 90 percent said they would be willing to pay more for green energy, with more than a third saying they would be willing to pay an extra $10 per month.

Not surprisingly, a Republican State Senator, Robert Spada of North Royalton, didn't like the result. Here is a quote from the article:

After a skeptical committee member Sen. Robert Spada, a North Royalton Republican, sarcastically asked whether the poll was a survey of "your members," Bowser told the committee that Public Opinion Strategies, "the largest Republican polling firm in the nation," conducted the telephone survey.

This is very typical of how a lot of Republicans react to information that they don't want to hear. Instead of debating the merits of renewable energy, the Republican response is to try and belittle the person bringing them the information. It doesn't matter whether the issue is the environment, the Iraq War, health insurance for children, just to name a few, the response is always the same: don't debate the issue on the merits, go after the person or organization supplying the information.

If you want to know why nothing gets done on the pressing issues facing our country, the answer lies in the fact that the leaders of one of the two major political parties that run our government is comprised on people who apparently can't handle or process information they don't like.