“I cannot fathom it.”

That’s how Rob Roper, former executive director of the VTGOP (back when they could, y’know, afford to pay staffers) turned conservative radio huckster, today began “Common Sense Radio,” his daily hour of free-market gospel paid for by the nonprofit Ethan Allen Institute.

Because, ahem, the free market wouldn’t support his crappy radio show.

“I am at a total loss to understand what people who voted for Obama were voting for,” he continued. Well, I could give him a hint: voters were soundly rejecting the ultraconservative quasi-libertarian economics and Christian Right social policies of Your Republican Party. Not to mention its absolutely horrible record of governance when in power, and the 30-plus years of proof that conservative trickle-down economics don’t work. And Mitt’s complete lack of personal appeal. But maybe I’m nitpicking.  

Rob’s take on the Vermont results: “It was pretty harsh.”

Ha ha, yeah.

But it didn’t take the Robster very long to get back on his scooter and come up with some (wrong, farfetched) answers. They tripped lightly off his tongue, unladen by facts, reason, or connection to reality.

“People out there were voting for a handout,” he said. “Mitt Romney was right about the 47%.”

After the jump, worshipping windmills, blaming public education, and a Secret Republican Victory.

Yep, blame it on the bottom-feeding government-dependent bloodsuckers. Not the deserving poor, of course; those hit by natural disasters, veterans, hardworking folks temporarily down on their luck, seniors who worked all their lives for Social Security and Medicare, and the legitimately (to borrow a term from Todd Akin) disabled.

No, when Rob and company talk about the 47% who just want more government teats to suckle on, they mean the lazy, undeserving poor. The ones who, as one of Rob’s callers said today, “spend all their money on cigarettes and beer and dope, and then they go back and ask for more help.”

Somehow I don’t think 47% of the country falls into that category, Robster.

He did manage to discern a “silver lining” in those “harsh” Vermont returns. And wait till you hear what it is; it might just make you laugh out loud.

Rob Roper seriously said “This election killed single-payer health care.”

Yes, the election where the Dems nearly swept the statewide offices and the Republicans failed to make the slightest dent in the Dems’ legislative majorities. See, we really lost this election. So sez Rob. How so, you may ask?

Because of the ads run by Vermonters First, the Democrats promised not to raise the sales tax. They took that off the table.

There are only three options to pay for single-payer: the sales tax, a 14% increase in the payroll tax, which Shumlin has taken off the table to some degree. The only one left is the income tax.

And by Rob’s reckoning, the income tax would have to be quadrupled or quintupled to cover his massively overinflated view of single-payer’s cost. And that would be political suicide.

So see? We may have won the battle, but Rob’s side just secretly won the war. And Lenore Broughton didn’t toss a million bucks down the toilet; she actually sprung a clever trap on those clueless liberals.

Hoo boy. Talk about desperate Republicans.

Over the ensuing hour, more conclusions were drawn from the same poisoned well, thanks to the combined brain power of Rob and his regular callers. One of them said “This all goes back to the 19th Century, to Karl Marx. This is a religious war, and we’re losing it.”

Rob then noted that Vermont is one of the most unchurched states in the union, and concluded that “Liberal politics has replaced the church. Those windmills on mountaintops are less about energy than about having icons to worship.”

Stop just a minute and let that sink in. Yeah, we’re just like them Egyptians and those folks what built the big heads on Easter Island and Stonehenge and stuff. Us liberals, we like to build stuff and worship it.

And of course, Dick from Barre chimed in with his intimations of the coming Communist/Nazi/Humanist/Muslim statist regime: “Unless we change direction, we’re going to be pledging allegiance to something other than the Stars and Stripes.” And Dick’s fellow traveler (sorry), George from Barre, called Bernie Sanders the Huey Long of our day. George noted that Long may well have seized power as a populist/socialist dictator if he hadn’t been assassinated.  

I don’t think he meant to imply that somebody should do the same to Bernie.

Apparently, according to the Robster and the Barre Gang, this all starts with the public schools, which discourage competition and excellence and try to make everybody feel good. Which produces masses of lazy, dependent, entitled Americans who blindly vote for the Democrats. And worship wind turbines, smoke cigarettes, drink beer, and do dope.

I couldn’t help but listen to the whole hour, just to find out what kind of shit would come out of this crowd after yesterday’s election. Now I have, so you don’t have to. I’ve never before listened to an entire hour of Common Sense Radio, and as God is my witness, I will never listen to an entire hour again.