McFeely: Let them eat nothing, Minnesota Republicans say

MOORHEAD — So if we have this right, Minnesota Republicans are against feeding schoolchildren because there are no hungry people.

Or because 1% of schoolchildren's parents are rich.

Or because feeding kids is a sinister communist plot to hook them on the government teat so they can be sheeple controlled by Tim Walz who isn't so much a governor as a fascist dictator intent on using his regime to turn Minnesota into Communist China or worse yet California and ...

Or something.

It's hard to follow the rantings of the lunatics running the GOP asylum, although there's a Kleenex-thin line between the looneys and whatever qualifies as a mainstream Republican these days.

How can you tell the difference? The party that used to be predictably boring in its support for rich-guy tax cuts, business boosting and lax environmental regulations is now barking about a new shiny object each news cycle. Trans kids, dirty library books, Hunter Biden's laptop, drag shows, George Soros.

Oh, and woke stuff. Especially woke stuff. Woke books. Woke schools. Woke banks. Woke businesses. Woke trees. Woke air. Wokey McWokerson. Here a woke, there a woke, everywhere a woke-woke.

Minnesota's DFL-controlled state government passed a bill last week to provide breakfasts and lunches at no charge to students at participating schools. Walz signed it into law. Yawn.

Except that for Republicans, feeding schoolkids is tantamount to 9/11. An attack on our very way of life. A sure sign society is about to collapse.

One could look at covering the cost of school lunches as a tax break for all, especially considering Republicans believe cutting taxes for the wealthy is right bestowed upon them by God. What's the difference whether you give them a few thousand bucks through a tax cut or universal school meals?

But Republicans long ago renounced common sense in favor of talk-radio hits and Fox News clips. What matters is The Base, defined as some 73-year-old white guy sitting at the end of an Aitkin County bar griping about Minneapolis and Nancy Pelosi.

And so what happens is a granite-skulled legislator like Sen. Steve Drazkowski, a Republican from Idiotopia, stands tall with a microphone in his hand and a camera focused on his face and says in opposition of feeding schoolchildren: "I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry. ... I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don't have access to enough food to eat."

Really?

A national conservative pundit commenting on Minnesota's bill said feeding schoolkids is bad because it doesn't teach them about responsbility.

And Jesus looked at the hungry children and said, "Goeth into the salt mines and learn responsibility before you cometh to me begging for food, ya lazy bums."

The rabbit hole is deep and getting deeper for Minnesota Republicans, who haven't won a statewide race in 17 years and have been neutered by the DFL holding the state house, senate and governor's office.

It'd be wise for Minnesota Republicans to get back to bread-and-butter issues, but they'd probably refuse because they'd think the bread and butter is going to schoolchildren.