Garbage dump in metro D.C. area; inset: Rep. "Styrofoam Dan" Lungren, R-Calif

It has only been about three months since Republicans took control of the House and there are already signs that voter remorse is setting in.

The reason for this is clear. Republicans won the House by promising to focus on fixing the economy and produce “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Not only have they broken those promises — they haven’t even bothered to schedule a hearing on employment — they passed $61 billion in budget cuts that conservative economic experts predict would kill about 1 million jobs and stall or reverse recovery from the Bush recession.

Otherwise, all the GOP has done is waste time on the taxpayers’ dime with a series of gimmicks. They read the Constitution out loud (and bungled even that). They voted to repeal of health-care reform even though they knew it had no chance of becoming law and have yet to utter a peep about the replacement bill they promised. And they passed a resolution to encourage placing “In God We Trust” signs on all 9,000 federal buildings.

Add to that list of gimmicks their cynical decision to reverse part of the Democrats’ program to make the Capitol Building more energy efficient:

New cups, plates, bowls and to-go containers made a not-so-quiet debut in House eateries late last month, and some are calling the ware — made of the notoriously non-biodegradable Styrofoam — a return to the dark ages. They replace the corn-based, compostable dishes and utensils that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) introduced under her “Green the Capitol” program when she was Speaker.

Several groups of congressional aides and many Democratic lawmakers have groused about the change and are planning to take action — be it boycotting the restaurants, bringing their own reusable containers to transport their food, or pressuring the Republican leadership to dump the Styrofoam as quickly as it reintroduced it.

“This is a case of the Republicans being spiteful and stupid,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who oversaw legislative branch funding in the previous Congress. “Not only are they harming the environment, they’re taking the Capitol, instead of being an example, back to the Stone Age.”

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, tweeted, “I can hardly wait for the lead paint.”

Republicans claim that they killed the compostable program because a study found that it wasn’t as energy efficient as it was supposed to be and that it cost $475,000 a year.

That sounds like a lot of money, but no comparable figures were provided on the cost of using plastic and Styrofoam (for the record, the cups are actually produced from polystyrene) or the long term costs of sending non-degradable refuse to garbage dumps from the 230,000 meals served in Capitol Building cafeterias every month.

Killing the program was done under the auspices of the House Administration Committee, and it has earned the committee’s chairman, Rep. Dan Lungren of California, a new nickname.

“I never thought I’d be known as ‘Styrofoam Dan,’” Lungren said, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. The Times reporter noted that Lungren seemed “surprised by all of the fuss.”

As if.

Bashing environmentalism is standard Republican fare these days. It works for them on at least three levels.

In the first place, they simply can’t help it. Republicans have a reflexive urge to attack anything that liberals are for. Notice here how Rush Limbaugh’s mouth gets ahead of his mind as he mocks earthquake survivors in Japan who continued to sort their recyclables after the disaster:

RUSH LIMBAUGH: The Japanese have done so much to save the planet … They’ve given us the Prius. Even now, refugees are still recycling their garbage, and yet Gaia [the Greek goddess also known as Mother Earth] levels them [laughs], just wipes them out. Wipes out their nuclear plants, all kinds of radiation. What kind of payback is this? That is an excellent question. They invented the Prius. In fact, where Gaia blew up is right where they make all these electric cars. That’s where the tsunami hit. All those brand-new electric cars sitting there on the lot. I like the way this guy was thinking. It’s like — it’s like Gaia hit the Prius in [inaudible]. It’s like they were in the crosshairs, if we can use that word, it does. What is Gaia trying to tell us here? What is the mother of environmentalism trying to say with this hit?

(Limbaugh later said the target of his derision was Diane Sawyer, who reported the story for ABC News, not the homeless evacuees.)

Second, Republicans believe that caring about the environment is feminizing — that being green turns men gay. No, seriously:

GLENN BECK: Real men don‘t go to a grocery store with a stupid bag like a purse. Your wife may buy one of those stupid hemp bags. And your wife can tell you —

UNIDENTIFIED MALE CALLER INTO BECK’S RADIO SHOW: My wife told me that.

BECK: — you can go, because you obey your wife. You listen and obey your wife.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As long as she‘s happy, you‘re happy.

BECK: But you teach your son, I‘m doing this because I love your mother.
Yes. My wife actually got one of those stupid bags and she hid it from me. It was in the bottom of the basket, and she hid it from me on purpose because she knew I wouldn‘t approve. So, then I double-bagged every other bag that we had. I used as much plastic as possible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good for you. You are a real man.

Got that? Heterosexual men who carry reusable shopping bags are a) scared of their wives and b) gay. And being mistaken for a homo is a prospect so devastating that if avoiding it means we have to fill garbage dumps with stuff that won’t disintegrate for 10,000 years so be it.

Thirdly and most importantly, follow the money: Republicans bash environmentalism because they are shills for their corporate sponsors — like the Koch brothers, to name just two — who view environmental regulations and therefore public safety as stubborn obstacles to easy profits.

Republicans have not always opposed environmentalism. GOP Pres. Theodore Roosevelt was an ardent conservationist whose legacy includes the preservation of thousands of acres of wilderness in the National Parks system. The Environmental Protection Agency was established during the administration of Republican Pres. Richard Nixon.

That all changed during the Reagan administration, when Republicans began systematically giving corporate interests a larger role in running the government. For example, Reagan, like his would-be “Mini Me” successor, George W. Bush, made a point of appointing anti-environmentalists as Interior Secretary.

But the moment that symbolizes the Republicans’ switch from protecting to exploiting the environment was when Reagan removed solar panels Pres. Carter had installed on the White House. (New solar panels are being installed by the Obama administration.)

While killing the compostables program may have been intended as a goad to liberals reminiscent of Reagan’s removing the solar panels, on a practical level, it’s more likely to feed the perception that while Speaker Boehner’s “Party of No”/tea party coalition relishes high school stuff — talking trash, scoring points and settling scores — they have no serious interest in governing.

And on a political level, it’s hard to see how killing the Capitol’s green initiative helps Republicans. Sure, the base will love it, but the swing voters — the group that voted for tea party candidates in 2010 — are much less doctrinaire on the environment. In fact, killing the program may even hurt some of them next year in districts at the margins where voters support environmentalism.

A new survey of the Republicans’ 50 most vulnerable House seats finds that voter approval has eroded in the districts and is trending downward.

One vulnerable incumbent is Styrofoam Dan Lungren himself. Lungren — a former California attorney general and one of the most disliked politicians in the state — came perilously close to losing his reelection bid during the Republican wave last November. Running against a political neophyte, Lungren won with just 50.6 percent. He was saved from defeat by a last-minute money bomb from Karl Rove.

If the downward trend continues for his party, Lungren will almost certainly draw an experienced opponent in 2012. The “Styrofoam Dan” campaign ads almost write themselves.