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Republican Rep. Cory Gardner is only entering his second full term in Congress, but he’s already confusing himself with some other Cory Gardner.

This week Gardner and some guy named Tim Griffin (apparently a Congressman from Arkansas) sent a letter to President Obama demanding answers in Monday’s State of the Union speech. Here’s how the press release begins:

Congressmen Cory Gardner (CO-04) and Tim Griffin (AR-02) issued the following statements after sending a letter to President Obama requesting that he be forthcoming in this State of the Union (SOTU) regarding our national debt, Medicare and Social Security:

“This President has claimed to be one of the most transparent in history, yet his healthcare overhaul was passed behind closed doors and ended up cutting $500 billion from Medicare,” Gardner said. “The American people deserve better than that. The State of the Union is President Obama’s chance to come clean and lay out an honest plan for protecting Medicare and Social Security, which is something he failed to do during his first term.”[Pols emphasis]

That’s funny! You know why it’s funny? It’s funny because Gardner was a big supporter of  the infamous “Ryan Plan” that would have gutted Medicare to the bone and slashed nearly $800 billion from Medicaid as well. It’s funny because he’s demanding that President Obama protect what Gardner himself is trying to unravel. It’s funny because “Medicare and Social Security,” has been under assault…from House Republicans like Gardner.

Or maybe that was some other Cory Gardner storming the gates of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in 2011.

We’d call this the height of hypocrisy, but this is so ridiculously absurd that even the word “hypocrisy” would want to distance itself from Gardner.

You go, Cory! Demand that our President protect America from Cory Gardner. Both of them. Either of them. Whatever.

Rep. Cory Gardner likes to point his finger at the media when things don’t go his way, blaming Romeny’s loss on “television stations,” and once complaining that the “media” is biased against people like him who allegedly want smaller government.

Reporters have yet to ask Gardner for the evidence supporting his media bashing. They just lie there and let Gardner trash them.

Why not fight back? It would make good content, and it’s the right thing to do.

Gardner provided another opportunity for an entertaining fight with reporters, if journalists are brave enough cast off their chains and step up, this morning in a conversation with Steve Kelley on KNUS’ morning show, Kelley and Company, about the failure of the Republican House to pass full support for the victims of Hurricane Sandy:

KELLEY:  It should be scrutinized.  But it just looks bad.  Doesn’t it?  I mean, — and the way it is being played in the media, unfortunately, [is] Boehner, this mean guy doesn’t — and you guys in the House — don’t care about those Hurricane Sandy victims out there.

GARDNER:  Look, the media is going to criticize the Republicans every time we turn around, because we are not in lock-step with the President.  And they are going to criticize any time they get a chance.  Now, should this have been handled in a different way?  Uh, there’s always going to be speculation about that.  But the bottom line is this:  John Boehner is not a – nor is the House Republican majority going to turn a blind eye on the victims of a horrible natural disaster.

That’s nut-head nutty, isn’t it? The media wants Gardner to be in lock-step with Obama? What’s he talking about?

It would be fun to hear Gardner explain himself, wouldn’t it?

Sometimes KNUS’ Steve Kelley seems embarrassed by his own morning rants and rages against Obama and the nasty Democrats. The other day he asked, “Do you really want to hear a rant from middle-aged white guy?”

Kelley’s current behavior looks different from what you heard during of his 19-year career at KOA, where he at least acted like he didn’t have the answers.

But Kelley’s more level-headed roots return when he conducts interviews, which usually feature straight-forward questions you’d want, but don’t expect, from someone seated behind a microphone.

This morning, for example, during his Kelley and Company show, he asked Rep. Cory Gardner this really good question:

Kelley: Why do you guys [Republicans] seem to be losing the PR battle [on the fiscal cliff]? I mean, it’s so easy to blame a Republican, but it seems to stick to you?

Gardner: Well, you know, it’s tough. We’ve got to do a better job of messaging and explaining to people who are in the middle class, people who are lower income earners, that people who will be affected by this tax increase are people like you, people who are working hard to make ends meet, people who are struggling to pay the mortgage, because their business are going to be hard hit. That’s going to result in lower take home pay because the businesses they work with are suffering and struggling to bear the burden of the tax increases. That’s the bottom line and so the President controls the bully pulpit, regardless of who it is in the White House, whether it is a Democrat or a Republican. They have a tremendous opportunity to shape the outlines of the message.

Listen to audio of Rep. Gardner talking fiscal cliff on Denver radio station KNUS 710 AM on 12-11-12

Kelley was on the right track, but to get to the heart of the GOP’s fiscal-cliff PR/substance problem, Kelley should have contrasted Gardner’s head-spinning response with Obama’s crisp lines on the topic, which he delivered at a rally Monday:

Obama: “We can solve this problem. All Congress needs to do is pass a law that would prevent a tax hike on the first $250,000 of everybody’s income,” he said. “When you put it all together, what you need is a package that keeps taxes where they are for middle class families, we make some tough spending cuts on things that we don’t need, and then we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay a slightly higher tax rate.”

In another question, which Kelley didn’t acknowledge actually related to his previous question about the GOP’s PR problem, Kelley asked Gardner whether he’d compromise on a tax increase:

Gardner: “We cannot agree to a tax increase. That is not the solution. That is not going to solve our $16 trillion debt. That’s what I am urging our leaders, Speaker Boehner and others, to make sure they are adhering to…I think he knows that the [Republican] conference does not support a tax increase, that there is no will to increase taxes amongst the Republican Party and the House majority.”

That’s obviously part of the Republican PR problem on the fiscal cliff, but Kelley didn’t get into the fundamentals.