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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.

UPDATE: Whatever a lopsided majority may say in polls, they apparently don’t live in Rep. Cory Gardner’s district. From the conservative website Newsmax.com:

Over-regulation and too much spending is plaguing the economy, Gardner said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV.

“I’m frustrated, [and] my constituents are frustrated, because they see Washington doing the same exact thing,” he said. “This was the most predictable crisis anybody could ever imagine. So, months ago we knew this was going to happen. It got closer, closer, closer and here we are now days away instead of months away and we’re talking about kicking the can down the road, and the American public, the constituents I represent, they’re tired of it. They want to see tax rates that are lower, not higher…” [Pols emphasis]

It’s a very safe seat, after all.

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Politico reports on the latest development in ongoing negotiations to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the end of this year. It should be noted that Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner made a new offer Friday, which includes a big at-least rhetorical concession:

“The President and the Speaker are meeting at the White House to continue their discussions about the fiscal cliff and balanced deficit reduction,” according to an identical statement issued by aides to Boehner and Obama [Monday].

Boehner jump-started the talks with a proposal Friday to boost marginal tax rates on income over $1 million, in what was a significant departure from his party’s no-new-taxes plank.

Democrats described the movement on rates as “progress,” but cautioned that a deal is not imminent because of the high income threshold and proposed cuts to Medicare, including raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67. Obama wants tax rates to rise on family income above $250,000 a year, and he has not publicly embraced cuts to Medicare beneficiaries in the latest round of talks.

As we and most media coverage has noted throughout these negotiations, public opinion polls show overwhelming support for allowing the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts to expire on income greater than $250,000 per household. At the same time, polling is tepid at best on any move to cut Medicare, Social Security, or other so-called “entitlements” valued by the middle class.

So what we have is Boehner agreeing, belatedly and only partly, to one piece of the public’s desired solution, using that as leverage to demand things the public doesn’t want.

Boehner needs robust changes to the hugely popular seniors health program to sell any kind of tax-rate increase to his conservative-dominated Republican Conference. [Pols emphasis]

The public’s failure to embrace cuts to popular institutions like Medicare and Social Security isn’t due to a lack of trying. The Fix The Debt campaign, Alan Simpson dancing “Gangnam Style,” and the millions spent trying to make Hugh Jidette a household name have all dismally failed to turn Americans into voters willing to accept Ryan Plan-style austerity. They know better.

This means Boehner and the Republicans are in a desperate political conundrum. The real constituency supporting sweeping entitlement cuts is exposed as embarrassingly small and ideologically motivated. Boehner must hold out for cuts to popular programs that the public doesn’t want–cuts only supported by a small minority for uningratiating reasons.

No doubt this latest smallish concession from Boehner seems rudely shocking and offensive to Grover Norquist, and other “starve the beast” ideological opponents of anything that doesn’t “shrink the size of government.” The lesson in this, however, may not be Boehner’s concession, but how far the Republican Party has drifted from the mainstream of public opinion.

CBS News’ Brian Montopoli writes this morning:

Boehner and the rest of the House Republican leadership laid out their offer in a letter to the president earlier this week. It said Republicans would cut a total of $1.2 trillion in spending, but it does not actually say what would be cut. The letter broadly says that the cuts would follow those put forth in what was called “the Bowles plan,” a reference to Democrat Erskine Bowles, who quickly put out a statement saying that the letter does not represent his beliefs. (Republicans were referencing testimony that Bowles gave to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction last year. That testimony represented Bowles’ understanding of the midpoint between the two sides at the time; he noted Monday that “circumstances have changed since then.”)

Let’s give House Republicans the benefit of the doubt and assume they are calling for the cuts articulated last year by Bowles. His testimony called for roughly $600 billion in Medicare savings, in part from raising the Medicare eligibility age, $300 billion in other discretionary spending cuts, and $300 billion in cuts to other mandatory spending programs.

Despite GOP claims that they represent a middle ground, there is simply no reason Democrats would agree to these cuts. Here’s why: If the nation goes off the fiscal cliff, it faces $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts split between domestic spending and military spending. Republicans are effectively proposing to keep the cuts but focus them entirely areas that Democrats want to protect: Domestic spending and other entitlements. Meanwhile, under the GOP plan, there would be no cuts to defense programs — the area Republicans want to protect. Why on earth would Democrats agree to a deal in which all the cuts are made to their priorities when they could simply do nothing and let the pain be shared by both sides?

Now to be fair, Montopoli doesn’t completely single out Republicans for blame in the present impasse over a budget deal to prevent sweeping automatic budget cuts and tax hikes set to take effect at the end of the year. According to this analysis, President Barack Obama’s aggressive stand in favor of resetting the present 35% top federal income tax rate to the Clinton-era 39.5%–again, only on income over $250,000–is “far from what Republicans could swallow.”

But it’s at least a specific proposal; more than John Boehner can deliver.

When it comes to new revenue – aka, additional money coming into the government – Boehner has set a target of $800 billion. This is not insignificant: The offer has already prompted howls from some on the right who oppose any new revenue. But it is also less than substantive, since Boehner declines to say how he would make the cuts — he merely says they should come through “pro-growth tax reform that closes special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates.” Does that mean getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction? Capping charitable deductions? The letter doesn’t say. [Pols emphasis]

With polling decisively indicating once again that intransigent Republicans will take the blame in the event of a failure to reach an agreement, what we have here is the equivalent of Paul Ryan’s infamous “budget with no numbers”–a proposal that really isn’t even a proposal, yet is nevertheless being insistently represented as a good-faith attempt at reaching an agreement.

Bottom line: both sides may be taking a hard line with a few weeks left to negotiate, but there’s a difference between doing so with specifics, and wasting everyone’s time. The polls say the public gets the difference, just as polls show that voters favor Obama’s proposal for raising taxes on high income earners while minimizing cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

With all this in mind, back to Boehner’s call to “get serious.”