My regular reader (Hi, Jeff!) will recall I have often talked about Colorado’s national embarrassment, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, the member of Congress from the Western Slope — sorry, I mean Weld County, for the moment at least. She decided to abandon a race in the district she won twice, likely due to a formidable challenger with lots of money: Adam Frisch.

In the face of such obstacles, Rep. Boebert did not hunker down and work hard to convince her voters she should still represent them. Rather, she packed a carpet bag and headed off to the eastern side of Colorado and CD4, a deeply red district, in hopes of snagging a congressional nomination in an easier district to win as a Republican. I understand she is renting an apartment in Windsor, a lovely little town, far away from the people she currently represents in Congress.

Not long ago, she took part in the first of what I hope are many debates with most of her fellow GOPers. In a meaningless and mathematically unsound “poll” taken after the 90-minute debate, Boebert finished in the middle of the pack. That would be highly disappointing for a sitting House member, but as I noted, this was what we wonky academics who study polling call a “voluntary sample,” which is never accurate. When people can volunteer to be counted, the results skew dramatically from random selections of everyone.

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In any case, I want to draw your attention to something that happened during the debate, when the nine candidates in attendance were asked a very basic question: how many of you have been arrested? Stunningly, six of the nine raised their hands, and even more remarkably, they did so to laughter and applause, and they seemed quite proud of themselves. Boebert even high-fived the fellow arrestee seated beside her.

Golly, such great fun and such pride in having been arrested for a crime.

One of the candidates, Richard Holtorf, bragged, “I’ve been arrested twice and every time it was for fighting because somebody needed a little attitude adjustment… I told my Dad both times that I was winning until the cops showed up.” Wow, such pride in beating up someone who disagreed with you.

Rep. Boebert understandably sought to make her arrest no big deal, claiming it stemmed from a careless driving charge (as a former military cop, I can assure you careless driving is no small thing), and she just forgot, gosh darn it, to go to court and so was, well, arrested. Apparently she just plumb forgot about the four other times she has been arrested.

And let’s not forget the comments and deeds of State Rep. Mike Lynch, who took a shot at Boebert by asking her to give a definition of “carpetbagging.” She might have asked him what it means to be driving while under the influence of alcohol, given his arrest stemmed from being stopped in 2022 for speeding, DUI and possession of a firearm while intoxicated. Again, as a former military cop, who responded to quite a few major accidents on Interstate 25 (which runs through the Air Force Academy, hence the base cops were first responders to accidents there), I detest drunk driving with a white-hot passion. The act is one of supreme selfishness and thoughtlessness, but I digress.

Lynch did step down from his role in Republican leadership, but he did not resign from office, and is continuing his run for the CD4 nomination, without any apparent irony or embarrassment.

So, maybe I should get to my point, eh? (Editor: that would be nice).

I really, really hate hypocrisy. And as I am not quite 66 years of age, I recall a time when the Republican Party stood for something. The GOP was the anti-communist, pro-law and order, party, allegedly. On the national level, we’ve recently seen so many GOPers rationalize somehow the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is somehow to be admired for his “firm leadership” that involves murdering his opponents and squashing any type of free press (I know, I know, former President Donald Trump said the press was the enemy, but that’s for a different column, eh?).

But let’s spend a bit of time on the “law and order” part, shall we? You have seen, relentlessly, on the national level the GOP ranting on and on about the border and the need for better law enforcement there. But GOP outrage is quite selective, it appears, as demonstrated in that debate of the CD4 contenders.

As I noted above, when asked if they had been arrested, six of the nine said yes. And then they laughed, high-fived, and grinned at the crowd that was apparently snickering it up too. Maybe my time as a military cop skews my views, given I was an actual law-and-order person, but I’m not OK with candidates for office being just fine with, and even giggling over, an arrest record.

And again, it’s the hypocrisy that gets to me. To claim to be law-and-order and to have been arrested a few times just doesn’t sync up for me. I would imagine that actual law-and-order Republicans are spinning in their graves, astonished people claiming their party identification could be pro-Russia and pro-arrest.

Unless things have radically changed since I retired from Air Force active duty in 2006, I doubt very much Boebert or Lynch (or the other proud “arrestees”) could get the security clearance needed for my first job, an ICBM (finger-on-the-nuclear button) launch officer up in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Multiple arrests, such as the ones Boebert brags about, would stop any background check immediately. And a DUI arrest by an officer signaled the end of that person’s military career, not just a restart and a run for a different office. But today’s Trumpian GOPers seem, well, quite proud of being law breakers, and they hope the rank-and-file GOP will agree respect for the rule of law isn’t really needed these days, except for when it is applied to, well, you know.

With Trump as the standard bearer today’s GOP is the party of saying the right things, but only living by those rules when it is convenient.

And that is truly a pity.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.