The G.O.P. Finds in Ted Nugent What Was Never Lost

After many weeks of looking for its soul since the Republican Party lost the election last November, the G.O.P. has abandoned the search as futile because it couldn't find what wasn't missing.  Ted Nugent was there all along.  He had changed underwear since his Vietnam draft interview, though, and, maybe, deprived of the olfactory cue, that's why Republicans were unable to locate him right away.

Apparently, because former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and other victims of gun violence are attending the State of the Union address where it's anticipated that President Obama will urge movement in Congress on gun control issues, Texas G.O.P. Representative Steve Stockman has invited Mr. Nugent to attend it as his guest as a symbolic protest of more gun control.  What a great idea.  Nugent, a board member of the National Rifle Association, was intemperate enough to say last April, "If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."  The Secret Service had a little sit down with him for that remark.  Courageously defiant as ever, Nugent promised them that he didn't really mean it.

Of course he didn't.  He'd no sooner expose himself to real risk than he would ignore an underage groupie's beckoning or pay child support except under legal duress.  No one takes him seriously except Republicans, who are themselves known to say things that they don't mean, like, "The Second Amendment is intended to prevent government tyranny."  Then, when anyone takes them at their word (like Timothy McVeigh, for instance - or Joe Stack, the guy in 2010 who flew his Cesna into the I.R.S. building in Austin), they back off, saying, "What?  Are you nuts?  Those guys were crazy!"  But Ted Nugent is to be a guest of honor for Republicans in Congress.  Him, they respect.

Look at (former) Masssachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.  He went hat in hand to ask The Nuge for his endorsement because it meant so much to the kind of voters Republicans apparently want to fill their party: Rednecks, the semiliterate and functional morons.  It's not like there's an intelligence test for voting.  Someone's going to take advantage of the fact.  Might as well be the G.O.P.

So here we have this guy who pretty much threatened to go on a rampage if President Obama won reelection.  Then, within two months of a shooting spree massacre of little kids at school, a national level Republican invites "The Motor City Madman" to attend the State of the Union address to make a point about how we should not deny responsible Americans like Mr. Nugent, a man guilty of poaching in two states, an unlimited right to own arsenals.  After all, when The Nuge threatened to go berserk over disappointment in politics, he was thinking of his bow.

No way does that sentiment reflect any kind of insensitivity on Rep. Stockman's part to invite him or Nugent's decision to accept.  He's just your average run-of-the-mill Republican.  He's the soul of the party.  Call off the bloodhounds, he's been found.  He had just changed his shorts out of his deep sense of sincere patriotism and the fact that he had only recently learned he's been ineligible for the draft for decades.  That's all.