y wife Holly and I attended a recent South Placer Republican Women Federated luncheon at Roseville’s Sierra Oaks Country Club at which the candidates seeking to replace Rep. John Doolittle, R-embattled, as congressman for California’s 4th Congressional District were scheduled to speak. It wasn’t exactly a debate, but it did reveal a lot.

For those of you who do not know, Doolittle has elected to remove himself from the FBI’s to-do list by retiring from office. However, he is working hard to control who sits in his seat and what that person does with his former authority. I will explain, but first, meet the candidates.

Suzanne Jones: A conservative NorCal native, she is a solid enough and well-rounded person. Her husband is U.S. Army retired and she traveled extensively with him to various postings, including some substantial time in the Middle East. She is well educated and holds degrees in biology and law; she accurately (and rightly) blasted the Republican Party for “drifting to the left” and believes in the Constitutional notion of citizen legislators. Calling the other candidates “one dimensional” and criticizing them for being business as usual, she says that, in her words, it is time for the California 4th to “choose from the mainstream of America.” The note I scribbled to myself was, “she’s the Ron Paul of Placer County”—sounds good on the surface, not a prayer of winning and would be eaten alive on Capitol Hill.

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Ted “Call me Terbo” Terbolizard: You read that right. He is an entertainer and advertising guy from Mountain View who gives the impression of being in constant search for the next full-length mirror. With a summer white suit, black silk pocket square, bolo tie and mink cuff links (yes, mink) he is nearly a dead ringer for Bat Masterson. (A regular old west dandy, indeed.) I am sure that he has positions and opinions about something, but is very much the center of his own universe and never really mentioned any of them. His main platform is that he likes little towns in the hills, has been to Washington, D.C. and likes to spend money on clothes. My take is that he is just out on a little narcissistic lark.

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Doug Ose: Not much to say about Doug. We know him from his stint in Congress from the neighboring California 3rd District (now held by Dan Lungren). Ose’s chief issue is that he lives close by the 4th District. As I have reported in this space previously, the Ose campaign is (according to my sources and observations) a surrogate campaign for the Doolittle wing of the party. Despite the angry missives and denials hurled at me when I reported that Doolittle’s old chief of staff Richard Robinson would be running Ose’s campaign, Robinson did indeed get the gig. My sources also tell me that a great deal of money is being funneled into the Ose treasury from the Doolittle wing. One may ponder the reasons but they come into focus when you realize that one of the major platform planks of the fourth candidate to replace Doolittle, state Sen. Tom McClintock, is to reject any and all earmarks. Doolittle was number two at the hog trough for pork (second only to Democrat Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania). The fury with which they attack McClintock reveals the true nature of the Ose campaign—different guy but same store and open for business.

Tom McClintock: He lives in NorCal with his family, his mom has a house in SoCal and he is a SoCal senator. The big criticism of him is that he “lives outside the district.” Big whoop. I live in Lincoln and work in Albany, N.Y.; I spend enough time in both to not only be aware of the issues and concerns of people, but also be in a better position to analyze them and offer up ideas because I have the broad perspective. The residency thing is a red herring. From Tom we heard a scolding that the GOP had “squandered Reagan’s legacy” and urged the “Reaganauts” to take the party back. Not a surprising thing to hear from him, as McClintock’s biggest problem is the inside politics of the GOP.

Sadly, the state party is not interested in reform, still holding onto a philosophy akin to the immortal words of Mel Brooks’ fictional Governor William J. Le Petomane in “Blazing Saddles,” “We’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs gentlemen!”

Or, as McClintock characterized the race for the California 4th, “…ground zero for the battle over the future of the Republican Party.”

He’s right. As in the 2003 Recall, Republican voters find themselves having to fight the selfish interests of their own party leadership. It is the GOP who gave us the catastrophic Schwarzenegger Administration and it is the GOP now trying to hijack the California 4th to keep the cafeteria line moving at the pig trough.

Contact Mark at www.MarkTalk.com.