The local GOP takes a rare turn in the spotlight as we “flASHback” on the week’s news that amused and confused:

» Hawaii Republicans were happily overwhelmed by more than 10,000 party faithful who turned out for the state GOP’s first-ever presidential caucuses. They were so unprepared for the overflow that they had to borrow some ward heelers from the Democrats.

» None of the GOP’s White House hopefuls campaigned here, but Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul all sent their children to stand in for them. Newt Gingrich sent his hair.

» The state agreed to pay atheist Mitchell Kahle and a cohort $100,000 to settle a lawsuit over Kahle’s ejection from the state Senate chamber for protesting the opening prayer. When Kahle heard about his big windfall, he must have thought, “There is a God.”

» A Senate committee began deliberations on House Speaker Calvin Say’s bill to make it a crime for members of the public to behave obnoxiously at the Legislature. The measure is known informally as the Mitchell Kahle Welfare Fund.

» A national study said Honolulu’s pothole-ridden roads are the third worst among major U.S. cities and cost the average driver $701 more per year in extra wear and tear on their vehicles. Lex Brodie’s Tire, Brake & Service Co. says, “Thank you … very much.”

» Honolulu rail executive Toru Hamayasu told the City Council that it saves money to start building concrete pillars for the elevated train without a guarantee of federal funding, even if the work must be torn down later. The math is based on Keynesian theory, divided by macroeconomics, multiplied by baloney.

» Councilman Tom Berg accused Go Rail Go leader Maeda Timson of shouting an “explicative” at a member of his staff during a pro-rail rally in Kapolei. That must mean she was cussing logically.

» Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Ed Case and Mazie Hirono argued about which of them has had to overcome the most hardships. It boils down to whether having a pale complexion is more of a hardship than being invisible.

» Hawaii is awash in bad national publicity from two incidents at Kauai Airport involving an elderly Colorado couple kicked to the curb in a rainstorm and a nursing mother who wasn’t allowed to board a plane with her breast pump. Here’s hoping that idiocy, unlike bad luck, doesn’t come in threes. 

And the quote of the week … from Sen. Donna Mercado Kim, scolding state officials for overpaying public workers by

$2 million and not doing enough to recover it: “If it was their own money in their own household, I think there would be a different result.” That’s the problem; they did think they were keeping the money in the family.