Huh. Your Uncle Dave was blissfully away on vacation and somehow missed this momentous event. Did any of you watch it? Apparently, Herman “Godfather Pizza” Cain won it.

Waterboarding is torture. But it is not the only cruel and unusual punishment.

Consider Thursday night’s “presidential” debate between Republican also-rans Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson and Ron Paul — a former governor, a former senator, a former CEO, another former governor and a former Libertarian Party nominee for the nation’s top job.

The first face-off between the Grand Old Party’s third-stringers was so bereft of consequence that House Speaker John Boehner, spotted at a Washington steakhouse at the same time the Fox News-hosted debate was going on, allowed as how he would be satisfied to “read about it tomorrow.”

On a night when everyone who might actually end up as the party’s challenger to President Obama was otherwise engaged, the Republican remainders distinguished themselves with lines like Godfather’s Pizza king Cain’s response to a question about Afghanistan policy: “At this point, I don’t know all the facts.”