Writing on the Huffington Post web site, Jennifer Donahue opines,

Jennifer Donohue

Political Director, New Hampshire Institute of Politics

Posted May 11, 2009

Throw Out Atwater, Rove Playbook:GOP Can Only Re-Brand with New Voices

....In a recent UNH Granite State poll, Gregg leads Rep. Hodes, the only announced Democratic challenger, 52-36. Gregg's favorability rating is 57%. This is revealed in a different way in recent polls which show President Obama's approval rating in the mid-60s, about twice that of the approval rating of the Democratic-led Congress. That indicates an opportunity for Republican pickups....

among other things. And, while it might be worth noting that Ms. Donahue's employment by an institute Judd Gregg helped to set up calls her objectivity into question, what I think worth refuting is the designation of Rep. Paul Hodes as a "challenger."

Paul Hodes is not a "challenger." He's an announced candidate for the United States Senate after having served with distinction in the U. S. House of Representatives.

That said, let me add that I've run across an interesting web site, History Commons where all kinds of historical tidbits are being collected, including an essay by Dick Cheney, published in 1989, in which he writes:

"Broadly speaking, the Congress was intended to be a collective, deliberative body. When working at its best, it would slow down decisions, improve their substantive content, subject them to compromise, and help build a consensus behind general rules before they were to be applied to the citizenry. The presidency, in contrast, was designed as a one-person office to ensure that it would be ready for action. Its major characteristics... were to be 'decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch.'...

In other words, he misconstrued the intent of the Constitution to set up three separate and equal branches of government and posited, instead, that the Congress and the Supreme Court were to be handmaidens to the President. Cheney was not alone then (Michael J. Malbin helped) and he's not alone now. Just the other day there was an explication on NPR about how the role of the Supreme Court is to advise the President on pending legislation, "not legislate from the bench " by calling laws un-Constitutional after the fact (which is, btw, how the Florida Supreme Court works in an advisory capacity).

Which tells us that conservatives aren't just opposed to equality for individuals. They're opposed to equal branches of government. When they speak of "checks and balances," they're referring to the opposition of political parties which "check" public officials by throwing them out of office.

Relegating the checking function to competitors for public office really makes ruling easy, especially if the amount of money spent on elections can be made determinative of who wins elections.

Moreover, if the Congress is merely deliberative, then bi-partisanship is a natural condition. If their role is to be supportive of the executive, there's nothing else for an official to do.

Equality is the central issue of our time. Detainees and gays are merely exemplars on whom the principle is being tested.