Oh, no, we've lost our checks and balances!

Now that Al Franken is about to give the Democrats their 60th Senate seat, Republicans are, yet again, trying to whip up fear within their base: fear that Obama will have “unchecked” power. This will undoubtedly be a campaign theme in 2010 for the GOP.

This is nonsense. We still have plenty of checks and balances: we have the elections themselves, the power of the state governments, the force of public opinion, the scrutiny of the press, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court (remember, they brought FDR to heel in the 1930s), the differences between House and Senate members, and the differences between Congress and the White House. Already there are visible differences between Obama, Reid and Pelosi on policy priorities and strategies.

And I didn't hear any of this Republican whining when the GOP ran all three branches of government.

And history shows that the real problem is not the “unbridled power” of single-party government, but the gridlock of divided government. Divided governments never accomplish anything, and right now we need the government to get out there and clean up the current mess. If the Republicans hadn’t created the mess, they wouldn’t be watching the “unbridled” Democrats hard at work cleaning it all up.

Don’t like Democratic government? Then you Republicans find a real message and real leaders, and run a real grownup campaign that isn’t rooted entirely in lies, smears, evasions, tea parties and other nonsense.