By John Brummett

Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor are the same senator, mostly.

She got a tad to his left in the most recent liberal-conservative ratings of U.S. senators by the National Journal. But that was because of a smattering of foreign policy votes on which she ventured further from the Bush administration than he was willing. On economy and domestic policy, she actually landed a little to his right.

Both understand the election dynamic for an Arkansas Democrat in a statewide election: They run in a state that is Republican but doesn’t admit it.

They sustain themselves by staying friendly with the business and farm communities and making a cultural connection with rural conservative people through guns and God and general down-to-earthness.

They know why Al Gore didn’t carry Arkansas. Though he was a neighboring Democrat who was vice president to our state’s favorite son, Bill Clinton, he had that environmentalist reputation that scared the establishment in a state that lives off the land. And he seemed a little elitist, more from St. Alban’s in D.C., where he went to private school as a boy while his dad was a senator, than a good ol’ boy from a farm in Tennessee.

So last year was a presidential election year, one in which the Republican candidate bested the Democrat in Arkansas by 20 points. Yet the Republicans chose not even to contest Pryor’s re-election.

A factor, perhaps the main one, was this: When it was time to mount a Republican race, it appeared the Democratic presidential nominee would be Hillary Clinton. So Republicans faced the unpromising prospect of running in Arkansas against a Clinton and a Pryor at the same time.

Still, a complete free pass for a Southern Democratic senator in a presidential election year under any circumstance was an extraordinary thing indeed.

Now, a mere few months later, Republicans sense blood in the water and have commenced to circling Lincoln. They will oppose her — with someone — and do so with ample financing and vigor.

If Pryor and Lincoln are the same senator, mostly, then what is it that makes one untouchable and the other a target of vigorous opposition — beyond, that is, that circumstance by which Republicans were expecting the Democratic presidential nominee last year to be Hillary?

There are but two differences. He is male and she is female. His daddy is David Pryor and hers isn’t.

Someone close to Lincoln was telling me recently — not whining, but explaining — that the underlying political culture of Arkansas remains a good ol’ boy one and that Blanche, as much a good ol’ girl as you’re going to find, simply can’t achieve the breadth and depth of a connection that Mark can. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It just is.

Then having David for a daddy gives Mark three things Blanche lacks — universal name identification, near-universal good will for that name and the most uncanny common touch I’ve ever seen in Arkansas politics or any other place’s politics.

You’re driving through a middle-class neighborhood of Little Rock on a Saturday morning. There’s a yard sale going on. You do a double-take. One of those guys in jeans vending used clothes looks like a former U.S. senator. That other guy in jeans, a tad pudgier, looks like a current U.S. senator.

So you slow your car and peer closely. Why, that’s precisely who they are. It turns out to be David’s sister’s place. Mark’s aunt. She’s getting rid of some stuff and the clan has turned out to help.

It’s not that they’re acting like regular folks. It’s that they are regular folks.

When Mark steers clear of a tough issue with mealy-mouthed evasion, he tends to do so smoothly, deftly, ever-courteously, agreeably. Blanche, like the rest of us, lacks the touch and the gene from which the touch ensues. She tends to come off rather clumsy and banal, spouting platitudes and the ever-tired jargon of policy-speak.

They’re saying the same thing substantively. They’re mostly the same senator. Yet one is entrenched and the other may not be quite so.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.