WHAT'S WITH COBURN, ANYHOW?

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn is a Repub in good standing. You are unlikely to find an issue on which he is not 100% reactionary. So far, so good for his party reputation.

But he has this attitude. It can only be aggravating to the faithful.

Hair mop-thick, bespectacled, with a blunt rural face, he looks a bit as Tom Sawyer might be expected to look at age 62. He is a physician and has served three terms in the House and one in the Senate. If popular Dem governor Brad Henry runs against him - whether he will is still not disclosed - Coburn could be in for a rough race this year.

And Coburn should go. Yet he is a bit of a rebel, on his own terms. He retains some contrarian instincts.

President Obama has cited him as a personal friend and someone who will listen fairly. That may not mean a lot, considering his voting record. But it is something you don't often find anymore.

A week or two ago Coburn shocked a gathering by stating that Nancy Pelosi is a nice lady and that people should not listen uncritically to the deliverances of Fox News. When somebody challenged him about Pelosi, he asked if the person knew her? Well, said Coburn, he does; so he can say. That didn't go over well.

Whether Coburn survives this year's vote could be complicated by his possible involvement in the engineering of the payoff arrangement alleged to have existed between Nevada's GOP Senator John Ensign and his ex-mistress's husband. It could be that a friendship made him do something impolitic.

But even that displays a nonconformity that is anachronistic.

It is no secret that I am hoping for the self-destruction of the Republicult. The remnants of tolerance and unprogrammed thinking within it that are represented by a Tom Coburn or a Mike Huckabee weigh against that. But those gents are effectively isolated; while they may not be kicked out by the teabaggers, they also cannot be influential to the extent that they are unrepresentative.

For "better" no longer means anything. It has become a euphemism for "a bad lemming."