Democratic officials asserted that Wednesday's nonbinding vote showed that Republicans were feeling pressure to enact some gun legislation this year, whether to answer concerns from their own constituencies or to help insulate Mr. Bush from charges that he is beholden to the rifle association.
But they are throwing the kitchen sink at winning Rochester - spending tens of thousands of pounds paying for an open primary in which every voter in the constituency is invited to help choose their by-election candidate.
So the chancellor has tried to reconcile two largely irreconcilable constituencies as she tries to help steer the euro zone through a second financial crisis in Ireland, and with an eye to crises down the road in Portugal and Spain.
"You have to know your constituency, who has the means to help," he said.
On Tuesday evening, Prime Minister David Cameron told his MPs he was "pumped up" for the Rochester and Strood by-election fight, and ordered each one of them to visit the constituency at least three times to help the campaign.
The politicians perhaps understood their constituencies: a public that desires to help the poor without paying a price, or even particular attention.
But the partisan debate on the Senate floor is also likely to dwell on what each side has sought to portray as an effort by the other to use the emergency economic package to help favored constituencies.
Deciding she "wanted to help build a constituency for the Foreign Service," she created unapologetically smooth, lush images that present the embassies, from the most gracious houses to the most forbidding office block, in their best light.
Twelve years ago I paid the lady who was looking after my children a salary from the Fees Office for the work she did to help me in my constituency duties during the hours when my children were at school.
But Mr. Gore's use of that title is dubious: he has often jumped to help his protectionist labor constituency, and was known in the White House as the most unforgiving of Japanese protectionist trade practices.
