We have lost our belief that complex policy problems call for critical examination from multiple perspectives and their solutions must be defensible to the wider public, not just friendly constituencies.
It will be a tragedy if, in the mad scramble to assemble a new ruling coalition that will almost certainly be more business-friendly, their constituency gets left behind.
"Pre-poll rigging" takes many forms, they say: the government weans candidates away from them, sometimes by threatening to arrange corruption charges against them; mobilises the administration to work for friendly candidates; and has redrawn constituencies to favour those candidates all charges the government denies.
It is likely that Erdoğan's vulnerability in the early stages of his premiership made it easier for him to make friendly gestures to Kurds and liberals – constituencies well beyond the typical ambit of the Turkish Islamist.
"And the Republicans have learned the costly lesson that there are limits to presidential coercion of senators who really do have constituencies that are more friendly to them than to the president".
By the same token, Messrs Barbour, Daniels, Giuliani, Huntsman, Pawlenty and Romney would all be competing for more or less the same constituency, as tested, pragmatic, business-friendly centrists with conservative veneers of varying thickness.
Is the (token?) non-white, non-male judge genuinely representative of a different constituency or someone who seems media-friendly rather than passionate about the issue he/she appears to represent?
A voice – believed to be a staff member in the constituency office – can be heard saying: "They're friendly enough.
No sooner has he appeared on a television chat show than he pops up at a fire station in his Hull constituency for a mug of tea and a friendly exchange of views with the "lads".
Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, Nour tapped into the same constituency that forms the backbone of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party: secular, educated, Western-friendly, middle class.
