Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's political action committee reported giving $5,000 to Sen. David Vitter, R-La., the same week it accepted an identical amount from former Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi.

Pickering, like Vitter, is a conservative Christian Republican accused of having an extramarital affair linked to the "C Street" townhouse in Southeast Washington that is at the center of a spate of GOP sex scandals.

Pickering's otherwise dormant CHIP PAC made its first donation of the year to Haley's PAC on Aug. 15 -- four days after the governor gave to Vitter's 2010 re-election campaign -- according to a Sept. 20 filing with the Federal Election Commission. The two checks comprise all of the month's activities for Haley's PAC, which has just $13,281.37 in the bank and has made only one other contribution this year.

Is it just a coincidence?

House Republicans are asking their supporters for ideas on health care through an online survey -- after months of producing nothing in the way of a comprehensive plan for overhauling the health care system.

Are they that hard up for ideas? Aren't they sent here to study the issues and help make policy based on their expertise?

Instead of the Party of No, they appear to be aiming for the Party of Yes/No/Undecided.

I can't make this stuff up. So here's the questionnaire in its entirety (most of it is after the jump). Oh, and by the way, the folks at the National Republican Congressional Committee want you to contribute your money after you give them your thoughts.

Access Issues

Would you favor a plan for the government to provide a tax credit to individuals who do not get health insurance through their employer to enable them to buy insurance directly from insurers?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided

Do you favor requiring insurers to offer coverage to ALL applicants regardless of their general health or any pre-existing medical condition?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided

Do you favor expanding Medicaid, the government program that pays medical bills of poor Americans, to cover virtually all adults with incomes up to 133% of the poverty level at a cost of $440 billion over the next decade?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided

Clearly, Notepad isn't yet on Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman's radar. But it looks like we see former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in the same light.

A month ago, this space had an item entitled "Why Sarah Palin is No Richard Nixon." Fineman posted "Sarah, You're No Nixon" on Newsweek's Web site this weekend.

Fineman's take, in a nutshell, is that at best Palin could hope to be the worst of Nixon.

Another argument can be made, that Palin, in a Nixonian formulation, won't get that far because she quit.

Hat tips to Howard, an industry star who doesn't act like one in D.C. green rooms, for his elegant writing style -- and for having met Nixon.

Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth was affirmed indirectly Monday night with the help of seven of 10 House Republicans who have inflamed fringe "birther" doubts about the legitimacy of the president's citizenship.

The Republicans joined the House in voting in favor of a resolution commemorating Hawaii's 50th anniversary as a state. The resolution included a clause stipulating that "the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."

The group of 10 Republicans had raised questions about Obama's nationality by sponsoring legislation that would require future presidential candidates to provide copies of their birth certificates when they file papers to run for the office.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is atop the standings of 2012 Republican presidential candidate prospects in a new poll.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted from July 15 through July 18 places the rock-music-playing evangelical as the favorite of 26 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, 5 percentage points ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 7 points ahead of soon-to-be-former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and 16 points ahead of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The also-rans (below 5 percent) in the Post poll were retiring Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (4 percent), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (3 percent) and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (1 percent). Two percent volunteered support for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, even though his name was not provided by pollsters.

But polls differ on this speculative matter, as you'd expect roughly three years out from the next Republican National Convention. A Gallup poll released July 16 showed Romney in the lead at 26 percent, with Palin second at 21 percent -- and Huckabee third at 19 percent.

The Republican National Committee is airing a health care ad in three states with potentially vulnerable Democratic senators -- Arkansas, Nevada and North Dakota -- that features the faces of children interspersed with foreboding warnings about the potential impact of President Obama's health care plan on them.

"His new experiment risks their future and our health," an announcer says in the ad.

The senators that are up for re-election in those states in 2010 are Blanche Lincoln, Harry Reid and Byron L. Dorgan.

Those states are also home to several pivotal players in the House debate over health care. Democratic Reps. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota and Dina Titus of Nevada have voted against the House bill in the Ways and Means Committee and the Education and Labor Committee, respectively, and Mike Ross of Arkansas has been giving Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman fits during that committee's marathon markup, which continues today.

RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho wouldn't say how much is being spent on the ad, but called it "a large buy."

Republicans conducted extensive polling on health care and a couple of other topics in mid-June and released the results to reporters at a roundtable at RNC headquarters on Monday.

The poll, done for the Republican National Committee by OnMessage Inc., surveyed 1,100 likely general election voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent, though the raw data was not distributed.

Here are a few highlights:

Given categories, 51 percent say their biggest concern about health care is that it costs too much, followed by 20 percent choosing access.

Veteran Sen. Robert F. Bennett probably thought he had won some loyalty from freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a fellow Utah Repbulican, when Bennett picked Chaffetz's 16-year-old son, Max, to serve as a Senate page earlier this year.

But it didn't gain Bennett enough favor to stop the elder Chaffetz, 42, from considering a challenge to Bennett's renomination in 2010.

"I don't have any intention of doing that" now, Chaffetz told the Deseret News. "But I guess I like to keep my options open. Never say never."

Wonder whether the younger Chaffetz was chafed by the scut work he had to do after Bennett got him the page gig.

In the moments after she announced she would resign the governorship of Alaska, MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan compared Sarah Palin to Richard Nixon in 1966.

Nixon returned from exile following his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial election -- "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore" -- to win the presidency in 1968. "We traveled all over the country on behalf of Republican candidates, built up this enormous good will," Buchanan said of a 1966 Nixon barnstorming tour that helped lay the groundwork for his bid two years later.

Buchanan, an aide to Nixon at the time and in the White House, knows better. Palin is no Nixon.

Obviously, Buenos Aires isn't the best place to be if you want to run South Carolina. But for the crowded field of 2010 gubernatorial hopefuls, it's looking more and more like South Carolina isn't the best place to be, either.

That could boost the fortunes of Rep. J. Gresham Barrett, who publicly has avoided the palace intrigue in Columbia in the wake of Gov. Mark Sanford confessing that he had an affair with an Argentinian woman.

"If you exist, you're getting dirt on you. It's filthy. There is so much destruction. At the end of the day it will be the last man standing," said a South Carolina Republican strategist who has not taken sides in the 2010 gubernatorial race. "So maybe Gresham Barrett is the winner."