On today’s closely-followed elections:

November 3, 2009 | USA Today
Don’t bury GOP yet: Prophecies of party’s demise this election are way
overdone.
By Jonah Goldberg

After Obama’s presidential election, a cottage industry of punditry
sprang up to forge a new conventional wisdom. It goes something like
this: The Republican Party has been discredited by the Bush
presidency, congressional scandals and overspending. Worse, it is “out
of touch” due to the stranglehold of knuckle-dragging, troglodytic,
Bible-thumping, gun-nuts and greedy capitalists. Confronted with the
divine light of Obama, these hissing conservatives must scurry to the
shadows like vampires fearful of the burning rays of the sun. The only
chance for Republican survival is to embrace moderation, compromise
and, in some cases, what Barry Goldwater called “me-too
Republicanism.” Whatever the merits of this advice, two things are now
quite clear.

First, most conservatives and Republicans have next to no desire to
follow it. And, second, it looks like they’re right not to.

The Virginia contest alone shows that much of this talk about
“moderates” vs. “extremists” or “pragmatists” vs. “ideologues” within
the GOP was nonsense.

McDonnell is socially and economically very conservative, but he has
dominated the race by focusing on mainstream issues such as
transportation, taxes and the economy. Meanwhile, Obama, House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been working
overtime to recast the Democrats as big spenders more committed to an
ideological agenda than setting the country right. As a result,
independents — the same voters who delivered the election for Obama —
are now flocking to the Republicans. McDonnell beats Democrat Creigh
Deedsamong independents by 2-1.

The best illustration of the conservative comeback is the special
election for the 23rd congressional district in New York (a district
Obama carried in 2008). Before last Saturday, the race was being cast
a “civil war” on the right because many conservatives were supporting
not the Republican nominee, Dierdre Scozzafava, but Doug Hoffman, a
Republican who switched to theConservative Party ticket when he failed
to get the nomination. Scozzafava is a very liberal, pro-choice
Republican, the sort of candidate the conventional wisdom says the
right must embrace to stay relevant. Hoffman is a mainstream
conservative. On Saturday, Scozzafava dropped out of the race because
Hoffman was crushing her in the polls. Most tellingly, it was
Hoffman’s support among independents that gave him the advantage.

There’s more than one way to read all of this. Independents might just
want to be a counterweight to the Democratic Party’s lurch to the
left. Corzine and Deeds might just be lousy candidates in a bad
economy.

All of that’s true. But it’s also true that the GOP is not much
interested in becoming a Democrat-lite party, and it seems voters
don’t want it to, either.

On government-run health (s)care:

November 3, 2009 | Real Clear Politics
The “Costs” of Medical Care
By Thomas Sowell

… There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply
shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs
are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor’s office and
more in taxes—or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices
for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has
put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you.

Costs are not reduced simply because you don’t pay them. It would
undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep
me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age
were in generations past.

Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them
alive—but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just
means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the
consequences. There is no free lunch.

Providing free lunches to people who go to hospital emergency rooms is
one of the reasons for the current high costs of medical care for
others. Politicians mandating what insurance companies must cover is
another free lunch that leads to higher premiums for medical insurance—
and fewer people who can afford it.

Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical
companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of
goods and services are the costs of producing them.

If highly paid chief executives of insurance companies or
pharmaceutical companies agreed to work free of charge, it would make
very little difference in the cost of insurance or medications. If
doctors’ incomes were cut in half, that would not lower the cost of
producing doctors through years of expensive training in medical
schools and hospitals, nor the overhead costs of running doctors’
offices.

What it would do is reduce the number of very able people who are
willing to take on the high costs of a medical education when the
return on that investment is greatly reduced and the aggravations of
dealing with government bureaucrats are added to the burdens of the
work. …

Jewish World Review | Nov. 3, 2009
A Society that Venerates Lawyers More than Doctors
By Dennis Prager

… Nothing better illustrates the reorientation — indeed, the
transformation — of values that will take place if the Democrats’
health care legislation is passed. Thanks to trial lawyer/Democratic
influence, for decades, we have been moving in the direction of
litigation-based society. But with a Democratic health care bill, the
movement will accelerate exponentially.

Much of our money, our innovation, our creativity and our ingenuity
will gravitate from medicine to law. …

No rational person argues that society doesn’t need law or lawyers, or
that all lawyers, even trial lawyers, do no good. That is certainly
not what is being argued here.

But it does say something about a society when those who sue
physicians and hospitals make as much or more money than those who
heal disease. It says something about a society when it glorifies and
rewards those who litigate while it demonizes and punishes those who
produce the drugs and devices that keep its citizens alive and well.

This is part of the upside-down world the left is bequeathing to us
and our children in the name of health care “reform.”

On the Leftocracy’s continued pile-up on Rush Limbaugh:

American Thinker | November 02, 2009
The Vilification of Rush
By Kenneth L. Hutcherson

[NB: Ken “Hutch” Hutcherson is a former NFL player, a pastor, and an
African-American. - ETR]

... The Minority Thought Pattern is aimed at destroying America, at
rending the very fabric that makes America great. The Minority Thought
Pattern denies the greatness, honor, bravery, courage, humility, and
sacrifice that has brought us the power to be the greatest nation that
has ever existed. The Minority Thought Pattern has a mission to
undermine and redefine every characteristic of America, maintaining
that it is a nation based on greed, cowardice, selfishness, and a lack
of genuine humility. The Minority Thought Pattern is the reason for
all the apologies to the rest of the world for how bad American is,
coming even from our top leader. …

This is extremely personal to me. It’s about a friend. When I look at
Rush, I don’t see a white man; I see a friend. I don’t see a talk show
host (a very famous talk show host); I see a friend, and friendship
overrides color and political stances. I don’t see a controversial
figure, but a man whose heart and thoughts I know, and a man who is
not a racist.

I believe with all my heart that minorities, especially African-
Americans, will never be free until they stop allowing people like
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to insist they adopt the mentality of
victims. Likewise, they will not be free until they take the next bold
step: start thanking God for America, and stop condemning the white
male.

It is time for America to reject the Minority Thought Pattern and the
hateful campaign against Rush Limbaugh.

On Obama’s dithering in Afghanistan and photo-op at Dover AFB:

American Thinker | November 01, 2009
O isn’t dithering on Afghanistan! It’s a Harvard Law Seminar!
By James Lewis

… Why would Obama be any better informed than the rest of the Left?
He’s swallowed the Party Line for decades. He never has an original
thought when it comes to liberalism; he memorized it when he was a
kid, and by gum, it’s still exactly the same as it was decades ago. So
he must have gulped down the whole peacenik delusion wholesale. And
now a Divine Providence with a highly developed sense of irony has
made him Commander in Chief.

After all, what does a Chicago pol have to really know about national
security? Nothing. Chicago pols don’t even know about school security
on the South Side. If they did, the schools would be much more
peaceful. In New York City, it took Rudy Giuliani to clean up crime
because generations of liberal mayors couldn’t figure it out. If they
can’t run safe schools, what can they know about keeping peace on a
global scale? When Obama and Bill Ayers got together on that Chicago
inner-city program for fixing schools and buying votes, the best he
came up with was a “jazz curriculum.” That’s the Dixiecrat solution
for African-American education. It is disrespectful to parents and
children of any race. …