Lunchtime reading

We've been a bit slow starting this morning here at TKM. That happens when The Monk has MUST-DO-NOW work and Wongdoer is still recovering from running a marathon (weirdo).

That said, here are some commentaries that must not be missed:

First, David Brooks debunks the BS about gay marriage and evangelical social issues driving the election results. Naturally Andrew Sullivan ignores this cogent analysis to buy into the "Christian fundamentalists hate gays" spin based on exit polls showing that "moral values" animated about 1/5 of the electorate in this election. This is one of Brooks' better columns since he went over to the NY Times as its second in-house semi-conservative.

Mark Steyn is always a must-read, and he hits a double this weekend: his biennial "Wither the Dems" column and his retort to the left-wing press.

Here's a snipet from the former column about the "moral issues" notion:

As for this exit-poll data that everyone's all excited about, what does it mean when 22 percent of the electorate say their main concern was "moral issues"? Gay marriage? Abortion? Or is it something broader? For many of us, the war is also a moral issue, and the Democrats are on the wrong side of it, standing not with the women voting proudly in Afghanistan's first election but with the amoral and corrupt U.N., the amoral and cynical Jacques Chirac, the amoral and revolting head-hackers whom Democratic Convention guest of honor Michael Moore described as Iraq's ''minutemen.''

Then read this post-mortem on the other losers of the election, the press.

And just because he's an SOB and a royal pain, read this piece on Arlen Specter, worst Republican Senator.