No matter how much it begs:

Would you gladly pay more for a cheeseburger today if it keeps your local librarian working tomorrow?

Several members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors think so. So do supervisors in neighboring Loudoun County, who hope the General Assembly will allow them to impose a meals tax, too.

Despite the recession, a growing number of Northern Virginia officials say they think people would be willing to pay more when dining out to avoid further cuts in budgets for schools and local government.

Statists always play this trick.  Anytime there is a potential need to cut the budget, or even just to not increase it, they always pick the most popular items and threaten to cut those.  Yet there’s little reason to believe that this are actually the programs or services threatened.  Don’t believe the spin, you don’t need to pay yet more in taxes to keep having a library.  That’s just bunk.

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Talking heads everywhere are telling you what yesterday’s election results mean.  Clearly you need one more source.

In some sense they mean little more than the obvious: that the states of New Jersey and Virginia sided with Republicans based on the issues in their respective states.  Certainly the corruption from top to bottom of the New Jersey Democratic Party and the tax raising ways of Corzine, along with fears that Creigh Deeds would raise taxes in Virginia, played an important part in the defeat of both.  But was there also an anti-Obama sentiment?

It’s hard to say the extent to which there was anti-Obama sentiment, if at all.  Most voters didn’t admit to casting a vote influenced by Obama in either direction, but that doesn’t mean that those who disapprove of the President weren’t more motivated than his supporters.  It’s quite likely that they were, and it’s hard not to consider that opposition to ever expanding government in Washington could have driven extra turnout from conservatives and small government independents, who went heavily for Republicans.

The economy was a key issue in every race, and the takeaway lesson for Democrats going into 2010 is that they are in trouble if it doesn’t improve.

But enough of the two party battles, what about the intra-Republican dispute in NY-23?  While RINO’s and their self-serving cheerleaders on the left will be emboldened by Hoffman’s loss, the race is hardly an indictment of conservative candidates.  Hoffman not only got 45% of the vote in a district carried by Obama in 2008, but he did it while battling both major parties with limited resources for most of the race.  Moreover, the fact that Scozzafava was still on the ballot with the Republican label may well have been the deciding factor. She received more votes than make up the gap between Hoffman and Owens, and that’s before counting the absentee ballots, many of which were mailed while she was still a viable candidate.

For the national Republican establishment, this is no vindication of their strategy.  In the end they spent almost $1 million on a candidate that endorsed the Democrat.  That is an inexcusable embarrassment.  The best lesson they can take away is: there’s a reason you hold primaries.  If there had been a Republican primary, Hoffman would have defeated the union loving, stimulus supporting, health care nationalizing Scozzafava and then had the Republican party behind him, rather than against him, in his race against Doug Owens.  The outcome likely would have been in his favor.

For conservatives, the lesson here is that third parties are not viable.  Yes, this was a rare case and it could have worked in NY-23.  But elsewhere, particularly at the national level, it’s simply a bad idea no matter what.  Conservatives have to continue working to restore the Republican Party as the home of small government voters.  For those who would stand in our way and think the “big tent” moderate Republican Party we have now is the way to go, I’ll leave you with this election night statistic:  In Virginia, 36% of voters identified themselves as Republican, while 39% said there are conservative.

Further reading: Matt Latimer on The Right and Wrong Lessons from Tuesday’s elections, and Michelle Malkin on The GOP elite’s $1 million object lesson — and the message of NY-23

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Here’s the latest on tomorrow’s elections:

McDonnell continues to lead by double-digits.

Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat, no doubt to the embarrassment of the national party boobs who spent almost $1 million on her campaign. Hoffman leads in recent polls.

Nate Silver asks (and answers) 15 questions to help illuminate the tight New Jersey race. He gives a slight edge to Christie, whose supporters are more enthusiastic. Corzine’s saving grace may be the Democrats state machine apparatus.

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It must be hard out there for an arm of the Democratic Party that fronts as a newspaper.  The Washington Post has done everything in its power to elect Creigh Deeds in Virginia, yet he is getting his clocked cleaned.

Admittedly the Post did influence Deeds’ primary win with its endorsement.  But power over the Democratic Party, to which the Post belongs, is a far cry from having influence in a general election.  The Post became increasingly shrill while running 12 hit-piece stories over 11 days, many about a 20 year-old thesis that purveyors of identity politics used to try and paint McDonnell as a sexist.  Then it endorsed Deeds while hurling pejoratives at McDonnell.  The result? McDonnell leads by double-digits.

Not to be discouraged, the Post has moved on to other Virginia races.  In three installments over the weekend the paper endorsed various candidates.  Not surprisingly, 25 out of 29 endorsements went to Democrats.  And even when the Post did bring itself to endorse a Republican, it was always with a positive nod to the Democrat; whereas most Republicans were ridiculed and mocked hyperbolically.  It’s unlikely this desperate attempt to salvage the crumbling Democratic Party will have much success.  But is it any wonder that papers such as this just aren’t taken seriously anymore?

Correction: I must have had fast food on the mind when I first wrote this post, as I repeatedly referred to Bob McDonnell as McDonald. I regret the hunger-induced error.

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Thanks to Barack Obama’s diminishing popularity and the general backlash against the Democrat controlled government, Democratic candidate R. Creigh Deeds currently trails Republican Robert F. McDonnell in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, a state carried by the President in 2008. Getting desperate, Deeds is turning to the same divisive issue the left often accuses the right of using for cynical political gain. A Washington Post headline notes, “Deeds to Wage Risky Attack On Opponent’s Abortion Views.”

This sure blows a hole in the faulty liberal rhetoric that it’s only those pesky “social cons” always stoking “culture wars” by pushing “wedge issues.”

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This video, produced by Austin Bragg and Caleb Brown of the Cato Institute, won video of the year at the recent Sammies, hosted by the Sam Adams Alliance:

The win was entirely deserving.

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