The chattering class attributes Tuesday's election outcome to a surge in voting by folks opposing gay marriage etc. David Brooks begs to differ. (Hat tip: Wilson Mixon)

I'm not sure if Brooks is correct or not, but there's one thing I did notice about some exit poll results I saw on tv. If I recall correctly, moral concerns were the top issue for 21% of voters with 20% and 19% citing other issues (I think one was the economy and the other was Iraq). There just can't be any statistically significant difference in these three issues yet the nattering nabobs prattle on about homophobia etc.

Whether or not values voters drove the election's outcome, the perception that they did so has driven some media folks a bit batty. Here's CNN's Carol Lin (10:00 pm show on 11/6) fretting about living in a society akin to Khomeini's Iran:

But how do you convince people of that, when people are actually asking me, when they take a look at the anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, all right, when you had a secular state that went completely the other way, and the mullahs and the ayatollahs and their agenda were telling people then how they could live, what music they could listen to. And it's astonishing to hear that Americans are saying how far away are we from that if the right wing and the moralist agenda takes over the election process?

Here's a darned if you, darned if you don't quandry: Illiberals often decry behavior motivated by greed. So presumably they'd be upset if voters cast their ballots based strictly on economic self interest. Now we have an election in which (David Brooks's analysis notwithstanding) many voters cast ballots based on moral beliefs. Yet leftists are not happy--there just doesn't seem to be any pleasing them.

None of this post is meant to reveal much about my own views on these matters--I find the culture wars annoying and, as regular readers have probably noticed, I largely avoid culture war topics. Instead, this post is aimed at two of my regular topics--our awful media and hyperbolic hand-wringing leftists. (Of course, there is a tremendous overlap between the two categories.)