Here are the key points in what passed:

- no subsidies for those earning more than $750k
- no direct payments of more than $40k
- no counter-cyclical payments of more than $60k
- unlimited marketing loan payments
- 1% increase in sugar subsidies

The point: this wasn't a good bill, even if it was better than what they easily could have done. Here are the Senators who had the guts to vote against it:

Bennett (R-UT)
Burr (R-NC)
Collins (R-ME)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Lugar (R-IN)
Reed (D-RI)
Sununu (R-NH)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

I'm desperate to know why Coburn didn't.

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Yup. Key extract:

Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

I think the Editors may have a different definition of "viable" than I, or most pollsters...

The poll gives Clinton, Obama and Edwards double-digit leads over Romney and Huckabee.

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I've noticed over the last few days that so many of them had such high hopes for taking the VA-01 seat away from the GOP. You know, Bush is very unpopular, so is the war, we're heading into a recession, we're killing the planet, etc.

Yet, voters there decided to back a Republican by, oh, the same margin (actually even a slightly better one than that) by which Bush won the district in 2004.

That ought to give Republicans in the Old Dominion a smidgen of hope. Though no one should get overly enthusiastic, here.

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