OK, so... - I can

OK, so... - I can admit when I'm wrong.

Yesterday, I asked, in effect, with "conservatives" like the President and Norm Coleman, who needed liberals? My initial take on the President's prescription drug plan, which he spelled out in yesterday's visit to Minneapolis, was...

...well, not wrong. It's typical of the President's brand of hybrid, triangulating, "compassionate" variety of conservatism, which means that while I, as a free-market conservative, can swallow it, it's got a bad aftertaste. It's also vastly better than Wellstone's plan.

Churchill may have stated the model for "compassionate conservative".social policy: "I propose not to level out the peaks to fill in the valleys, but to put a safety net over the abyss".

The President's plan strings that net - a clumsy, bureaucratic net, to be sure, but one that leaves intact the peaks from with the world's finest health care emanate.

Wellstone's plan warms up the bulldozers - and on their way to push the peak into the valley, they're going to level the pharmaceutical companies, without which there'd be no medicine worth rationing.

Jason Lewis said it yesterday: Rationing medicine (which is what the Wellstone Plan involves) is pennywise and pound foolish. He cited a study in New Hampshire, where the state rationed anti-schizophrenia medication. The state saved an average of $43 a year in medication per patient, by basically scrimping on giving it to schizophrenics on Medical Assistance. Each patient, by the way, went on to incur on average over a thousand dollars' additional hospital costs.

If you're a conservative and you're not actively supporting Norm Coleman - you need to. We need to get Paul Wellstone out of here.