I'm not at all surprised they voted that way, pdq. They are not familiar with socialized medicine, so they did what most people do, and they voted to maintain the status quo. In Canada, where people are familiar with socialized medicine, you would find the vast majority in favour of it, and very strongly too...so they regularly vote FOR it, thus maintaining the status quo. (Amusing, ain't it?)

To be conservative is merely to have a strong resistance to change. That being the case, most populations are quite conservative most of the time, except when they become absolutely desperate. That can happen under extreme conditions, such as a financial collapse or the loss of a war. Then people become willing to consider unusual alternatives and changes in the status quo.

Knowing this, most mainstream political parties try and convince people that they will, for the most part, defend and maintain the familiar status quo of the society. Thus mainstream political parties are by their very nature, conservative...or at least, they pretend to be.

I regard the current Republican administration as anything but conservative, since it has done and continues to do quite unusual things. That's not conservative. It's radical.

I submit that a socialized health care system such as we have in Canada would not "f**k things up for the 83%" that you refer to. Canadian doctors make very good money, I can assure you, and people are doing just fine here with socialized medicine. Your Oregon people are just afraid of what they don't know, and would rather stick with what they do know. ;-) And in that respect, they sound just like Canadians...or most other people.

In Cuba, they have totally socialized medicine...100% free. That's even better than Canada. I haven't heard any Cubans object to it. They like it (although they may not like various other things that are going on in that society). They're used to it...and they like it. Same deal. They're so much like your Oregon folks that I bet if they didn't both know they were "different" from each other they would hardly even notice!

Ha! I laugh at how governments divide people from one another over pointless issues. But it's sad, really.