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The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”
 
Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

While I agree with the general sentiment of "let's not rule something out the moment it leaves a Democrat's mouth," the Kent Conrad co-op plan (the most comprehensive on the table at the moment) seems like it's something that conservatives can unite against.

These government-chartered co-op plans aren't what we conjure up in our minds when someone mentions the word 'co-op.' As Lewis McCrary detailed at the American Conservative, we should think less of the stereotype food market co-operative and more of Fannie Mae.

"When I hear the word cooperative, I imagine myself banding together with my neighbors to create a community-based solution. But Conrad’s approach is not the kind of organically emerging network of local civil society organizations that many conservatives could endorse. Such a decentralist approach to filling the gaps in health care could never come from a top down Washington plan that requires “strong governance standards” (and most likely a large regulatory bureaucracy)."

And John Hood at NRO says that this will just be government-run health care by another name.

If a federal law creates a bunch of new entities, financed with federal taxes and subjected to federal rules, and likely overseen by political appointees, calling them “cooperatives” will not change their essential nature.

While it's possible that encouraging the establishment of health care co-ops might be a good idea in general, the Conrad plan (and any plan that likely comes out of Congress) is going to be a government-controlled enterprise full of unnecessary mandates and rent-seeking.

Conservatives should definitely be open to all sorts of health reform ideas. There's a lot of good work being done in these areas by, off the top of my head, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. We shouldn't be against "co-ops" as an idea. But we should be wary of what's coming out of Conrad and Obama.

Salam says that "bitter opposition to the idea suggests that the right is needlessly hostile to reform." This is half-true. The right is hostile to reform, but not needlessly so, and not to all reform. Conservatives should be under no illusion that we're going to get health reform in the direction that we think is important while the Dems control the White House and Congress. What I'm hoping for is a plan that will do the least damage, have the lowest price tag, and be the easiest to sunset once the Democrats fall out of power again.

Bob was a good source for Ohio history.  From really Eisenhower forward, he had great lines of communication with the political players of Ohio -- and he knew Ohio was crucial for any Republican success -- so he studied Ohio. 

We would talk on the phone, and I was like any number of his sources.  He would just call and it was off-the-record or on background, and he would ask probing questions.  He knew the numbers, but he would also try to understand the human dimension associated with intrastate politics in Ohio.

Lewis abruptly turned to Geraldine, whom he had never met before.  "Now, Mrs. Novak," he said, "Surely you favor exemptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, don't you."  Geraldine detested political debate, and I'm sure she would rather have been anywhere else.  But she was asked a direct question and answered it:  "No, I don't." "You are not in favor of any exemptions?" Lewis persisted.  "No."  "Not even for the life of the mother?"  "No," she insisted.  A moment of silence followed, before an embarrassed Lewis told my wife:  "Well, that's your opinion, and stick to it."  Lewis had no idea my wife was a prolife activist doing volunteer work for the National Right to Life Committee.  I could not have been more proud of her courageous stand taken with a couple dozen pairs of eyes fixed on her.

Drew symbolized corporate executives, lawyers, lobbyists, and campaign consultants who were trying to plane down the new Republican Party's rough edges.  Geraldine typified new Republicans who were loyal to Reagan but not to Reagan's aides.  She had come to Washington twenty-four years earlier as a born-and-bred Texas Democrat, a twenty-three-year-old secretary on Lyndon B. Johnson's staff.  She had changed her registration to Republican mainly because of abortion.  If the Republican Party abandoned her on this issue, I knew she would abandon the Republican Party.  I'm not sure that Drew Lewis fully understood that.