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Yesterday, [Rahm] Emanuel was quoted in the NY Times pushing back against liberal critics who think Democrats have watered down healthcare reform too much.

"The goal isn’t to see whether I can pass this through the executive board of the Brookings Institution," Emanuel quippd. "I’m passing it through the United States Congress with people who represent constituents.”

Today, William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings (the Ezra K. Zihka Chair in Governance Studies, to be exact) penned a testy response to the White House Chief of Staff...

"Dear Rahm," Galston began. "It may surprise you to learn that many of us here at Brookings like politics as much as you do, and some of us even know something about it."

Oh, SNAP!  If you care to read the rest of this article from The Hill, go for it.  But I for one declare: Brookings 1, Rahm 0. 

The office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says that the Stupak amendment does not prohibit by law private insurance companies from offering plans that include abortion coverage to women not receiving government subsidies.

But many in the abortion-rights community say the amendment will likely have that effect because so many Americans would be receiving a subsidy, insurance companies would drop abortion coverage so as to appeal to the largest number of consumers possible.

Let's all think about what that means.  By that logic, the plans open to those receiving government subsidies would effectively determine what health care benefits are available to us all -- if they don't cover it, this argument goes, no one will, for competitiveness reasons.

So just take abortion out of the equation for a minute.  In effect, what the liberals and abortion rights activists are telling us is an ugly truth about the House "reform": It will effectively impose one-size-fits-all health care on Americans.  The plan(s) open to those receiving government subsidies (and therefore essentially under government control) will indirectly determine what you and I will be able to get from our own private health care plan.

And on the off-chance that there remains a plan that offers more benefits but at higher cost, we'll be taxed for choosing it.

Nice.

Conservatives have long been pointing to the two states that the Left has held up as models for health care reform - Massachussetts and Maine - as a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation. To many people's surprise, even the New York Times today picked up on this.

Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage.

A state-sponsored insurance plan has been capped at fewer than 9,000 [enrollees] because of financing problems.

The story quotes Tarren Bragdon, CEO of the Maine Heritage Policy Center. Tarren wrote about Maine's public option insurance system, Dirigo, in Townhall back in July.

Dirigo passed in 2003 with bipartisan support, based on promises made by the governor and other supporters of this big government overhaul. At that time, legislators and the public were assured the taxpayer-funded government-run plan would cover all 128,000 uninsured Mainers by 2009. Taxpayers were also promised that Dirigo would pay for itself by through savings government would create within Maine’s health care system and that funding for the program would never require new taxes or tax increases. Sound familiar?
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When Carrie Prejean had expressed an opinion on a social/political issue that is unacceptable to the American left, she found herself ...[amongst] a collection of people who can, must and will have their entire lives scoured for any example of “hypocrisy.”

You and I think hypocrisy is when you say one thing and do another...but that’s not the definition that applies here.

The definition that applies here works like this: She is a conservative and a Christian. Conservatives and Christians are judgmental prudes who a) claim to be perfect; and b) judge everyone else for not being perfect. So it doesn’t matter that she never denounced topless photos. It doesn’t matter that she never denounced “sex tapes.” Every prudish, judgmental belief that has ever been imagined by a critic of Christians and conservatives is hereby ascribed to Carrie Prejean. Anything she has ever done in contradiction of these imagined beliefs thereby proves her hypocrisy.

Conclusion: Gay marriage is awesome. And all because TMZ has a video of Carrie Prejean masturbating. It’s good to be alive.

Prejean strikes me as being rational and pretty and self-confident and energetic. She could work on her public speaking skills a bit, but, that's not a big deal. I'm just not sure what role she's supposed to serve other than someone who made a stand and then got unfairly slammed by the left. She seems like she'd be a good spokesperson for... something... but what?

... significant primary races dot the horizon: In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry (a trailblazer in reducing the size and scope of government) seeks to fend off a challenge from moderate Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. In California, conservative Assemblyman Chuck DeVore seeks to paint former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as an establishment liberal in their race to win the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer. In Florida, former House Speaker Marco Rubio is running for U.S. Senate against moderate Gov. Charlie Crist.

When all is said and done, we will have seen a tug-of-war for the heart and soul of the GOP playing out in three of our largest states (by population). Something to note is that the timeline allows for conservatives to focus and transfer their energies from one state to the next. The Texas primary is in March; three months later the battle shifts to California; after that, it's on to Florida for an August primary.