BTW – Great job this past weekend at RightOnline. Was able to watch on C-SPAN. I wanted to attend but was getting my middle son ready to start his first year at Hampden-Sydney. Hope to catch it next year.

To be clear, I’m not dismissing cooperatives and am a fan of cooperatives. I worked for a year for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the parent for the private energy cooperatives around the country.

Perhaps I didn’t state my point well, but it was not against cooperatives per se, but against the Heritage Foundation’s aggressive push at this moment in favor of cooperatives. Their roll out, coinciding with the Democrats’ roll out of cooperatives, is confusing a few dim witted members of Congress and providing several sneaky members of Congress with cover to support the public option through the back door of cooperatives.

Now we’re left with Democrats saying what they are proposing are cooperatives and Heritage saying they are not real cooperatives. The result? Muddy water, confusion, and cover.

It was a bad political move by Heritage. They say they are a policy shop, but they routinely engage in the political conversation and should have known better than to start their push right as the Democrats were left floundering without any ideas.

Hope that clarifies things.

I will also add that I think cooperatives are relatively untested at the level and operational capacity that Heritage is proposing, but I am amenable to them. They’ll just never, ever happen with the Democrats in charge, thus back to my original point that Heritage bringing them up just gives cover and adds confusion.