"The conservative case for healthcare reform's individual mandate"

In considering the individual mandate, conservatives need to address three questions. First, why is it so troubling that the government is requiring responsible individuals to purchase what they would purchase anyway? Second, is it fair or appropriate to make the responsible pay more in order to protect the rights of the irresponsible? Third, what should be done when the principle of limited government clashes with that of individual responsibility?

Or, put another way, is the principle of limited government so compelling that it should cause us to penalize the responsible and reward the irresponsible?

The whole op-ed is worthwhile, but it underlines that many "liberal" ideas (such as same sex marriage) can have "conservative" support, underlined in the latter case by Ted Olson (!) one of its leading advocates. This is different from the "libertarian" arguments in certain respects. Marriage, e.g., has certain conservative values that a libertarian might not support. Conservatives do support government power, even for moral ends, for certain purposes. For messaging purposes etc., they might want to pretend to be libertarians, but they are not.

This is far from surprising given this was a Republican idea. I'm unsure why they want to give Obama all the credit in that respect.