Brooks:

Over the next months, there will be more efforts to water down reform. Some groups are offering to get behind health care reform in exchange for gutting education reform. Politicians from both parties are going to lobby fiercely to ensure that their state gets money, regardless of the merits. So will governors who figure they’re going to lose out in the award process.

What groups could he be talking about? I can’t think of, off the top of my head, a group that would have any kind of significant interest in both issues and the clout to make any kind of offer like that worth considering. Teachers unions? They are already solidly behind health care reform. Medical teachers associations? I don’t think they even exist. If Brooks knows of any groups offering a craven deal like that, he could have used his nationally-read column to call them out.

It is too bad he didn’t, because some people say that pundits often use the “some groups/people” convention to create straw men that artificially increase the drama around an issue for the sake of the argument.