• Megan McArdle: No, we're not dating. And though we do know each other socially, we're not particularly good friends. Moreover, I read Megan long before she moved to DC, and in fact, long before I knew her real name, or had ever met her. (The first time we did meet, we got into a long and angry argument about card check and unions.) You guys react with a frankly inexplicable level of fury to Megan, but I read, and link, to her because she's the writer on the right who's engaged in the project most similar to mine: Namely, trying to seriously examine social and economic policy.

But in being similar, she's also my inverse. Where my project is trying to figure out social policy from the premise that the economic system is stacked against the not-so-powerful, her premise -- and target -- seems to be that the political culture is stacked against the interests of the rich and economically dynamic (which then becomes the traditional libertarian bank shot arguing that if we loosened the constraints on them, the economic growth they'd kick off would save the poor). From there, I think she comes to some bizarre -- and occasionally cruel -- conclusions, but she also gets in a lot of worthwhile insights, and asks a lot of questions that I find useful. So if what you're interested in is a right wing version of me -- which is to say, a social policy writer who comes to the opposite conclusions and starts from the opposite premises -- she's your girl.

• Ramesh Ponnuru: I find it exhausting to wade through The Corner, but Ponnuru is an interesting thinker with takes policy research very seriously. His article on the conservative approach to health care is about the best I've read on the subject. If I could get a feed of just his blog posts, he'd probably be atop my list.

• Ross Douthat: Great writer, deep thinker. For better or for worse, Ross is among the conservative writers most palatable to liberal readers, probably in part because he's often writing in contraposition to the Republican establishment rather than liberal opinions. Where reading Megan can make your blood boil, reading Ross will tends to give you insight into how the Republican party is experienced by its more thoughtful members. Given how I experience the Republican Party, that's useful.

• The American Scene: A totally unclassifiable group of political thinkers assembled by Reihan Salam, who's possibly the world's least classifiable individual, period. Includes Peter Suderman, who's one of my favorite cultural writers, and James Poulos, whose stuff I enjoy quite a bit.

• David Weigel: Weigel's one of Reason's guys, and I'm not even sure he counts as a conservative. But he loves politics, is obsessed with the horserace, and hates both parties. It's like reading a sports blog by someone who loathes all the teams but can't tear himself away from the joy and spectacle of the competition.