The title of a series of six presentations by Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the US House of Representatives.
A series of events hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
I have registered to attend the third of the six presentations next Tuesday, January 17, at 11:00am at Heritage in DC. Online registration at the Heritage website was simple, and a welcome email arrived immediately after I registered. Thank you, Heritage!
Dress respectably. I think I’ll wear the red tie with the dinosaurs on it. (Yes, I will wear other clothes as well as the tie.) I’ll be clean-shaven; I may even break out a fresh razorblade that day.
Avoid trouble. I won’t even ask a question, even if questions are invited.
Post here after the presentation.
More from me soon. More from you in comments below?
The Conservatives could form a government, with a majority, with the support of the Liberal Democrats. I think, and hope, that they won’t get that support without commitment to reform the electoral system toward proportional representation.
We still don’t have the details of the deal. When we do, I’ll post about them. If they include a firm step toward PR, then I for one will forgive Nick Clegg and the rest of the LibDem leadership.
I do have some regret that the LibDems couldn’t do a deal with Labour instead. But I think that the operative word is couldn’t. Such a deal would have required the support of all Labour MPs and of some of the other, smaller, parties, and that support just didn’t seem to be there.
Yesterday saw a General Election in the land of my birth: the United Kingdom. Here’s a snapshot, based on the Guardian‘s election coverage.
Britain’s parliament has 649 seats, each representing a geographic constituency. Here, for each party, is the share of the seats and the share of the vote (the 10 missing seats are those for which we don’t yet have a result).
So, the Conservatives have more seats than any other party, but they don’t have a majority of seats, and they were nowhere near a majority of the popular vote. The Liberal Democrats have a far greater share of the popular vote (more than a fifth) than of the seats (less than a tenth). That’s because of the UK system, in which there is a winner-take-all race for each seat.
The electoral system is bad at representing the popular vote. It’s usually “good” at making it clear who’s in power, in that usually either Labour or the Conservatives has a majority of seats. That hasn’t worked this time.
The Liberal Democrats did hope that this would be the election in which they gained a significant number of seats even without electoral reform. Now they hope that it will be the election after which they can bargain for electoral reform. In subsequent elections, their popular vote would be reflected in seats – and produce more “hung parliaments,” alliances, and so on.
Proportional representation is my hope also. For that, and for other reasons, I’ll be particularly interested in UK politics over the next few days.
If corporations have rights, such as free speech, where do these rights stop? Can a corporation, for example, run for congress? My fellow Silver Spring resident Murray Hill wants to find out. Murray Hill is a PR firm, rather than a person. Or is a firm a person?
So, Murray Hill Inc. for Congress, as we say on Facebook: and Reddit, and NPR. And Youtube as well, but I’ll embed the video here to save you the trip.
Has there ever been a better name for a political party than the Official Monster Raving Loony Party? Or a better name for a candidate than Screaming Lord Sutch?
Maybe the above is rather too British for most of my readers. But, dear readers, if you ever see a candidate named Loud Viscount Watson, it will probably be me. That is the only name under which I will ever run for political office.