Conservatives Win in a Landslide! Okay, So It's Over in the U.K. . . .
It's a good day to be a Tory. Pundits had predicted the UK election would be a close one and suggested there would be days of post-vote, backroom talk to thrash out a power-sharing deal. Instead, it's turning into a thumpin'. With almost all the results in, British Prime Minister David Cameron stays in power, with his party, the Conservatives, stronger than at the last election in 2010. Reuters has reported that the center-right Conservative Party has won an "effective majority in Parliament with 324 seats." That's two seats short of an absolute majority. Eh, scratch that -- moments before I hit "send" on this newsletter, Conservatives won an absolute majority. As the dust settled Friday, three party leaders resigned, including opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. What this means for the UK is that the Conservatives get to govern alone after five years in a coalition . . . Domestically, the Conservatives have said they'll push forward with reforms to tackle the huge UK deficit and rein in spending on the welfare state as well as holding a national referendum on continued EU membership by 2017. George Galloway is out! It's a good night in the U.K.! They're having their own "how could the pollsters be so wrong?" debate that we had in the United States after the 2014 midterms. Dr Chris Hanretty, of BBC Newsnight's Index and the University of East Anglia, said he felt "a little bit foolish". "When we said we might be wrong, we talked about being 20 or 25 seats off on the top two parties. We did not think we would be off by more than 40 seats. And we categorically ruled out a majority. "We'll be looking at our forecast model and trying to work out what we could have done better. We imagine the polling industry will be doing the same," he told the BBC." We should have expected far more 'shy Tories'." Theory: The more obnoxious and confrontational the Left gets, the "shyer" the Tories get when the pollsters call. Greg Abbott Could Be a 2016 Kingmaker—but He May Not Want to Be Texas governor Greg Abbott met with some of NR's Washington staff yesterday, and discussed what he's hoping to see in the GOP presidential nominee. He said he doesn't know if he'll endorse before the Texas primary. Part of me would be surprised if he did. In Washington yesterday, Abbott said he had met with senators Ted Cruz and Jon Cornyn, along with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Of course, Abbott's predecessor, Rick Perry, is almost certain to launch a bid in the near future. Perry and Abbott worked closely as governor and attorney general for about 14 years, and while they occasionally disagreed, the two men think well of each other. And of course, the Bush family is still quite well-regarded, connected, and influential in Texas; both President Bushes have their presidential libraries in Texas and George P. Bush, Jeb's son, is currently Commissioner of the Texas Land Office. In short, by endorsing one, Abbott would do some damage to his relationship with the other two; the media, both nationally and in Texas, would interpret an endorsement of one as a slap in the face of the other two. If Cruz doesn't win the presidency, he's likely to be a senator from Texas for a very, very long time, and George P. Bush is likely to be a significant player in Texas politics for just as long or even longer. As our Joel Gehrke laid out, Texas offers about 10 percent of all of the delegates needed to win the nomination. It costs $1.5 million a week to buy television ads in every media market in the state, and the allocation of the delegates is . . . complicated: Seventy percent of the 155 delegates will be allocated based on the March 1 election results, following a winner-take-all by congressional district formula: If a candidate fails to earn more than 50 percent of the votes in a given congressional district, the delegates will be divided two-to-one between the first-place and second-place finishers. The remaining 30 percent will be awarded by a caucus at the state convention in May. For the local candidates Cruz and Perry, the Texas primary is like "playing the Game of Thrones": you either win or you die (metaphorically). An Abbott endorsement of one candidate could be seen as an insurmountable setback for the others. Conservative Dad Rules, from Rob Long and Friends Rob Long, Jonah Goldberg, James Lileks, and other friends of NR have a collection of essays on fatherhood coming out. From the Washington Post review: In my favorite essay in this collection, Rob Long, a writer and producer in Hollywood and National Review contributing editor, offers two tips for this conversation. When a son or daughter asks about marriage, compare it to listening to their favorite song — but only that song — for the rest of your life. "Or if you're not ready to make that kind of commitment, you can keep listening to all of those other songs, skipping happily from track to track, as long as you're prepared to never listen to your favorite song again." His second suggestion: Take your kid to a suburban Starbucks in the middle of the day, a weekday, and point out who is there. Long says you'll see a lot of middle-aged guys with out-of-date laptops opened to their LinkedIn profiles. They're networking, e-mailing, resume-padding, consulting, doing whatever they can "to catch up to an economy that seems to be moving just a little faster than they can run along behind it," Long explains. And then tell your child: "We will all — you can count on it — be lost in the Starbucks wilderness in our lives. . . And when that happens, ask yourself: Will there be someone in my life who knows me, knows how hard I'm trying?" Long concludes: "When the Men of Starbucks pack up their laptops and toss their napkins and head out into the night, there's only one thing that will make them feel strong and loved and ready to try again, and that's their favorite song. Just that one song." ADDENDA: Coming later today, the pop-culture podcast with Mickey White looks at the royal baby and what Americans think of the royals (and E!'s The Royals); Marvel's continued domination at the box office and the future of superhero movies; a wrap-up of Right Online, and Carly Fiorina surviving her appearance as the first presidential candidate guest on Kathie Lee & Hoda . . . . . . That book I wrote way back in 2006? I received a royalty statement indicating two e-books sold in the past six months. Thanks, you two readers! Finally, Russia's new "super tank" needed to be towed after breaking down during a Red Square parade rehearsal.
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