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(CNN) – Rick Santorum’s clean sweep in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Tuesday was the latest plot twist in what was already a potboiler of a Republican presidential campaign. Here are five things we learned from Tuesday.

CNN Political Ticker

The Roman Catholic Church’s leaders want a special exemption from federal legislation because, well, they are the Roman Catholic Church.

Politics articles at Blogcritics

This morning’s story about the likelihood of widespread civil unrest on the Continent if the euro collapses prompts the question of whether the UK will limit the number of European migrants entering the country in the event of that happening. Earlier this week, we learned that net immigration to the UK reached an all-time high [...]
News » Politics

Just three weeks to go now until the bendy buses block their last streets, cut up their last cyclists, and make their longed-for final exit from London. Their rather more popular predecessor, the Routemaster, lasted 51 years. The bendy has managed nine. There are now only three bendy routes left – get your fare-dodging in [...]
News » Politics

This being Remembrance Day, and this being  a political blog, it seems a good time to remind folks that public service takes many forms — one can serve the country in uniform, or as a member of Parliament. Or, for 733 people in Canada's history, you can do both.

The Parliament of Canada's website contains a list of all members of Parliament who have also done military service.  It notes that the list was compiled with the help of some notable (and sadly, recently departed) people who had political and military careers,  such as  former defence minister Barney Danson, former Sun columnist Doug Fisher. 

So, some interesting numbers: 

As mentioned, 733 people in total have done military and Commons service. 

In the current Parliament, 12 people have a military background. Six are Conservatives: Gordon O'Connor, Peter Goldring, Laurie Hawn, Corneli Chisu, Pierre Lemieux and Ted Opitz. Four are New Democrats: Alex Atamanenko, Christine Moore, Wayne Marston and Djaouia Sellah. Two  are Liberals: Marc Garneau and  Kevin Lamoureux.

In total, 326 people with military backgrounds have represented ridings for the current Conservative party or its three predecessors, the Reform Party, the old Progressive Conservative party and the Conservative party (1867-1942). 

The Liberals have had a total of 278 former military people serve as MPs, while for the NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, that total stands at 40. 

Naturally, there were far more MPs with military service in the Parliaments of the  immediate, post-WWII years. From 1945 to 1949, in the 20th Parliament, a full 90 members had military backgrounds. In the 1960s, even, that number was still high: 99 MPs with military service in the Parliament that lasted from 1963 to 1965. 

And while Parliament and the military haven't always been women-friendly places, we have seen a  number of women entering Parliament after serving in the military too. But that's a single-digit number: seven. 

If you're still curious about the people who've linked military and political service, you can head over to the site (link above). It's very easy to search. 

Politics

Greece, Ireland, Portugal – and now it’s Italy that will almost certainly need a bailout, a situation so worrying that it even knocked Justin Bieber out of the top ten Twitter trends (although I’m sure he’ll be back soon). The costs involved are so absurd that Dr Evil couldn’t do it justice. And it probably [...]
News » Politics

EU leaders are still, hilariously, claiming that Greece will avoid a default and meet its obligations. Greek political leaders, with equal comedy, insist that they really are going to raise revenue and cut spending. Here’s a little story for those who are tempted to place too much trust in Greek politicians. It is recounted in [...]
News » Politics

Who picks the GOP presidential candidate? Is it Republican voters or the media and their pet pollsters?

Politics articles at Blogcritics

At the outset of the last election, I rattled off a little blog post that seemed to strike a nerve (not to mention some hilarious additions I couldn't post — yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. MacDonald in Washington.)

In the nearly two months since the election ended, I haven't blogged a whole lot (that's deliberate — needed a wee break), but I have been out every now and then babbling to various audiences about what I observed/hypothesized/concluded from Canada's 41st election.

This morning, for instance, I was on a panel with the CBC's Julie Van Dusen and  McLoughlin Media's Laura Peck, moderated by Tobi Cohen of Postmedia. The event was a breakfast at the Rideau Club by the WXN (Women's Executive Network.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the event, by the way — and not just because my mom was there too. It's worth checking out one of these gatherings if they happen to occur in your hometown.

Anyway, since I haven't blogged much on any of the topics we discussed at WXN, and now, with the benefit of some reflection, I thought I might lay out some of these thoughts here.  Call them a bookend to the 10 lessons I posted at the outset of the campaign.

1. There's been a lot of talk about "how did the media get it wrong?" in the wake of the last election.

I find this odd.

The strangest essay  in this vein has to be Marjory LeBreton's piece in the most recent Policy Options, which argues that journalists spent too much time on the leaders' buses, too much time on  social media, too much time arguing for more questions from the PM, and thus (get your basketball shoes on,  we're about to make a leap in logic): we were wrong about everything.

If I understand that argument correctly, we should stay away from the buses because no one tells the truth there, and not insist on more questions from the politicians because, well, they're tiresome to the folks on the bus, who are too busy not telling us the truth to let us get on with the more proper job of declaring the Conservatives the likely winner in all our reports. Confused? Yeah, me too.

So, here's my simpler solution: Why don't we reporters stop trying to call winners and losers and just do our jobs? (Which, sorry, involves asking questions of impatient prime ministers and then telling the public what they said.) I took that view back in 1993, when the reporters organized an election pool aboard the Liberal campaign tour  and posted their  vote predictions  by the bathroom door in the plane. "No way," I said. "I'm not calling the election."  At a stop in Quebec, guess what Jean Chretien did?  He told his loyal Liberal crowd about the pool entries he'd perused on the  plane  and said, "see, even the media think I'm going to win." Eeww. Not our job. We're not supposed to be judged on how well we tell the future; it's how we recount/analyze   what happened in the near or distant past.

2. How are women doing in politics overall?

Much better, thanks. A record 25 per cent has finally been hit in terms of numbers in the House of Commons. This is actually the second surge I've seen in my career here as a political reporter. In 1993, again, women's numbers jumped from 13 per cent to 18 per cent and in this election, from roughly 20 per cent to 25 per cent. Women do well when voters are in "the mood to kick the bums out," as Jennifer Lawless said at an event in Ottawa shortly before the election. Women are definitely not seen as "more of the same." 

That may well be why Elizabeth May, excluded from the TV debates, pushed to the fringes of media attention in the campaign, actually won this time. It was an outsider's election: Conservatives and New Democrats campaigned against Ottawa, the NDP successfully cast the Bloc as consummate insiders of Quebec politics. Liberals, for some strange reason, after five years in the wilderness, are still seen as the picture of resented power in Ottawa and so they lost because they were seen as part of a government they hadn't run since 2005. Lesson: You must run against the system you want to control.  Shades of Rob Ford. Mark that well.

3. Have women "arrived" in politics?

Yes and no. There's no question the numbers are getting better, but the ceiling is still there. Don't forget, in 1993, when a record number of women were elected, Canadians harshly rejected the two parties led by women (Kim Campbell for the Conservatives, Audrey McLaughlin for the NDP). Women MPs, okay, but women leaders? May is an interesting exception, but we'll see. I still sense a certain hesitation or invisible limits on women getting too much power.

4. Is the situation the same for women reporters?

A bit. There are more women reporters in the press gallery today than ever before — about 35 per cent by my rough count yesterday. That's just excellent news. But there are very few women columnists (I count two full-timers, compared to at least a dozen men) or bureau chiefs — those jobs are almost totally dominated by men. Two of our leading women broadcast hosts, Jane Taber and Kathleen Petty, are leaving their high-profile spots at CTV's Question Period and CBC's The House, respectively.

Women are more likely to be found in the reporting ranks, doing the same jobs they did when they arrived in Ottawa (as mentioned in previous posts, so enough about that.)

5. Social media, like Twitter and Facebook… are there opportunities for women there that don't exist in the traditional political media?

It is true that the wild-west nature of the new media has made it easier for dynamos like Kady O'Malley and Rosie Barton to become dominant voices in the brave new frontier. But a large survey of Canadian Online Political Participation, released earlier this year in preliminary form at the Canadian Political Science conference, shows women severely lagging in the political blogosphere.

Just 12 per cent of the participants in the study (including yours truly) are women bloggers on politics. But when you break down the numbers according to the type of participation, some interesting findings: women form only 7 per cent of the unabashedly partisan blogs, associated with political parties; 14 per cent of bloggers "identified" or leaning in a certain direction and 30 (!) per cent of non-partisan political bloggers. So, the closer you get to power and authority in the blogosphere, the women retreat. Kind of reminds you of the lack of women leaders and columnists, doesn't it?

6. Will decorum and civility be any better in this House of Commons than the last one?

Call me an optimistic skeptic. I'd like to think so, but I'm also aware that there are more rewards for bad behaviour in politics than there are for good behaviour. Negative ads work. Character assassination is quotable. TV panelists are constantly being urged to mix it up more to make their shows "lively" for the viewers. Need I say more?

7. Will the Liberal Party survive this period in the wilderness?

I don't know. (See answer to question 1.) I give it a 50-50 chance. (How's that for a prediction?)

8. What was the most important lesson you took from Election 2011? (This was, in fact, the last question asked at today's event.)

Here's the longer version of what I replied, since we were pressed for time by this point:

I have a degree in politics and a career in journalism. Both are fields that were "professionalized" in the mid-to-late 20th century. The idea, popular in the 1950s and 1960s, was that everything could be a science; measurable, predictable, operating under certain, mechanized, routinized rules. (That's why kitchens, incidentally, started to be designed like hospital operating theatres in this era. Science fixed everything.)

My view is that the public is no longer   "buying the science," as they say. (Shades of last year's census controversy, or, for that matter, the climate-change debate.)  I think the public was more influenced by skewed, partisan ads in this election — certainly when it came to the Liberals — than they were by journalistic reporting or political debate on a level playing field.

I think we journalists have to grapple with the fact that the public is perhaps more willing to believe a blatant partisan report than a perhaps complicated work of journalism.  Repetition works; even when the facts being repeated are wrong. It may mean that this 50-year-old experiment, treating journalism and politics as a measurable science, with absolute rights and absolute wrongs, is coming to an end. And what rises up in its place?

Politics

Alerted by a rather simplistic, often factually inaccurate article over on Liberal Conspiracy, I’ve ended up checking out the new British campaign for a referendum on continued British membership of the EU, The People’s Pledge. More to the point, I’ve had a quick look at its five key arguments:

The choice concerning our relationship with the EU is now clear: either we accept being primarily and increasingly governed from Brussels or we decide to abandon membership and negotiate a new relationship with the EU based on trade and, where this makes sense, voluntary co-operation.

*sigh*

Herewith, a very quick and dirty demolition of their “5 key reasons why we must have a referendum on Britain and the EU”, originally written as a comment under that Liberal Conspiracy piece:

1) No one under 54 has had the chance to vote on our relationship with Brussels.

- And no one – full-stop – has had the chance to vote on the role of the House of Commons, House of Lords, Cabinet, Prime Minister, Civil Service, etc. etc. etc. On pretty much any aspect of the British constitution, in fact, since the Acts of Union 300+ years ago.

2) The European Union now makes a majority of the laws we must obey

- This is simply bollocks. See, for example, the recent House of Commons Library paper (PDF) on the issue, or my old What percentage of laws come from the EU post. The true figure is more like 10-20% of laws, with regulations coming in at around 20-30%. Both figures are declining year on year.

3) The UK has less than 10% of the votes in the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament

- Our representation is (approximately) in line with our population size – with population taken into account on many votes in the Council, giving the UK a very strong position. Would anything other than that be fair on the other member states with whom we are cooperating? And how much relative say do we have in the WTO, NATO or the UN?

4) The EU is costing Britain more and more money

- This is justified by the classic £48m a day claim (it used to be £40m, but the exchange rate’s got worse), which is abject nonsense, based on gross rather than net, and rounded up, as shown in this old post – and is backed up by some nonsense about the cost of the Greek bailout (ignoring the British investment money that would be lost if Greece/Ireland/Portugal had been allowed to go bankrupt), and in any case ignores the wider impact of EU membership on the economy as a whole. Simplistic tosh.

5) The EU wants to give itself new powers of “economic governance”

- Erm… For the Eurozone. Of which Britain is not a member. Britain would only benefit by her neighbours (and major trading partners) being economically more stable and prosperous.

Utter rubbish, all five of them.

Nosemonkey’s EUtopia