domestic violence in this country every year? can i ask him -- can i ask him to ensure that he reexamines the effectiveness of policies in that area, because of the cost in human misery on the victims and the cost to our caring services? >> it would be fair acknowledging that the home secretary has also led the way on tougher sentences on domestic violence, including in domestic violence court. there is a record on taking on domestic violence also funding centers for women throughout the rest of the country. that is vital public expenditure that we believe is important for the health of this country, and we will continue to support the measure to help women in our country. >> the prime minister talked about policies going into the european elections tomorrow. can he confirm that the labour government, 700,000 companies,

work with the european union, that 3 million jobs relate to the european union, and that 60% of our trade is with the european union? which party goes to the elections tomorrow with the better record? >> the manufacturers' a suspicion has said that they about to reduce our interest in europe. they cannot talk to the german chancellor or the french president or people in spain or portugal -- it is only -- she said she would not offer the hand of friendship to those opposed to the lisbon tree -- treaty. only the check form supports it. >> more from the british house of commons can be seen on c- span2, and each sunday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern here on c- span. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] coming next, the future of conservative politics. after that, "q&a" with governor mitch daniels from indiana, and after that, prime minister gordon brown. there is the federally mandated transition to digital television coming next week, and we will get a staff report on how the fcc has prepared people for the change with weta -- weta's manager and others. "the communicators" on c-span2. a meeting was held last week in washington, and they discussed

the obama administration. now, a portion of their discussion on strategies for a political comeback. this is 45 minutes. , at the same time we see repeated momus with the nomination of judge sotomayor. think about this panel, and thinking about where will future attacks come from, what will we see from the right and how to fight it, we laid out some ideas as to what it will look like. the story about obama's responsibility for all these financial failings is a little scary. what is also clear is that the right right now has very little in the way of real solutions to everyday people problems that

they can attach to their brand that they can't sell. in the absence of that, what they sell very well, things that speak to people on a certain level. if they are not prepared themselves, they can get swept up in that and it can be effective. i think several things contribute to those ideas moving people in a way that they shouldn't. first is that i think so many people, especially who are not on the right, who are not a part of church communities are not involved in ongoing, trusted conversations where they can react naturally in a positive way. when you don't have that, a lot of the things that come to the right makes sense. an argument you can buy and have

little else to put up against it. second, we have a mainstream media, its attempt to be going out of its way, is willing to take anything the right gives them. it suddenly becomes reasonable enough to repeat. that is another problem. third, we have legislatures who i think, many of them have a hard time, even when the facts are on their side to have the gumption to stand up and say here we are, here is what is true. this is a sizable landscape. the one i have worked on is creating these communities of interest where people are pulled into an ongoing conversation.

we saw with the obama campaign, we saw it with others who were doing massive organizing during that campaign. you had people moving in a direction, in conversation together. when things came out of right field, there were in fact days when they were negative, there was the ability to counter them. that -- we are in a different place now. it wasn't just york white progressives, a member of move on, it was people of every color, age, a diversity. there is a reality to folks going back to their everyday lives. one can only sustain that kind

of energy so long. and i think we really do lack the kind of sustained basis for people to engage with each a, to be in conversations about political speak that is truly relevant. part of the challenge is in doing that. you saw during the campaign, positive messaging, specific steps people can make to make a difference. we were able to neutralize attacks from the right. what i am really interested in, and part of what excites me about doing the work i am doing is we have black folks, brown folks, mothers, people who find themselves involved in particular issues.

these are folks who can mobilize the presidential campaign. for folks to recognize, realize legislative change, real change, it will require a lot of folks being in ongoing conversations. that is part of why this organizing work that goes beyond what will do is important. another effect aside from being a force that can lobby, together, if you have all these folks mobilize, it becomes an antidote to the craziness that will come out of left field. the judge sotomayor nomination comes up again. she is latina, she is puerto rican. shia acknowledges that.

she is a sheep. -- she is a she. there has not been an anticipated response that says okay, we have white men who have a certain experience, if you look at what previous justices have said, they acknowledge their thinking on some level. we get hit from the right, the some of the folks that could be the most vocal are simply not at the table. a big part of countering the right, when they come with this far-reaching, non fact race rhetoric is having folks mobilize or already in

conversation when they can understand it and respond to it. even more interesting is, it is one thing to hear the media come get a message come and be prepared to say i know what that is. it is another to be a part of a network of people, on-line networks and offline networks. people have conversations with others to trust them. the ability to diffuse a message from the right, i can send e- mail to others. there are others who may disagree with me. i still have the opportunity to be engaged. in part, i think it is about people being organized and in certain conversations to diffuse what comes from the right. i also think, the progress of blog is fair has done a good

thing. to point out that by hearing this main message, you are doing a public this service. that has happened to some degree. finally i think, at the end of the day we can help boasted -- bolster our elected officials.

again, i think the landscape is very big, and i think the threats are very real. if you believe, as i believe, that what the far right has going for it is really not of substance. it is really about taking folks who are on some level vulnerable when it comes to understanding what is possible and what is not possible, understanding what real threat to actually look like. i think if we give people a way to be in continuous conversation, we can help safeguard it. [applause] >> hi, i am rick. it is an honor and pleasure to be here. the last time i was at this conference, it had a different name. this year, it is called america's future now, in case any of the stragglers did not

know that, and the reason is because we took back america, so could you please give yourself the proverbial. -- the proverbial hand? [applause] and i am so glad to be up here with friends old and new. i study the right for a living. i am in the middle of writing a two-volume trilogy on the rise of the right through the age of reagan, and what i really writing about is the evolution and destruction of what really seem to be during the 1990's and during 9/11 and during 2006 a smoothly functioning, courted, conservative republican machine -- coordinated, a conservative public machine, and that has given me an understanding in looking at this year of that machine, something does not seem

so smoothly functioning anymore, and writing about the campaigns for the campaign america future, i remember three particular moments in which i saw things happening on the right in ways that i had never quite seen them before, once the conservative movement really came to maturity. i went to the convention in 2004. he said thomas made him want to vote for george bush. -- i said on this may be what to vote for george bush. at another time, it almost made me want to vote for george bush, because i wanted a beautiful, free, multicultural america, too. in 2008, it is really no different. it looked like a different group of people, and i remember the speaker say, "dadadadada," and i

thought to myself, "i know what he means. i have studied the right. i know trial lawyers, and gila monsters who hate hard-working entrepreneurs." the people in america know why these people are giving trial lawyers standing ovations. if they know anything about about trial lawyers, they noted these are the people the, you know, protect us from corporate malfeasance, so i thought that these guys really do not know how to speak american any more. they are really losing their touch, and then another movement, and i think it might have been sarah palin's speech, remember the panacea, we were going to save all -- solve all our problems by drilling. it was if it was scripted.

the whole audience in the convention hall breaks into a chant, "drill, baby, drill, drill, baby, drill," and i know americans had no idea what that was about, because it is only because -- and i was born in 1969. it is only because i am a student of the 1960's that i know that when rioters rioted in the 1960's, the yells, "burn, baby, burn, burn, baby, burn to -- they yelled that. -- burn, baby, burn." insurgency for themselves in the form of calling for more offshore drilling for mobil and exxon. it speaks to one of the themes in my book, that the conservatives have enormous capital from the social struggles of the '60s. americans have reasonable doubts about what those struggles

meant. that might have made sense in 1970. these gestures all have a half life. every year, half of their efficacy passes away. they are not speaking american. once the nomination happen, and john mccain got it, republicans like to say the only win elections by being conservative. they always win presidential elections by appearing to be magnanimous, a kinder gentler america, to thousand points of light. it is never, i will shrink government and stopped work. -- stop war.

it is a different part of the republican machine. it is what they say to each other. i talk radio hosts in cincinnati warm up the crowd at a john mccain event. he spoke the dreaded name barack hussain obama. that particular week in the campaign, the pundits had decided this was beyond the pale. calling him by his middle name was not correct. they took john mccain to task. john mccain said, i don't know this guy. he is just some guy from cincinnati. the next morning, this talk show host bill cunningham was on the today show saying what does he mean he has never met me? i met him three or four times. they told me to warm up the crowd. i knew it. i knew that the machine had developed some serious operating

efficiencies. the conservative movement works in a very integrated way. people knew what was being set off stage. suddenly, you have to talk about trust. the power of people testing each other, and being able to struggle and sacrifice together, and maybe even be willing to step aside cannot put aside one's ego for the sake of a greater cause. conservatives don't have that anymore. this guy, bill cunningham, was no longer willing to fall on his sword and take a bullet on behalf of the cause that he believes to be greater than himself. we see the machine that has ground down in a way that is

quite extraordinary. let me conclude with something i find amazing. grover norquist, we all know is the conservative movement's old dog, one of the organizers, one of the guys who through the red meat. my goal is to make government so small that we can drown in a bathtub. that is a very famous ". as we convene here today in california, in sacramento, arnold schwarzenegger is getting ready to pass a budget that will cut its essential government services in a way an american state hasn't seen in this century. cutting health, people will see what is life for the great progressive welfare state was

light. he is literally fulfilling grover norquist ambition. what do the conservatives think about this? arnold schwarzenegger has the wrong ideas about what parts of our bodies are supposed to rub up against each other. he has the wrong ideas about what you are supposed to say about global warming. he doesn't follow the ritual of rush limbaugh. he is concerned -- considered a traitor to the conservative movement. it used to be that these people could meshed together. they used to be able to read this intricate tapestry and make it seem seamless and whole. now, the holes are out -- abound. what do they have to do? one of the things i have learned in the past year from watching barack obama is the importance

of leadership. i don't think i really understood this. the republican party will not trust one to the other, until there is a leader who could bring these people together. i don't think they are in a position to do this. people succeeded so well building that machine. they paid lots of money and got lots of attention. all the people who are running the party will keep on doing what they are doing. they don't have any incentive to change rush limbaugh does not have any incentive to change. he has a 50 million cut -- $50 million contract. one of the things we now from our sessions with our therapist, is that strategy's we used to make sense of our lives when we

are children in one environment doesn't always work in another environment. that is just a natural fact of life. conditions change. the world has changed. the republican party has to change with it. there will be a period of infighting until they can mend the machine and pull together a functioning, coherent machine again. [applause] we set the tables on what i hope we will have an exciting conversation. speakers and questioners, please set up. >> i wanted to ask a question or

pose a situation that i think we are in that connects some of what mr. frank was sane -- saying. the current economic crisis should be the opportunity to rein in the power that finance capital has over our government. as you were saying, the personnel in the administration seems to indicate that will not happen. you were saying that one of your big three was campaign finance reform as a way of breaking that. my question is, is there really no opportunity in your mind to shrink the size of the financial sector, and introduce stronger forms of regulation to curb their forms of power now? if you have any comments in

lacking in that greater opportunity, is there a path for getting campaign finance reform on the agenda? >> i think things will have to break a lot more than they are broken now, before people are ready to make that change. you don't get that kind of change until people are pushed to it. >> you should all read the wall street journal, every wednesday i comment on this subject of the role of wall street and the american economy, how these people have been the vanguard of the economy for decades, not

forever, but for a long time. they basically ran it off a cliff. what they want now is just to go back to the status quo. put all the pieces back together again, i don't want people to think that i am too pessimistic about obama. president obama said in in an interview with the new york times, obama basically said that we cannot continue down the path that we have been going. wall street cannot be the people running the entire economy. we can never go back to that situation. he singled out in particular the financial industry's compensation practices. when i went to college in the

1980's, i guess i was kind of stupid. i went on to study history. i got a ph.d. in history. all of the other kids that i knew went on to go work for wall street. that was so obviously what the writing on the wall was telling you. this was the future. these guys were pulling down fantastic sums until about eight months ago. i agree with the president that we cannot go back to that. these people can't just be taking the loot of the world and making the decisions for the economy, because they make idiotic decisions. i want to refer you to paul krugman. the line that he repeats, we have to make things boring again. that is right. >> that will not happen until we

get campaign finance reform. that is probably every -- prerequisite. >> i think there has to be other routes, because this is a comparative thing. one of the things that fascinates me about the whole financial services boom is the sociology of it. why is it that people around obama see these individual with this background and skills that are the only people who have the skills to be trusted to handle these questions? i do not have an answer to that. i think that presuming to obama means what he says, and i think he does, he needs to be thinking about how to really we've a tightly wound fabric, in which people in the financial service sectors have seized all levers

of not only government, the economy and the whole incentive structure, but more profitable to rent money to people who could not afford to pay it back, then it was to get a steady 7% return. they were up and down the economy from credit cards, which were a product of deregulation of finances, yes, thank you. >> but please, everyone, answer, so first, in your