My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

The past two decades revolutionized the way we access information. You and I can have our questions answered with the click of a mouse at any time of day. If America, both corporation and citizen alike, can use these services to solve problems, why can't Washington?

The Republican Party is terrific at determining how a program will impact the federal budget, but we're not nearly as good as the Democrats in explaining to people how our agenda will directly benefit them and their families.

I never got into politics for it to be a career.

Telling the public, 'We'll get to it later,' is inadequate. That's what the federal government does.

The Conservatives do not want to go into an election with the leaders' relative ratings as they are - but it is depressing to hear that plans are afoot to paint Miliband as the Michael Dukakis of British politics: part of a metropolitan elite with no understanding of mainstream concerns.

If you are teaching Muslim sixth formers in a school, and you tell them they can't have their God and Darwin, there is a risk they will choose their God and be lost to science.

A lack of government oversight hasn't hindered the Internet. Quite the opposite. A hands-off approach is largely responsible for its fantastic growth and success.