and i look at the historic public lands bill passed in congress this week. our guest will be dan puskar with the public lands alliance. host: good morning. welcome to washington journal. congress warned the pharmaceutical industry this week that it may have to step in on one of the most talked about issues on american lives, the high cost of prescription drugs. drug companies have argued they use their profits to innovate and improve american lives. many americans agreed the cost of medicines is too high. what do you think? should there be a federal role in lowering prescription drug costs? should market forces continue to set the price for drug prices? we will talk about whether there should be a role in our government for lowering prescription drug costs. if you are in eastern or pacific time zones, call in at (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, and you want to talk about whether there should be a federal role in lowering prescription drug
american history tv continues now with a look at the historical and political legacy of former house speaker newt gingrich. this was part of a two-day conference hosted by the library of congress. it s just under an hour and a half. this is our final panel on the congress in history on newt gingrich. arguably one of the most influential speakers of the house in the past 100 years. i think there s no dispute we re all living in the era and legacy of newt gingrich. so i m going to turn it over to jacob strauss, who s our chair. for the panel from the congressional research service. thank you, colleen. it s a pleasure to be here. you guys have put on a great conference. it s wonderful to get away from my desk for a little bit and talk to people about all kinds of subjects related to congress. so i m very happy to be here. as colleen said, we re going to talk today about the historical and political legacy of newt gingrich. obviously, we stand between lunch and you going home
conference hosted by the library of congress. it s just under an hour and a half. this is our final panel for the history conference on the political legacy of newt gingrich, arguably one of the most influential speakers of the house in the past hundred years. i think there s no dispute that we re all living the legacy of newt gingrich, so i will turn it over to jacob strauss who is our chair for the panel from the congressional research service. you guys put on a great conference. it s wonderful to get away from our desks and talk to people about all kinds of subjects related to congress so i m very happy to be here. as colleen said, we will talk about the historical and political legacy of newt gingrich and we stand between lunch and you going home which may or may not be a good thing, but we have a great panel with two very interesting speakers so stick around because there will be good stuff here. we ll start with the paper by mack green and jeffrey crouch. as we agre
the other party, you could do an amazing job there now, much better than you ever could before. but there are other things that are at play as well. for example, population sorting. there s a wonderful book that some of you might want to read by a guy named bill bishop called the big sort. and he basically talks about how people, in a sense, they kind of vote with their feet in that people tend to move and concentrate with people like themselves. people are more comfortable when they re with like-minded people, and that this is becoming more and more and more so. and that when you look at, say, democratic districts or look at, look geographically across the country, what are the districts the democrats tend to represent? they tend to be large urban areas and close in suburbs and college towns. and then you say, okay, where do republicans live? small town, rural america and in the more outer reaches which are the faster growing of the suburbs. but that s a clear population
and so that approach generally, generally doesn t work, but you, you know, you could establish distance without trashing, you know, an incumbent for your side. and there was a famous election, it was bush 1990. george h.w. bush, his midterm election. and ed rollins who had managed one of president reagan s campaigns had top staff job at the national republican congressional committee. and he wrote a memo that went out to all the republican house members saying, um, you know, effectively, you know, we all love president bush and he s a great guy and all like that, but your most important job right now is to get reelected and do whatever you need to do to get reelected, and feel prix to put distance free to put distance between yourself and the president. not surprisingly, the white house went crazy. and i m trying to remember whether ed had to resign or not. do you remember if he did or not? i remember they were calling for his resignation. i don t remember whether he actu