Demagogue

Among the letters to the editor of today's Washington Post is one from a person who once studied and worked in St. Andrews, Scotland -- site of one of the more notorious Abramoff-GOP lawmaker junkets. According to the letter writer:

Of all the bizarre bits of the Jack Abramoff brouhaha, the silliest may be one purported reason for the congressional junkets to Scotland -- meetings with elected Scottish conservatives to compare political notes.

Were it not for St. Andrew's fabled links and a lot of other great golf courses, its seems unlikely that Republican members of Congress would travel to Scotland for powows with Tory politicians. A few facts:

Scotland has about 70 members in the British House of Commons. Exactly one is a conservative .... Of the 32 local councils in Scotland, the Conservatives control only one.

And while we're at it, it's worth noting that the conservatives on the other side of the Atlantic would strike most U.S. conservatives as big-government liberals. After all, the Tories in Britain may occasionally propose reforms of the National Health Service, but they do not oppose a national system to cover all people.