What now?

This election was a shock, and a wake-up call, to a Republican Party that is in desperate need of... dare I say it? Change.

Yesterday, Rush was celebrating the loss as signaling a forced return to conservative values, and I think he's right. Freedom's just another word for 'nothin' left to lose,' and that's about where the GOP is right now. Which does represent opportunity. It's time to rebuild, and a party based on values rather than lust would be a big improvement.

The only folks with a bigger adjustment to face up to is the Democrats. What will they do now? The cry of 'racism' as a political hammer has been proven as obsolete as moderate Republicanism. Minorities who have been educated in the Democrats' schools and think the election of Barack represents an end to their troubles will not take kindly to the idea of having been misled, nor will they like a couple of years of deep recession and belt-tightening. The economic picture is not pretty, nor are the Dems prospects for the mid-term elections in LESS THAN TWO YEARS!

While the GOP knows what it needs to become - it needs to become what it always was - the Democratic path is not so clear. To win national elections, Democrats have needed miracles. Keep in mind, in an America with little interest in race, Barack Obama got more of the white vote than did John Kerry or Al Gore. White voters, who cast 74% of the votes on Tuesday, still didn't favor the Democrats. And despite long efforts by the Dems to minimize the political influence of white voters, they still made 74% of the votes on Tuesday - not a bad base for the GOP.

With the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton race baiting angle in decline, Democrats will seek to become the working man's party once more. Most of the votes they receive from the 74% are nostalgia votes - coming from voters who were raised Democrat like they were raised Catholic, they can't shake the identity, and they haven't realized how little connection there is between themselves and Barney Frank. They will need to embrace the needs of the real man more and the union bosses less, while the GOP will be given a big opportunity to embrace good old fashioned American values once again.

I'm looking forward to the fights to come.