24 hours ago the world turned upside down for the Bush Administration.  First the House fell and Pelosi rose.  Next the state house majority fell and the presidential aspirations of Hillary rose.  This afternoon Rumsfeld fell on his sword and the spectre of untrammeled investigations and subpeonas at the hands of John Conyers rose.  This evening the Senate fell and the Presidents (and our collective nightmare) was completed.

The arrogant and rudderless leadership of the Senate and House Republicans saw their stars burn out.  The fire was fueled by the scandals of Mark Foley, Dan Abramoff, and the democrat-like spending of men and women who pretended to carry the banner of Reaganism while they really dragged it (and us) through the mud.

Did some good come from it?  Yes.  Lincoln Chafee has been relegated (we hope) to the ash heap of history.  Many more corrupt and immoral republicans who made a mockery of the conservative supporters they took for granted are now looking for jobs as media pundits and/or college professors.  And more importantly, an opportunity has been presented to the heirs of Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt that we all need to embrace.

We must return to the platform of cutting spending to compliment the tax cuts that we must now protect.  We must re-embrace the Reagan ideal of smaller government by working for the elimination of the Department of Education and other useless government departments that have been on life support for the last 20 years.  We must continue our battle to protect the unborn while standing opposed to the destruction of life and the allure of cloning to create viable stem cell lines when there are many other sources that do not require man playing god.  We need to re-visit decades old treaties that require us to provide limitless defense of our allies at tax-payer expense when our allies are capable of protecting themselves at their own expense.  We must continue the war on terror but we need to reject the current plan as well as the democratic proposals of appeasement and dialogue and embrace an approach born from the tactical lessons we learned from our best military minds.  Lessons that were successfully implemented in past armed conflict that can be adapted to this current battle.

We must demand of our congressional representatives that they agree to term limits, the same term limits that we require of presidents, governors and mayors.  We must reject the slick salesmen of race politics and relegate them to the ash heap of history.  We must stand opposed to the radical special interests who seek to subjugate our republic for their own gains.  We must work towards removing radical, activist jurists and replace them with strict constitutional interpreters who will enforce the law rather than try to write laws that create rights that the founders never intended.

There once was a vision of a shining city on the hill.  If we are to survive as a people and a nation and bequeath on to our children the greatness that America was meant to be when our founding fathers signed their names to the Declaration of Independence and when they embraced the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we must embrace the vision and dream of a shining city on the hill and make it real.  We owe our children that much.