If this man is dancing the Watusi with a lampshade on his head tonight, I wouldn’t blame him in the least – if I were him, I’d be doing it with a tall cool boat drink in my hand, with double cocktail parasols to boot!

Well… 24 hour hours can sure change a lot of things politically. You’ve got to tip your hat to the Dems – they ran both smartly and conservatively, using the President’s stubbornness on Iraq and the Republican leadership’s pitiful record on domestic issues over the past six years to create enough of a wedge with Independents to get the job done – not just in the House, but most likely in the Senate as well.

Conservative bloggers everywhere are licking their wounds – TKS admits he got his butt kicked, Dean Barnett has gone from simply hitting the panic button to smashing it with a hammer, and Paul at Power Line has called it an exhausting night.

Me? What can I say? I, like most conservatives, see this as just desserts for a Republican Congress that had increasingly lost its way governing the country since the 2000 elections. You know the saying – absolute power corrupts absolutely? Well, somewhere along the way the Republican leadership in the House and Senate forgot the reform ideals what got them there in 1994, lost the Independents and Reagan Democrats who helped keep them there, and alienated conservatives with their unwillingness to curb their reckless spending habits and their limp-wristed tendencies whenever the Democrats played hardball over judicial nominations. In the end, left with a slate filled with: a) RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) or b) incumbents with questionable ethics, and nothing else to offer but “stay the course”, there was nothing left in the tank.

So what happens now? Well, the Democrats will now find out what it’s like to be the party in power. It’s one thing to play the ‘poor minority party’ card, carping about this, that, and the other thing and bemoaning the lack of bipartisan spirit, a whole ‘nuther thing entirely to be the one in power and actually accountable for the things you say and do. Let’s see how Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do wielding the big stick – my guess is they’ll find out it ain’t quite as easy when you’re the ones who others are taking pot-shots at.

Rather than cry in my beer, I’d rather look at this as an opportunity for Republicans to return to their roots politically, and a chance for both liberals and conservatives, and Democrats and Republicans to forget about Florida 2000, and all that crap. There’s certainly a lot of work to be done domestically, internationally, and politically, and it can only be accomplished together. Will it happen? We shall see.