posted November 09, 2016 11:51 PM            

As I write, at one in the morning, it looks as though the Republicans will score a hat trick: the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives.

Which means we are poised for an extraordinary revolution in American government, with a 100 days of legislation beginning on January 20 next in which Obamacare will be repealed and replaced, and in which we can begin to talk about major tax, immigration, and campaign reform bills. We can imagine a Supreme Court that respects our republican system of government.

We can begin to drain the swamp.

What that adds up to is a reversal of the parade of horribles that have been enacted over the last eight — indeed eighty — years.

One thing is absolutely crucial, and that is the necessity of abandoning the Senate filibuster. The Democrats don’t honor it, and it’s become a handcuff that fetters only the Republicans. Trump’s legislative agenda will be DOA if the filibuster survives. As it stands, it’s turned out to be the principal obstacle to republican government, since the gridlock it’s given us provided Obama the excuse to rule as an elective monarch.

We’re also going to have a new Republican Party. It will be a Party that includes Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, of course, but it won’t be a party that will pay much attention to the self-styled intellectuals of the Party, all those people who scorned both Trump and his supporters, the NeverTrumpers who did everything they could to defeat Trump, with the absurd candidacies of David French and Evan McMullin.

David Frum, The Federalist, NRO, all those vendu conservatives who write for the Washington Post, they couldn’t wait to purge Trump supporters from the Party. So, guys, how’s that purge working out for you?

To all the liberal media people who agreed with Clinton that we were a basket of deplorables, we get it. You really hate a majority of your fellow countrymen. The funny thing is, we really never hated you. It was all one-sided. But if that’s how you feel about us, take a Valium.

What we’ll need is a new understanding of Republicanism, one that doesn’t hold ordinary Americans in contempt, that sees politics as something more than a set of abstract right-wing principles unconnected to human welfare, that goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, that believes in an American nationalism that is liberal and humane because it is rooted in our foundational beliefs, that sees corruption as the silent killer of our economy and public morality, and that seeks a return to a mobile country in which children can expect to move up the ladder and earn more than their parents.