This last election was a positive thing for the United States. There is now an entire branch of Congress with a new sense of relevancy, of power, and therefor perhaps of motivation to get off their dead asses and try to accomplish something.

The Republican Party has been a long standing joke. After the Eisenhower and Nixon regimes it has been taken over by one outlandish group after another. First, the ‘Moral Majority’ (the power starved televangelist types), then the conservatives, then the neo-cons, the conservatives again and now the Tea Party. Yeah, the ‘Tea Party’.

So now the Republicans, in their most recent iteration, have at least a seat in the game. Where before as the ‘minority party’ they were dead set on stopping anything and everything the Obama administration presented they now have no excuse whatsoever for failure to function.

But can they function? Have they forgotten how to function?

The Republican Party remains a joke but everyone here in the United States hopes that its members might one day soon become relevant, effective, maybe even worth a damn.