WASHINGTON -- To its practitioners, politics is about power: getting it, keeping it and using it. But for the nation, the basic purpose of politics is to conciliate. If everyone agreed on everything, politics would be unnecessary. So would democracy and elections.

A dictator could govern by universally accepted preferences and policies. Without consensus, politics is how we resolve our differences short of resorting to violence. One reason so many Americans are unhappy with politics today is that it has abdicated its central role. It doesn't narrow our differences; it exaggerates them.

Pennsylvania is about to get a new governor, and there will be a lot of new faces in the legislature when it reconvenes in January. Fiscal issues, specifically the state's $5 billion plus structural budget deficit, will dominate debate. But the issue of school choice is showing signs of rising rapidly to the top of the agenda.

By Naftali Bendavid
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party underscores the clout of Club For Growth, a conservative group that targets Republicans it brands insufficiently committed to low taxes and small government.
The move also has inflamed a debate within the party: Are the group's tactics good or bad for Republicans?

In his 28 years in the Senate, Arlen Specter has been accused of many things. Some of his Republican colleagues grouse in private that he is sanctimonious and unreliable. A Pennsylvania moderate in a party dominated by conservatives, Specter votes with Democrats so often that the GOP once threatened to deny him his Judiciary Committee chairmanship. Meanwhile, Democrats complain he's a fair-weather friend who makes speeches about breaking with his party—but then abandons them when it comes time to vote.

By Tom Ferrick

As Republicans begin debating the future of the party, it is worth noting that some in the party are already trying to rewrite the past. In recent weeks, several members of the more conservative wing of the GOP have stated that the reason the party failed so miserably this election is because it turned its back on fiscal discipline by turning toward the political center. Perhaps conservative stalwart L.

By Mort Kondracke

How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda.
A second step would be for Congressional Republicans to actually try to help President-elect Barack Obama succeed in addressing the country's dire problems -- offering better ideas where appropriate and opposing just when necessary, not reflexively.

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Calm down -- and start building a bigger tent.
That's the bottom-line message Tom Ridge has for hyperventilating Republicans sorting through the wreckage of their defeat at the polls on Nov. 4.