Great changes are taking place.

The very dangerous threat globally from Islamic extremists and terrorists is different from the types of threats we have faced before.

Domestically, the country is weighed down by dysfunctional systems we created in the last century at a time when many Americans thought that central planning had its place in our lives and when we were rich and independent enough to play these kinds of games.

Now a good portion of our population and economy is dependent on broken retirement, health care, and education systems.

We need to retool and replace the broken and the old with the new and dynamic.

We need a more deregulated health care market, private health and retirement accounts, and an approach to education that allows parents to choose how they wish to educate their children.

However, leading a whole nation to abandon the old and familiar and to step into the unknown and the new is no small task. It cannot be done without leaders who have vision, who have courage, and who, like Reagan, see the truth clearly enough, and believe in it deeply enough, that they will capture the trust of our people.

I haven't spent a lot of time talking about the Democrats because it is so clear that they still are the peddlers of the old and the broken. I have yet to read an analysis that defined this election as an affirmation of the Democratic Party.

We know about relationships that come on the rebound. It's just a matter of needing somewhere to go. But there's no substance and no future. The Democrats will soon remind us again about what getting government into our lives really means. Telling us what we should earn, what we should produce, who we can and can't hire, what the prices of things should be, what we can and can't teach our kids, etc.

Short of a complete transformation of the Democratic Party, if our country is going to maintain its standing as a great nation _ the greatest nation _ it will be under Republican leadership.

But it's not going to happen without real leaders. This is the challenge for the Republican Party today _ to re-articulate its vision and to re-establish the trust it has lost with the American people.