The fight has just begun -- let's get it right ...

The not-so-Grand Old Party is in such disarray that a complete overhaul is mandatory for survival. Because America thrives when the GOP champions conservative ideals and ethical reform, Republicans must reach deep down to their faithful grass roots, get back in touch with the party's right-minded base and then boldly build from the ground up to again have a chance to win back the Oval Office and regain control of Congress.

One factor may well provide that opportunity. As Clintonian Democrats used to say: "It's the economy, stupid." How ironic that the main reason the electorate tilted toward Barack Obama is the main reason why he won't be able to have his Marxist way with the land we love.

As Dick Morris rightly points out, Obama will serve more as "a trustee or conservator of a bankrupt company" than as President backed by an obedient Congress. Obama has little maneuverability because right behind the mortgage crisis looms the credit-card crisis, then the student-loan crisis and the car-loan crisis.

"Sweating this mess out of the system will take two years of zero growth or contraction," Morris wrote in his Thursday column. "We won't have a Great Depression, for the government will irrigate our economy with money. But we'll have stagnation, followed by inflation."

So the economic crisis likely will keep the most liberal man ever in the White House from indulging his anti-capitalism and unAmerican ideologies. A faltering economy should stop Obama from redistributing wealth and hiking our taxes for the massive money needed to make his envisioned socialist state a reality.

And that should buy time for the tattered conservative movement to mend and be reborn as an effective opposition party to recapture the support of right-minded America. So should Obama attempt to move the country too far left, that will only help reunite conservatives.

Not only that, but while Democrats tend not to learn from history, 1994's sting of being run out of power is fresh in many memories. So even though Obama has House and Senate majorities similar to what President Bill Clinton enjoyed, many Democrats -- including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- are anxious to avoid the same heavy-handed mistakes that previously swept them out of office.

"The country must be governed from the middle," Pelosi told reporters Wednesday. "You have to bring people together to reach consensus on solutions that are sustainable and acceptable to the American people."

That, too, if true, may also provide conservatives an opportunity to regroup. But who will lead the way? The hunt is on for the next Ronald Reagan, for Mr. Right. Or perhaps Mrs. Right?

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin looms as one of many people to influence Republican comeback strategy. Beloved by talk radio, she's a proven reformer who has successfully implemented conservative solutions to her state's problems.

Grover Norquist, a leading conservative and president of Americans for Tax Reform, called her "one of five or six people who is a plausible candidate for president in 2012," along with familiar names like Mike Huckabee, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The media, always wrong, will again urge us to move to the left and become more like the Democratic Party. However, Republicans win by running on President Ronald Reagan’s ideas and lose when we move left. Instead, let's hammer a stake through the hard heart of big-government Republicanism and quickly put that blood-sucking vilain to death.

“The conservative movement will rise again," promises Phyllis Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum. But the veteran conservative activist warns the movement needs to start over again -– from the beginning.

“The conservative movement knows how to rise from the ashes, and we need to pick up the pieces of the movement, which was so badly dismantled and put in disarray by the George W. Bush administration. But we can do it. And we’ve got to get started immediately,” she said.

Democrats expect Republicans to raise the white flag and admit that our principles of freedom, responsibility and smaller government no longer hold the answer to America's myriad problems. The guys in the black hats want us to abandon our principles, stand aside and give Obama and a Democratic-dominant Congress free rein.

That must not happen! And I don't think it will.

God's people, of course, must come to their senses. And quickly! Far too many were shamefully duped by the wolf in sheep's clothing, allowing Obama to lure away a significant number of "religious voters" who historically side with Republican presidential candidates. Exit polls show him winning a strong majority of both Catholic and Protestant Hispanics to go with nearly all black Protestants.

Remember this: Obama couldn't be more pro-abortion. This homosexual activist doesn't believe Jesus is the only way to eternal life or that those who reject Christ are headed for hell. What's worse, now that the President elect has fooled enough Christians to grab power as a false prophet, he will be coming after us to silence the truth we would speak against his ultra-liberal agenda for America.

Sen. John McCain's loss was NOT a defeat for conservatism. I believe McCain lost because he strayed far from the principles that made the old party grand.

The fight really has only just begun. God is still with us. This time, let's get it right!