A friend on the WELL passed along this paragraph from an essay in today’s Washington Times (“Hope and change in a magic tea pot” by Wesley Pruden, page A4; the piece isn’t in the online edition):

But this time, the Republicans and other conservatives did not flinch, their spines stiffened by courage taken from the tea pot. Washington hasn’t seen a panic like this since Beauregard sent the Federal army scrambling back to Washington from Manassas battlefield in the summer of ’61. This was the change we’ve been hoping for.