At my age, I've long ago tempered my native optimism with the realism that comes from experience, so while I'm hopeful that the growing consensus about a prospective Republican majority in both the House and the Senate is accurate, I'm not holding my breath.

Nevertheless, I am pleased with what is going on in the Republican party.

Usually the up elevator attracts 'the entourage'--those useless, flattering sycophants who cluster around the good fortune of others. We saw a lot of that with the Democrats in 2006 and 2008--easily controlled people who could be entrusted with a senate or congressional seat. They vote the way the leadership tells them too, and if it goes wrong? Well, they were always disposable anyways.

Its not a partisan thing either--lots of hacks got seats at the table during the 1994 Republican revolution. Yet, that isn't the case this year thanks to the Tea Party movement, which decided that voters, and not officials, would decide who would get the nomination. Some pretty unlikely, and according to the liberal-left media, 'unacceptable' people are running for office this November, and that's a good thing because they won't be in hock to Mitch McConnell, but rather their honest-to-God constituents.

I could actually see myself registering as a Republican for this and one other reason. When you see a dark face in the Republican party, its not because someone thought it would look good with the drapes, but because they earned it

Haley, whose early campaign strategy was exuberantly indiscriminate ("go anywhere and talk to anybody") won the nomination by defeating the lieutenant governor, attorney general and a congressman.

If elected, she will be the second Indian-American Republican governor in Dixie, joining Louisiana's Bobby Jindal. Tunku Varadarajan of Stanford's Hoover Institution and NYU's Stern School of Business suggests why they have risen in the GOP while no Indian-American has comparably risen in the Democratic Party:

"Could it be that because Democrats put more of an emphasis on identity politics, an Indian-American Democrat would have to contend with other ethnic constituencies that might think that it's 'their turn' first? And once you go down the 'identity' route, your success as a politician tends to rest more on the weight of numbers -- the size of your ethnic constituency, or your racial voting bloc -- than on the weight of your ideas."

Because of his ideas, Tim Scott, 44, an African-American Republican, will be elected the new congressman from the heavily Republican -- and 72.8 percent white -- 1st District. It includes Charleston, the cradle of secession, in whose harbor sits Fort Sumter. Scott won the nomination by handily defeating (68 percent to 32 percent) Paul Thurmond -- son of Strom, the Dixiecrat presidential candidate in 1948 and eight-term US senator.

In 1995, he became the first black Republican elected to any South Carolina office (Charleston County Council) since Reconstruction, and in 2008 he became the first black Republican since Reconstruction elected to the state House of Representatives. His Web site stresses economics: "Tim has never voted for a tax increase" and "Tim was heavily involved in bringing Boeing to the Charleston area."

With all the crap that we have to contend with, and will have to contend with for years to come, its refreshing to see the American spirit being renewed and a pleasure to contemplate what it means for the future. All those people counting out the U.S.A. might want to hedge that bet...again.