Conservative voters gave Republican politicians their best Christmas in at least half a century, conferring majorities at nearly all levels of government. Now, what will the politicians give the voters in return?

President Bush says he wants to spend the "political capital" he earned in the election to advance his agenda. Let's take a peek at what the leading priorities should be for 2005.

Reining in judicial supremacists who have been legislating from the bench to remake our culture should top the list. Bush campaigned against such judicial mischief, and we expect him and the 55-44 Republican majority in the Senate to deliver on those promises.

We expect Bush to use the Supreme Court litmus test he announced in his St. Louis debate, i.e., that he "wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words 'under God' in it." Bush's constituency will not accept another mistake like Justice David Souter, whose lack of a paper trail made him vulnerable to capture by judicial activists.

The voters are beginning to flex their muscles on cultural and patriotic issues. After the school superintendent in Mustang, Okla., removed a Nativity scene from an elementary school Christmas program, the voters punished the school by rejecting two bond issues.

By significant majorities in 2004, the House of Representatives passed two excellent and long-needed bills to end judicial supremacy on the Pledge of Allegiance (the Akin bill) and the Defense of Marriage Act (the Hostettler bill). It should be the first priority for the enhanced Republican Senate majority to introduce and pass these bills.

The Nov. 2 election proved that defense of marriage is more popular than George W. Bush. In 10 of the 11 states (all except the very pro-Bush Utah) that passed marriage amendments, the marriage amendment received more votes than President Bush.

Of course, conservatives expect Congress to stop the runaway federal spending that plagued George W. Bush's first administration. It's the job of the House of Representatives to reduce the bloated federal budget and to stop funding institutions that spend our money to oppose American values.

After Big Media, U.S. colleges and universities are the biggest enemies of the values of red-state Americans. Of course, Congress can't order colleges what to teach or to fire their tenured Marxist professors, but the universities are among the biggest recipients of federal handouts and the power of the purse carries strings.

Judicial supremacists recently nullified the Solomon Amendment, which requires universities that take taxpayers' money to allow equal access on their campuses to military recruiters. The congressional response in 2005 should be to slice out of the federal budget those universities that exclude the military - and then watch those parasites beg to be reinstated. Continued...