W e had two Christmas miracles this year. The first was that Kevin was there to celebrate his favorite holiday. After a random blood test last summer, my brother learned that he had a 20.3-centimeter malignant tumor in his kidney, struggling to burst out like the creature in "Alien."

With the guidance of the saintly Dr. Jerry Groopman, and the brilliance of the Sloan-Kettering surgical team – the exuberantly blunt Paul Russo, the mystically serene Manjit Bains and the calmly proficient Gerald Soff – Kevin survived to enjoy Christmas with his wife, Ellen, his three sons and his 15 creches.

I knew my favorite conservative was really sick when he stopped railing against the vast left-wing conspiracy. And I knew he was really well when he said he was ready to write his annual column.

Here's his political plum pudding:

It's time for some sense and sensibility. With a field of nine candidates, the Republican product is too diluted. That's the reason the polls have been so fluid. There are only two candidates with a chance to win the nomination: Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The rest are sincere, nice people who "can't light the candle," as someone said of John Connally in 1980. You are excused.

There's only one who can beat Barack Obama. Romney was a governor and a businessman, and we will need that kind of expertise to pull us out of the president's famous ditch. Newt is too volatile and has too much baggage.

In October, I joked that the Republicans should suspend their campaigns since the president was sinking so fast on his own. I thought David Axelrod was on the verge of urging the president to give a Jimmy Carter malaise speech.

Scheduling 16 major debates in states that thirst to be first was an unforced error by the GOP. I kept waiting to see Kim Kardashian and Paula Abdul as moderators with Lady Gaga performing at halftime. Trust me, everything you need to know from the candidates can fit into four debates. What genius decided to take the focus away from the president and his dismal record? (I know the threshold for genius has been lowered. I have heard both Paul Begala and Tim Geithner called geniuses).

First of all, the Republican primary voter will not decide the general election. The independent voters, who deserted the Democrats in droves in the midterm elections and are poised to do so again, will be the determining factor. Republicans should be focused on who can win the general election, not who has the most muscular conservative DNA.

Second, let's get the conversation back to the president and his job performance. It will be easy to benchmark since he left office after two years and nine months to campaign full time for the same job but this time as the Republican populist Teddy Roosevelt.

Third, in a game of chess, you do not try to capture the king on every move. You accumulate smaller victories with other pieces until the king is defenseless. The House voting down the payroll tax cut after Obama would have been forced to show his hand on the XL oil pipeline was a mistake. If you see the president's approval rating going up, blame the Republican strategy.

The tea party has many strong points: fiscal sanity, orderly demonstrations and a penchant for cleanliness that the Occupy Wall Street group should try to emulate. But they must understand they are part of the Republican defense against the president. They cannot run around like the Knights Templar ready to die for their ideals. They compared themselves to the soldiers in "Braveheart."

Did any of them see the end of that movie? I recommend they watch "Patton" and adopt his credo, "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

There are still plenty of things to be grateful for this holiday season: Nancy Pelosi breaking new ground with her befuddled appearance on "60 Minutes"; Eric Holder threatening to bring suit against states requiring a photo ID to vote (maybe we can text in unlimited votes like "American Idol"); Vice President Joe Biden suggesting in 2009 that Jon Corzine should be the president's go-to guy to get us out of the ditch (I guess Bernie Madoff wasn't available) and contending that the Taliban is not our enemy; Jay Carney growing nearly as annoying as Robert Gibbs.

A lot is at stake in the next election: the Supreme Court, federal regulations on business, the American way of life. We should look at Europe (which the president so greatly admires) and ask if we want that to happen to us. In five years, it will be too late. If you think you're better off now than you were four years ago, be sure to order "La Dolce Vita" and "The Fall of the Roman Empire" from Netflix.

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Maureen Dowd writes for the NewYork Times.

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