You're on your own, Mitch.
After 2012, they conducted an "autopsy" and said they would reach out to someone other than white males. After 2014, they were going to prove they could govern. That's all gone to hell in a handbasket with GOP front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson stoking anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim fears, Jeb! Bush prattling on about "
free stuff," and John Boehner choosing exile over communing with a rabidly ungovernable House majority, writes
Manu Raju:
"It's tough enough to win elections by offending every demographic group that we can identify," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona "What we've seen in prior elections is, you could say until you're blue in the face: 'That's not my view.' But if the head of the ticket, or those running for the head of the ticket, are espousing that view -- it hurts. It really does." [...]
Despite the largest House Republican Conference since 1928 and an eight-seat Senate majority, Congress is just as divided and gridlocked as it was when the GOP only held the House and Democrats ruled the Senate.
Those differences will become more pronounced with new House leadership eager to take on President Barack Obama and their Senate counterparts, setting up high-profile fiscal showdowns over the debt limit and budget.
"This is a manage-by-crisis town," said Sen. Steve Daines, a freshman Republican and former congressman from Montana. "We've got to get out of this cycle."
Some GOP optimists are hypothesizing that the chaos is coming "early enough" that it won't hurt them in 2016, but the fun has just begun, methinks. Even if they find a way out of their current manufactured shutdown fight, the debt ceiling and a long-term funding bill loom. Not to mention what could be a GOP nomination fight for the ages.