Ok:
http://www.slate.com/...
The Republican party won a resounding victory in this week’s elections, even though the majority of Americans appear to disagree with its policy positions. There are reasonable explanations for this. Voters reliably turn against the president’s party during midterms, and Obama’s approval ratings have been in the pits. Turnout was especially low this year and dominated by older whites who tend to be conservative. Much of the country went to the polls to register nebulous anger at the White House rather than their specific feelings about federal spending.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a member of the Tea Party class of 2010 who has become one of the GOP’s more high-profile policy minds, has written a Republican to-do for the Federalist that vaguely seems to recognize this reality. The “party establishment and consultant class chose to de-emphasize Republican policy alternatives during the campaign,” Lee writes. “So despite that strategy’s apparent success Tuesday night, our new majority cannot claim a sweeping legislative mandate."
Modesty! Coming from a man who was largely responsible for the government shutdown, no less. Maybe Washington isn’t heading for another two years of hellish gridlock after all. - Slate, 11/6/14
Sounds like he's being rational now but don't kid yourself. His three main goals are still balance the budget within ten years, never raise taxes and repeal Obamacare. So really they're just going to keep on doing what they've always been doing: not governing. Plus here's another example of how Lee's plan is destined to fail to get anything done:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/...
Lee's answer is a simple five-step plan to fix Congress. It's just a whopping 4,274 words long. We took the liberty of reading this behemoth on your behalf, and condensed it into six sentences:
Get the public to trust Congress by cutting out "cliff" crises, secret negotiations, and procedural manipulation to block debate. Become the party of the middle class by passing anti-cronyism legislation. Get establishment Republicans and tea-party conservatives to actually agree on something. Fix federal programs before funding them. Paul Ryan-ize congressional committees so they propose at least one major policy overhaul each year, a la "A Roadmap for America's Future." Assume Obamacare dead.
It's an ambitious plan, one that reads like a legislative agenda at one turn and The New York Times' innovation report at another. Just try to make it through this sentence without feeling #disrupted: "Leaders should embrace a more open-source strategy development model that includes everyone on the front end to avoid confusion, suspicion, and division on the back end."
Achieving an "open-source strategy" within the party may prove to be the most difficult of Lee's steps. But it's the one Republicans must prioritize if they want to present a united front. The midterm elections sweep has temporarily masked the party's deep divisions. The GOP stood together, and, at least for a while, the words "tea party" were barely uttered amidst near-giddy remarks by House Speaker John Boehner and future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But after the confetti clears and the legislating eventually (hopefully) begins, differences between establishment and tea-party conservatives are bound to resurface, as they did during budget talks last winter.
But whether establishment or tea party, no Republican plan for Congress would be complete without a not-so-subtle hint about 2016. For Lee, that came about 500 words in: "The 2016 presidential primary campaign may include several Republican senators, whose incentives for differentiation in a crowded field will make internal politics even harder to predict or control." - National Journal, 11/6/14
Looking forward to the next two years of this? Didn't think so.