OK, so if our Republican brothers and sisters could finish up their victory lap and have a seat, I’d appreciate it.  We need to talk.  Seriously, put down the champagne and get that young lady on the chandelier to come down.

Yesterday, you did good.  You took back the Senate, widened your majority in the House, and took a bunch of governor’s mansions away from the Democrats.  Congratulations.

But please keep this in mind:  A two to six vote majority isn’t a mandate, and you don’t have a big enough majority in either chamber to override a presidential veto.  Please act accordingly.

What this means is that anything you do to stick your thumb in the President’s eye for the next two years is going to be symbolic, at best.  Yes, you can pass bills every other Thursday repealing Obamacare, and he can veto them every other Friday.  So, get that out of your systems, go through the kabuki dance of “Hey, we tried, and the big meanie up the street messed everything up”, and then get on with the people’s business.

The first thing that ought to be on your plate come January is to pass a budget.  Not another continuing resolution, a budget.  We’ve gone far too long with the drama of the money running out because you all can’t do the one thing that the Constitution says you have to do, and I, for one, am sick of it.  Get the administration to make a commitment on what it wants and what it needs, craft budget resolutions, and then get them passed through both houses. Make the President to commit one way or another with his veto.  For the good of the country, I ask that you make this as ideologically neutral as possible.

The time for sticking it to the President will come.  It will come with joint commissions to look into Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS, the NSA, and whatever else you want to work on.  It will come with the inevitable nominations for judges, cabinet secretaries, and Supreme Court justices.  It will come as you build a base of support, both in your party’s electorate and in that big squishy middle that gave you your majorities.

That last one is what your goal for the next two years should be, because if you go off the deep end and do something incredibly stupid, we will lose in 2016.  I have no doubt that government shutdowns and impeachment would whip up the base quite a bit for about six weeks, but you have 104 weeks to worry about.  Grandstand a bit, put somebody more photogenic and well-spoken than Mitch McConnell in front of the cameras, but don’t take your eyes off of the goal of putting a conservative in the White House.

Once that’s done, we can talk about repealing ObamaCare and all of the other things you want to do.  For now, remember why we put you back into power:  to keep the President from doing further damage to the country, to recover lost ground where feasible, and to lay the base for further victories in 2016.

What you have been given can and will evaporate in 2016 if the opposition can goad you into doing something stupid in the next 24 months, and if that happens, you will have nobody to blame but yourself. I hope you all remember that, because we will be watching and we won’t forget.

Remember, remember,
The 4th of November
Midterm election night
I know of no reason
Short of RINO treason
Why we should give up the fight!