LLS
It WOULD be simple, if the GOP was a radical action party like the Democrats.
But they are as far from that as can be, and now they're scared shitless to boot.
All 55 Democrat senators are radical leftists. Every single one.
Of the 45 GOP senators, maybe ten have actual conservative instincts.
The next two years will be a lot easier on your mental health if you think of the Senate being divided 90-10 instead of 55-45.
We have to go through the transformation that the Democrats finally accomplished after the Kerry 2004 loss, which was as incomprehensible to them as 2012 is to us.
They settled the question of "base vs. center" by going hard left and betting that the center would defer to the strong horse, and in that they were exactly correct.
The only two ways forward now are a move to the hard right or war (which may come down to the same thing, but we don't know that yet).
The reelection of John Boehner and Rence Preibius suggests that the necessary political evolution can't occur within the GOP, but a hard right political effort may disprove that.
The mantra for the future is "go right or go home". It worked for the RATs.