The problem won't be the elected Republians if history is a guide. GOP won landslides in 1946 and 1994. It did what it campaigned to do in both cases. In both cases two things happened:
1. The Democratic President and his allies in the media demagogued the new majority and won in the minds of the public.
2. Some conservatives turned on the party because it did not do what it was incapable of doing. In the case of Truman that was overturn the New Deal. It could not be done because there was no wide public appetite to dump it all and the judicial revolution of 1937 and other judicial actions had enshrined it in Constitutional Law. In the case of Clinton, the complaint was the GOP should have tossed him out of office (impossible) and done more about Chinagate (Congress has limited police powers, Burton and others did all they could--hold hearings and get people under oath).
The GOP win of 1946 was reversed in 1948 and the '94 election was set back in '96 and almost reversed in '98 because of the above. If the GOP wins Congress, the burden will be on those who voted them in to ensure this doesn't happen again. That can be done by accepting limits on what is possible. The founders designed our system to be gunked up. It takes the sort of supermajority FDR and LBJ enjoyed for radical change ( in the normal course of events, this administration and congress is an exception as they are defying the will of the people). The other thing is countering every attack by the media (which will be relentless...worse than the very successful "Republicans are shutting down the Government at Christmas" and "Republicans are cutting school lunches and medicare to give tax cuts to the rich" campaigns the Democrats launched in 1995.)
Brilliant analysis. WORTH READING.
I will add this though - 1946 Congress did a lotof good, enough to fix our post WWII economy.
and 1994 Congress balanced the budget, restrained spending, reformed welfare, and cut some taxes.
They did good.
We do need to stop blaming Republicans for the fact that the media is biased and Democrats lie.