Why 2014 may be as good as it gets for the Republican Party

It looks increasingly likely that the Republican Party will win a slim majority in the Senate in the 2014 midterms, completing a takeover of Congress that began with the GOP's 2010 landslide takeover of the House. As Jonathan Chait has written, the 2010 midterms were the "greatest disaster" of Obama's presidency, introducing a reactionary, uncompromising power center in the capital that scuttled his entire legislative agenda. With a GOP-controlled Senate, the Republican Party's years-long campaign to create a congressional bulwark to Obama's policies would finally be completed.

But the GOP may find the rewards of victory to be fleeting. For as soon as the midterms end, the 2016 presidential campaign will begin in earnest — presenting Republicans with the prospect of losing their Senate majority a mere two years later.

The conventional wisdom is that Democrats in 2014 are suffering from a lack of enthusiasm among base voters. With no Obama-like figure at the top of the ticket, it's hard for the Democratic Party to exploit its natural demographic advantages and marshal the kind of turnout that helped Obama handily defeat Mitt Romney in 2012. Combine that with the fact that Senate Democrats are defending more seats than Senate Republicans, and you have a recipe for the upper chamber to flip.

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But this dynamic will be turned on its head come 2016, particularly if Hillary Clinton decides to run. Clinton is the kind of blockbuster politician who helps lesser lights down the ticket. And Senate Republicans are expected to defend far more seats (24) than Senate Democrats (10). Due to gerrymandering, winning the House is another matter — a tough, if not impossible, task for Democrats — but 2016 could very well see the government return to the pre-2014 status quo.

Of course, this scenario presumes that Hillary Clinton will trounce her Republican opponent in 2016. But everything so far points to Democrats repeating their 2012 performance. The demographic trend lines keep going in their favor: more millennials, more minorities, fewer aging whites. Meanwhile, outside a relatively small band of so-called reformicons, the GOP has mostly refused to moderate on big issues like gay marriage and immigration.

Republicans are starting to win back the trust of voters on the economy and national security, but these polls could easily be interpreted as general weariness with the Obama administration, not an endorsement of positions (lower taxes for the wealthy, a more militarily active foreign policy) that Republican presidential candidates have lost on in recent memory.

It's also not hard to imagine a Republican-controlled Senate backfiring on the party, resulting in even more losses come 2016. As Brian Beutler has noted at The New Republic, GOP leaders will be under immense pressure to confront the White House with the base's maximalist agenda, which could mean more government shutdowns, debt defaults, and dysfunction. At the very least, it will mean headaches for a party that has struggled to keep its fire-breathers in check:

Now, there is a way that Republicans could expand their majorities in Congress, all while boosting the hopes of their future presidential candidates and sending Democrats into true disarray. It would involve cutting deals on tax reform, immigration, and income inequality. It would entail working with President Obama, instead of passing the umpteenth bill to repeal ObamaCare. And it would involve dropping a strategy of total opposition that has served the GOP reasonably well to this point, blocking a nice chunk of Obama's agenda and, come November, possibly leaving the party just one governing branch short of meaningful power.

Barring that unlikely turn, Republicans would be well advised to really enjoy the spoils of their efforts this midterm season. Because that may be as good as it gets for a long time to come.