WASHINGTON _ Republicans have controlled Washington town for seven months. They have virtually nothing to show for it.
Returning home this week to face voters for the first time since Republican leaders failed to get an Affordable Care Act repeal through a Senate where it has a majority, members of Congress are struggling for a message that they can spin as a win.
"No party can remain in power by lying to the American people," said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, before leaving the Capitol for a trip home. "They're going to have to answer hard questions of people who look them in the eyes and say, 'Why did you lie to me?'"
Republicans control both the White House and Congress for the first time in 10 years. And historically, a new president uses his mandate to get a major initiative passed by the August recess.
Not this year. Instead, the paucity of political victories spells danger in the 2018 and 2020 elections for the party that promised over and over to repeal the health care law, get the government out of people's lives and significantly cut spending and taxes.
The collapse of the health care effort, scuttled when three Republicans joined 46 Democrats and two independents to defeat the latest repeal version, was the most glaring, embarrassing example of how the party could get nothing big done.
Republicans now face a huge political dilemma. They have to choose between answering the call from the base and returning to the heavy if not impossible lift of remaking the nation's health care system _ or working with party moderates and Democrats on shoring up insurance markets in danger of cratering in some states.
Collaborating with the political enemy will be a tough sell to the Republican Party's conservative base. But working with only conservatives will probably mean into another intractable health care war.
Instead, many conservatives want to look ahead to overhauling the tax code, and fast. But doing so is a complex process that historically has taken years, and probably can't be done without Democrats.
And it will be up against a conservative base that's not going to stop demanding repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said that while expects tax cuts to become the party priority, it must return to health care.
"The people are not going to let this go," Kaufmann said. "You saw the anger that led to the election of Donald Trump. They've not done a thing to make that anger subside. Indeed, they've thrown gas on the fire."
The tea party movement, which was largely responsible for Republicans winning control of the House in 2010, feels the same way. Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin insisted that the health care debacle was "failure only for this week" and urged the Senate leadership to take a harder stance against the holdouts.
"It is time to 'crush' the moderates and 'punch them in the nose,'" she said.
But the three senators who cast "no" votes Friday are highly unlikely to respond to threats: Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is popular in her state and said to be interested in running for governor; Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ran as a write-in candidate and against the Republican establishment in 2010 and won; and Sen. John McCain of Arizona cherishes his status as a party maverick.
