On Wednesday night, a miracle happened. Not only did the country avoid default on its debt and reopen the government at the same time, but it did so using something that has been unheard of in Washington pretty much since 2006. That is, Republicans and Democrats compromised in order to govern.

It was not at all something that people could have expected. Nor was it necessarily what had to happen. I personally was quite sure that the whole fight would end with Republicans being forced to abdicate on basically everything they wanted just to avoid the massive polling hemorrhage they’d inflicted on themselves. It would end, perhaps, with a reversal even of the sequester, as well as countless other concessions that would leave the GOP bloodied, disoriented and full of mutual recrimination. Barack Obama would have achieved his goal of breaking the Republican Party.

However, that is not what happened. In fact, it appears to be precisely the opposite of what happened. Rather, Republicans were able to extract concessions on income verification for Obamacare from the White House, while preserving that perennial sequester bugaboo to fight another day. The GOP walked away bloodied, yes, but it was the equivalent of forfeiting a football game when one’s team is down by a touchdown early in the season, rather than by 30 points in a playoff game. And while the shutdown was an unmitigated public relations disaster, there is a long time between now and November of next year for people to forget, and for the GOP to redeem itself.

And, in fact, while I regret that it took this much pain for this to happen, it does seem that the experience has taught Republicans some highly valuable lessons — lessons that will only help the next time this rodeo comes around, assuming they stick. Those are as follows.

By now, it has been observed countless times – by everyone from Karl Rove to Byron York – that the government shutdown provided Democrats with the perfect distraction at a time when the big story should have been the abject, embarrassing failure of Obamacare. Not only that, but it gave Democrats a scapegoat for the failures of Obamacare, which they could blame on the government being shut down: a non-sequitur, but a persuasive one to people who don’t know better.

Somewhere between the GOP scoring its lowest approval ratings in the history of the Gallup poll and the NBC/WSJ poll showing a dismal 24 percent favorable rating for the GOP nationwide, Republicans started to wake up to the fact that the 1995 shutdown was not a fluke of history, but emblematic of a much larger trend – that is, when one party is holding up the government being reopened with politically impossible demands, and the other is holding up the government being reopened by refusing those demands, Americans blame the people with unrealistic expectations.

Amusingly, one of the people who grasped this better than his colleagues was Ted Cruz, whose 21-hour filibuster was mostly a performance (one he gave with the explicit sanction of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), but who never actually cast a vote that could have stopped any serious legislation, in contrast with the House Republicans who dug in their heels even when the situation demanded cooler heads. Those who blame Cruz for the shutdown are making a mistake in this capacity, for while he undoubtedly inflamed passions in the House, ultimately, the forces that made House intransigence last came from the House itself, and from the pressures of local district politics, not from Cruz’s public presence.

Fortunately, the GOP learned this lesson in time to extract concessions, for, as remarked by George Will, the tide began to actually turn against the Democrats once they refused Susan Collins’ eminently moderate, extremely reasonable and not particularly demanding budget. At that point, the demand by Harry Reid, et al, that Republicans give everything while the Democrats not budge an inch transformed the Democrats into looking like the unreasonable party. The lesson, therefore, seems to be that no matter how annoying the base finds Republican moderates, they are useful for one purpose, and that is to act like the adults in the room when the Democrats think they can get away with being intransigent, because the GOP is being more intransigent. Collins’ offer of a deal completely wrong-footed the strident, overzealous Democrats, and it showed. After all, income verification — an idea proposed by Collins — ended up in the final deal.

Let’s not mince words: while the Senate deal is probably a better deal than Republicans had any right to expect, given their total absence of leverage, there is another plan that could have been better – the Boehner plan that was shot down by the House. Don’t take my word for it – even Pat Roberston said so on his show.

Painful though this was, it says something that, despite Boehner losing 62 percent of his caucus on a much worse deal hours later, he’s now arguably in a better position politically, if early reports are any guide.

In other words, this shutdown seems to have been the breaking point when trusting Boehner became politically acceptable. Certainly, the ferocious defense that Boehner received from the likes of Raul Labrador and Jim Jordan in the succeeding hours, not to mention the standing ovation he got from his caucus, suggest as much. And if Boehner can inspire loyalty in his caucus now, or command support from conservative leaders like Jordan and Labrador, who had previously voted against him as speaker, this might be worth the trouble in terms of discipline in the house.

This last lesson might inspire one or two “huh” moments, but bear with me. I’ll leave it to the Young Americans for Liberty to explain the history:

In March 1960, Clarence Manion—radio host and former dean of the Notre Dame Law School—arranged for the publication of Goldwater’s book Conscience of a Conservative, which debuted to wide acclaim. Young people devoured the book hungrily and contributed to the cause by organizing Youth for Goldwater for Vice President clubs. The drive received support from National Review, and the push was on to get Goldwater nominated for VP at the August GOP convention in Chicago. But it was not to be. Richard Nixon had already met with New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and had made a deal that liberal Republican Henry Cabot Lodge would be his running mate. Conservatives booed when the name was announced, leading Goldwater, in his speech to the convention to say, “let’s grow up, conservatives.” He urged his supporters to take back the GOP. Young conservatives did just that.

One point that is omitted from this bit of history? Goldwater threw his support behind Nixon and did everything he could to get him elected. The result? Goldwater was nominated four years later. And while he went down to a historic defeat, conservatives didn’t forget the lesson. Even if you lose by a huge margin, bide your time and wait for the right fight to come along, instead of trying to force things to happen before the right time. As Col. Prescott said at Bunker Hill, “hold your fire til you see the whites of their eyes.” Hopefully the impulse by conservatives today to treat such an order as an attempt to protect the enemy from fire, rather than to conserve ammo until its maximum effectiveness, has been wrung out of the party.

It badly needs to be, for the GOP stands on the precipice of what could be its last big shot at taking the Senate and earning a truly equal stake in governing the country. Its decision to cease permitting the press to treat them like the Vandals in the walls of Rome, and return to the task of governing, can only aid in that endeavor. One only hopes that this will be the last experiment of its kind this decade.

Or, barring that, at least until the next election cycle.

Featured Publications