Here's the reality:
Senate Republicans need at least six Democratic votes to break a filibuster, meaning they’ll have to compromise to pass Trade Promotion Authority, a No Child Left Behind rewrite, the 12 annual appropriations bills, a debt limit increase, a cybersecurity plan and a war powers resolution against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. But the House conservative opposition to those compromises could be enough to scuttle a bill if the liberal House Democratic Caucus refuses to lend support.
And that reality is sinking in:
Republicans on both sides of the Capitol were shaken at the party’s handling of the DHS funding dispute that led to a monthlong standoff, paralyzed the GOP agenda and prompted serious questions internally about whether their newfound majority can deliver anything significant over the next two years.
Said Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, "We have been at this for two months now, and we are already hung up in terms of not being able to govern." The big "question" answers itself. It's no longer a question of Republicans vs. Democrats, but one of Republicans vs. Republicans — and no, there is absolutely no way that the one conservative faction can ever get along with the immovable, uncompromising, pseudoconservative faction. It's like trying to mate a chimpanzee with a peacock. They're entirely different breeds.
At some unavoidable point, the Establishment will come to realize that the peacocks — the Cruzes and Gohmerts and, indeed, even the Reince Priebuses — are not only taking the party down, but must be jettisoned. The Democratic Party once swallowed the Populists whole and fin de siècle Progressives were absorbed by both major parties, all of which neutralized the insurgencies. In modern Republicanism's case, however, the insurgency is consuming its host, which would be plenty workable if the insurgents weren't ideological crackpots with all the national appeal of banner-carrying Bundists.
In short the Grand Old Party must find a way to cleanse and re-center itself, and that's just not possible with a top-heavy, unbalancing and imbalanced band of wingnuts hanging about. To put it even more briefly, the GOP must kick them out. It would be bloody, and the party would lose its majority hopes for some time to come, but otherwise, only wholesale destruction awaits the older guard.