Republicans seemed bitter that the State of the Union Address wasn’t some kowtow by Obama, crying in his cups about the Republican Party’s success in the midterm elections.  But now that they control Congress, they don’t seem to know what to do.  This is a party that gets its energy from the rage machine, not from leadership. .At the Plum Line, Paul Waldman sums it up this way:

Ironically, the Republicans had a lot more power when they were in the minority than they do now. With a Democratic Congress, the administration set out an ambitious legislative agenda, which Republicans were able to obstruct and subvert as long as they stayed unified, which they did very well. But once they took control, the administration all but gave up on legislating (apart from unavoidable tasks like passing budgets to keep the government open), which leaves Republicans with no fights to wage apart from the meaningless ones they manage to concoct on their own. And they can’t even figure out how to win those. Winning Congress has put Republicans in a position where they have little choice other than to make things worse.