The current Republican passivity on policy ill serves the party’s objectives after 2014 as well. If Republicans take the Senate as well as the House, they will need to send popular conservative legislation to Obama — ideally to be signed, but more likely to be vetoed. That legislation will be taken up by the Republican presidential nominee, and those vetoes will serve to set up the 2016-election contrast. If Republicans do well in 2016, they will also set up the governing agenda for 2017.

If they do not think through and advance conservative ideas now, though, they will not know what to do in the event that they have control of Capitol Hill — and will instead react to ill-considered proposals from their allies and opponents alike, and hand Democrats opportunities of their own.

There is no point to Republicans’ setting any goal lower than the creation of a new majority that will govern more constructively, and more conservatively, than the last Republican majority did. Republicans ought to start building the case for conservative governance of our country now, this spring, today.