Over at RealClearPolitics, liberal Bill Scher has some advice for the GOP for how they can grow their majority. Like most of these insipid pieces from liberals, it helpfully suggests that Republicans will have much more success if they ignore demands from their base about… well, basically everything. It’s always precious when a member of the party who just got trounced offers advice to the victors about what sorts of strategies and tactics they should adopt to not get trounced themselves.

The problem in this case is that the Congressional GOP seems to have been listening to the advice of Scher or at least people like him. As literally anyone could have predicted (and as we predicted here numerous times), the Congressional GOP has already signaled its intent to pre-emptively fold on Obama’s executive amnesty, even though they swore up and down they were going to fight this thing tooth and nail once they had control of Congress. The GOP’s cowardly capitulation on a popular abortion bill on the eve of the March for Life has also been well documented. And that is to say nothing of [mc_name name=’Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’H001061′ ]’s embarrassing own goal on climate change with respect to the Keystone Pipeline bill.

We’re about two minutes into the new Congress and already the tactics of GOP leadership are clear: keep their heads down. Avoid any controversial votes. Throw some red meat to the base without risking any votes that could actually put them on the record or stop Obama from accomplishing everything he wants to accomplish. Pull any controversial votes that look like they might pass. Let Obama take the blame for a bunch of stuff that they frankly want to happen anyway.

All this having been accomplished, they will then come back to us in 2016, shrug their shoulders, put on their best “aw, shucks” grin and say, “Well, not a lot we could have done with that crazy Obama in the White House, now give us some more money and send us some more [mc_name name=’Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’E000291′ ]es back to Congress!”

The Republicans in Congress think they can grow their majority – just for the sake of having a bigger one, not for the sake of doing anything with it, mind you – by being afraid and by trying to foster that fear among the base. What they clearly don’t do, or at least don’t do enough, is fear the voters they need to have any chance of winning. They are, by temperament, cowards. And the only way you can succeed with a coward is to make him more afraid of you than the other guy.