THE pact between Republicans in Congress and the president always looked more than a bit Faustian. Many Republican lawmakers decided to cheerlead for a president who won the nomination by running against their party, in the expectation that he would then help them pass the laws they wanted. They were misinformed. The collapse of health-care legislation has shown that, despite his boasts, the president is hardly a master-dealmaker who can help Republicans get bills through Congress. The defenestration of Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer and the short-lived Anthony Scaramucci shows that he also has a habit of rewarding even his most loyal defenders with public humiliation. This pact is indeed like Faust’s—but without the enjoyable moments of omnipotence before the reckoning falls due. It is past time for Republicans in Congress to strike a new one.

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There are signs that this is happening. After the failure of health-care reform, blocked by a trio of independently minded Republican senators, some Republican legislators have offered to work with Democrats to shore up the Affordable Care Act. Incremental improvements to Obamacare are far more likely to succeed in making Americans healthier than scrapping it and starting afresh.

If Congress can avoid a government shutdown, by approving a budget in September, tax reform will be next on the agenda. Here, Democrats have signalled that they may be willing to work with Republicans on a bill to get rid of tax breaks while lowering rates and containing the budget deficit.

That is partly for show. However, there is bipartisan agreement on the need to reduce the corporate-tax rate, which at 35% is among the highest in the rich world, though disagreement about how far the rate should come down. This is an area where a Congress that functioned properly would find a compromise on its own and send a bill to the president, rather than expecting the White House to cut a deal on its behalf. The aim of any bill should be a proper reform, rather than an unfunded tax cut, hard as that will be (see article). Regrettably, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has so far rebuffed advances from the other side of the aisle.

Perhaps Mr McConnell is hoping that Mr Priebus’s successor as chief-of-staff will bring some order to the Trump White House. A former general, John Kelly started well by using his first day to fire the bloviating Mr Scaramucci. Yet he must still cope with the man in the Oval Office who, throughout his business career, has made conflict and infighting a way of life. More likely is that the turbulence will continue and that an angry president will set Republicans in Congress the kind of unreasonable loyalty test he often imposes on his staff. That would be the moment when the Republican Party must show that it stands for more than winning elections.

If Jeff Sessions is sacked, or shunted aside from his job as attorney-general, it will be because the president wants someone in the job who has not recused himself from the investigation into Russian election-meddling, and therefore has the authority to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel who heads it. Plenty of Republicans think there is no fire to go with the smoke that emanates from the White House each time some new meeting or e-mail exchange regarding Russia comes to light. Even so, they should recognise that in America the president must not be above the law; he cannot simply halt independent investigations that he does not like.

In Washington being bipartisan is risky and deeply unfashionable. But it is what the country urgently needs.