It was going to be their big chance – the opportunity to get things done, prove they could govern and tighten the reins on President Barack Obama. With historic majorities in Congress, Republicans were perfectly poised to rebrand themselves as the sober legislators ahead of the 2016 elections.

“Serious adults are in charge here, and we intend to make progress,” new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in January.

More than two months in, the GOP has been troubled by internal fissures, an emboldened president and what has been roundly decried as bad judgment, at best, in weighing in on sensitive foreign policy matters. The majority agenda has been thwarted in the Senate by Democrats who (after complaining about filibuster abuse when they had control) have largely stuck together in holding up GOP legislation. In the House, where the rules overwhelmingly favor the majority party, leaving the minority to merely make opposing speeches on the floor, the Democrats have exploited GOP divisions to exert astonishing influence.

And behavior by individual members hasn’t helped the storyline: just months after New York Republican Michael Grimm resigned his House seat after pleading guilty to a felony tax violation, the once up-and-coming Rep. Aaron Schock, an Illinois Republican, announced he would resign effective March 31, in the wake of ethics questions about his spending.

“They’ve been there [in the dual majority] less than three months, and they’ve made such strategic errors, you just want to shake your head,” says Peter Fenn, a Democratic consultant. “It’s the gang who couldn’t shoot straight – too cute by half.”

Right out of the gate, the GOP stumbled in both chambers in its efforts to thwart Obama's executive action on immigration. In the House, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, managed to pass a bill that funded the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of the fiscal year, but with a provision undoing Obama’s executive action. Senate Republicans tried to pass the same thing, but were stopped by repeated Democratic filibusters. McConnell, unwilling to let his party be blamed for failing to fund homeland security during an especially vulnerable time, agreed to allow a clean bill before the full Senate. Boehner tried to get more time, but could not get enough GOP support to extend funding for three weeks so the two chambers could negotiate further. Finally, the House approved a clean DHS bill, but only because every Democrat present voted for the bill – putting Boehner in debt to Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and raising more questions about his influence over his own caucus.

Republicans tried again on foreign policy, starting with Boehner’s invite to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress – an offer Boehner made without so much as a call to the White House. Boehner and his caucus were criticized for the breach in protocol. Soon afterward, 47 Republican senators signed an open letter to Iran’s leaders, warning them that any deal being negotiated to control their nuclear ambitions could be undone by the next president or amended by Congress. That letter earned widespread condemnation from newspaper editorial boards, the White House and even the Iranian government itself.

And domestic issues continue to divide the GOP caucus, with the tea party wing and other conservatives balking at budget proposals by GOP leaders. House Republicans released a budget outline this month that had the usual conservative wish list: undoing of the Affordable Care Act, $5.5 trillion in spending cuts and a balanced budget in about a decade. The plan has come under fire on a number of fronts, some of them involving basic math: For example, it includes savings predicted under the Affordable Care Act even as it eliminates the law, and the plan does not itemize many spending cuts. Democrats, unsurprisingly, say the cuts are too deep. But the GOP authors of the proposal got pushback from within their own party, and Boehner barely managed to get the budget passed by the House, despite a strong GOP majority.

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The budget maintains the “sequestration” cuts in defense, keeping it at $523 billion, $38 billion less than what the Obama administration proposed. The plan adds cash to something called the Overseas Contingency Operations fund, which has been used to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But budget and defense hawks alike say the idea shortchanges national security while playing games with the budget.

“I’m going to struggle with it,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., said before the vote. “You can’t just wave a magic wand and say [Overseas Contingency Fund] is going to solve all our problems.”

Senate Republicans, too, including South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, have said it’s simply not the right time to be sacrificing national security in the name of budget-cutting. Still, the GOP managed to pass a plan closely aligned with the House version early Friday morning in a near party-line vote, setting the stage for the two chambers to negotiate a final spending plan next month.

The House budget also calls for a partial privatization of Medicare – a step the Senate skipped – and both chambers included a block-granting of the Medicaid program. The Medicare plan puts GOP senators up for re-election next year in a difficult position, since no incumbent wants to alienate the senior vote.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, however, says tough choices will need to be made to control entitlement spending.

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“When you run for office ... you don’t get to dodge votes,” Barton says. “Any Republican senator running for re-election should be able to defend his or her vote.”

The GOP strife has put Democrats in a paradoxically strong position: They have been able to stand united in the Senate, blocking GOP agenda items, while forcing House Republican leadership to come begging for votes from the other side. Boehner quietly worked with Pelosi, for example, on a longer-term “doc fix,” Congress-speak for legislation the House and Senate have had to pass repeatedly to keep doctors from suffering severe cuts in payments for Medicare patients. The bill passed easily Thursday, with 33 Republicans voting against it and 180 Democrats voting in favor. Those Democratic votes provided the margin of passage (and then some).

“I think it’s fantastic,” Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said before the vote. “It shows [Boehner] is proactively reaching out” to the other side of the aisle, and that “Pelosi is an honest partner. She wants to get the job done.”

And Senate Democrats see an opening, too, in the GOP’s divisions.

“When Republicans are divided, they need us to get things done. They’re learning they can’t do it solo,” says Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “We can do a lot of great things together if the tea party weren’t pulling them so far to the right.”