Democrats say they’ve successfully put the Republican majority at stake in 2014. | AP Photos House GOP gets nothing

If these last two weeks have proven anything, it’s that House Republicans haven’t yet mastered the art of using their majority.

Many House Republicans believe they’ve gained next to nothing from a two-week government shutdown and near debt default.


At the beginning of October, Republicans decided against funding the government to try to force Democrats to change Obamacare. Sixteen days later, it remains fully funded, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign a debt ceiling increase and extension of government funding without giving up a single thing.

( WATCH: Who won the shutdown? Top 5 quotes)

The data points are overwhelming. The party is wildly unpredictable, as was evident during this national roller-coaster ride. Even top figures in the House Republican universe can’t completely figure out what their 232-member conference thinks at any given moment. Outside groups still proved they hold outsized sway on Capitol Hill.

Despite tossing and turning for weeks, Republicans led by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) ended up extracting exactly no concessions from the Obama administration in the final deal that was heading for a vote Wednesday evening. Almost every time their leadership came up with a plan to redirect the debate, it was knocked down.

Despite a party-wide pledge to rebrand after the 2012 elections, House Republicans spent more than two weeks in a wrestling match while Democrats held firm. As the Obamacare rollout proved disastrous for much of this month, much of the media and nation’s focus remained on a shuttered government and loud protests on the National Mall.

( Also on POLITICO: Boehner taps House Dems)

Democrats now say they’ve successfully put Republican majority at stake in 2014, as the GOP’s numbers are in the cellar.

“Is there short-term damage? Yes,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said. “Is there long-term damage? We’ll see.”

Talk to House Republicans, and almost everyone agrees: the Senate-brokered deal to lift the debt ceiling and reopen government marks a big fat loss for them. Asked flatly if his party is using their majority, Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland said flatly, “no, we’re not.”

“You have to show courage,” he said. “We got 232 votes. Reid has 54. We’ve got the majority and the House is where all the spending bills are supposed to originate.”

It wasn’t all bad news for House Republicans. At many moments during this debate, they appeared unified in strategy and in tactics.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) urged them Wednesday afternoon to keep the fight up, and focus on what holds the party together, not what tears it apart. Boehner, Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) appear to have emerged from this fight with a massive well of internal capital. They fought a fight they didn’t pick, and saw it to its conclusion. Despite a pummeling in public polls, there appears to be no coup attempts brewing against any members of the leadership. Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), who many people believe to be influential conservatives, are publicly backing Boehner.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama's win)

The conventional wisdom is that Republicans learned from this fight, and won’t put their party through this again. But many of their members say the lesson they learned is President Barack Obama is not willing to negotiate, and repealing the Obamacare is a fantasy — for now. The majority of them are gearing up for another fight in a few weeks. Government funding runs dry again Jan. 15, the debt ceiling will be reached Feb. 7 and a budget conference has to report findings by Dec. 13.

“The lesson that we learned is our constituents are behind us,” Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said. “They’re very supportive of what we’re doing.”

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Fleming added, “The politicians up here who have been holding strong are people who are nearest to the people. More recently elected, not part of the media, glass-bubble echo chamber, and I think that the Republican Party has evolved into two groups: the old time establishment — highly-paid consultants who say that this is the way things are, and the way things should be, and they are not nearly in touch with our evolving constituency out there.”

Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) said these last two weeks “showed me we’re strongest when we’re unified.”

So what do Republicans get out of this fight? Lower spending levels dictated by the sequester, they say, and not a whole lot else.

The debt ceiling will be raised with no spending cuts — a complete reversal of Boehner’s 2011 promise to match a borrowing limit increase with reforms or cuts equal or greater to the amount of the hike. The government is funded with Obamacare fully funded.

“We did have sequestration — and it’s still the law of the land,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) said. “There is a mechanism in town for cutting the budget that has survived. Secondly, we’ve made it abundantly clear we don’t support Obamacare.”

In some corners — that is, among allies of top Republican leaders like Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy — anger is growing with conservatives inside and outside the Capitol.

Asked who won in these two weeks, Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) said “the people that managed to raise a lot of money off this.”

Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) said that there are many Republicans who “are less likely to go along with the fringe elements of our caucus.” Dent, who publicly pushed Republicans to end this battle last week, said he hopes: “Everybody has learned a lesson.”

“The lesson being to enact must-pass pieces of legislation, we’re going to need bipartisan coalitions in the House to get anything done on these major bills,” Dent said. “That has been the case all year, that is gonna be the case tonight, and it’s gonna be the case going forward. You might as well accept that reality and deal with it.”

The kicker? The budget conference committee that this bill created is expected to go nowhere. Major entitlement reforms look doubtful in the near future.

“I don’t think we can count on the president engaging on the entitlement reforms we hope for,” Brady said. “In the future, the next debt ceiling will be equally difficult. Which is unfortunate because we really need to get out of this cycle of crises.”