With the U.S. fiscal crisis over — for now — Republican lawmakers say they won't push the country to the edge again. The pledge comes amid polls suggesting the budget impasse, the partial government shutdown and the standoff over the debt ceiling have negatively affected Americans' opinion of the GOP. The plummeting popularity numbers have, in turn, revealed deep new fault lines within the party.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told The Hill that he would not allow the GOP's desire to do away with the Affordable Care Act to result in another shutdown.

"One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there's no education in the second kick of a mule," McConnell said. "The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid-1990s and the second kick was over the last 16 days."

"There will not be a government shutdown," he added.

McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., worked to ink the deal to fund the federal government through Jan. 15, 2014, and raise the borrowing limit until Feb. 7.

The Senate passed the bill Wednesday, night and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who had been wrestling with a restive Republican caucus during the shutdown, allowed it to come to a vote just hours before the country was to hit its borrowing limit.

WATCH: Could the post-shutdown GOP change its tactics?

Economists and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said during the shutdown that missing the deadline would have catastrophic effects on the U.S. economy. Some tea party representatives disagreed with their predictions.

McConnell scolded the tea party for backing a shutdown to advance political goals.

"I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is," he said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., echoed McConnell's view Thursday.

"The real losers were the American people," McCain told CNN.

"We're not going to through the shutdown again because people have been too traumatized by it. There's too much damage. We tried this back in 1995, had the same the result, and we waited a long time before we tried this again. So I don't think there's that danger again, and that's what most people are worried about."

In 1995 and 1996, two government shutdowns lead by House Republicans under then–House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia did not result in a political win for his party. Democratic President Bill Clinton won a second term in November of 1996, while the GOP lost eight seats in the House.