Republicans are justified in their excitement about big electoral wins — a wave — one month ago. But Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center urges caution as the GOP attempts to build on those victories. He explains why in an article for the latest print edition of National Review.

The 2014 GOP tsunami is the fourth time since World War II that Republicans have picked up control of at least one house of Congress in what can be called a midterm “wave election.” In each previous case—1946, 1994, 2010—a Democrat held the White House and Republicans thought the wave presaged his subsequent defeat. Each time, however, the Democrat won reelection relatively easily.

Conservatives who want to prevent history from repeating itself with yet another Democratic victory should learn from these failures. In each case, conservative overreach and establishment complacency combined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. …

… Republicans have failed to capitalize on their midterm waves because each wing of the party has misinterpreted the voters’ verdict. Midterm waves are primarily negative verdicts. Voters are unhappy with what they see and they want it to stop.

The conservative wing of the party, however, tends to interpret such victories as positive endorsements of a new direction. It presumes that voters who two years ago voted for the Democratic incumbent but are unhappy with what they have seen since then will now endorse policies that they have already rejected. Going too far too fast, the conservatives cause new supporters to reconsider their allegiance, thereby setting up the Democratic nominee to pose as the defender of a comfortable status quo.

The establishment wing makes the opposite mistake. It understands that a midterm election is primarily a referendum on the administration, but it fails to understand that presidential elections are about new visions and new agendas. Moreover, the establishment tends to overreact to the conservative overreach, distancing itself from both the policy proposals and the enthusiasm for change that the base and the new supporters want. Running on “pale pastels” consisting of lukewarm endorsements of old policies and condemnations of the administration does not give the base or the swing voters the new alternative they desperately want. …

… When voters say no to one party, they want to say yes to the other party in a way that does not require them to reject the primary reasons for their earlier allegiance. Ronald Reagan was a master of helping them do that. In 1980, he offered a vision of an America that would be safer and more prosperous, but he did not reject the safety net that voters had grown to value. The wave that produced his election returned for his landslide reelection in 1984, setting the stage for conservative victories to come. Republicans today should not waste their opportunity to establish conditions for a similar long-term success.