Richard Norton Smith examines for TIME readers the tensions among contrasting elements within the Republican Party.

Obama … occupies a unique historical position. No mere presidential polarizer, nearly six years into his tenure he defines the opposition party more than his own. Neocons and Pat Buchanan isolationists; Appalachian miners and emotionally bruised billionaires; Mother Angelica Catholics and Ayn Rand objectivists–disdain for the President is seemingly all that unites a coalition as fractious as the one Ronald Reagan successfully bonded through his optimism and conviction politics. How will the GOP cope with life after Obama? We don’t have to wait until January 2017 to find out.

From the outset, the story line of this year’s election has been predictable, unlike many of the races. Would Republicans recapture the Senate after two attempts foiled by the base’s preference for ideological purity over electability? And what would a wholly GOP Congress do to hamper or harass the Obama White House in the continuing effort to tarnish his legitimacy or downsize his place in the history books? (Whether this campaign advances Republican chances to regain the Oval Office in 2016 is another matter altogether.) Massive electoral losses at the same juncture of their presidencies hardly reduced the legacies of Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Reagan.

The Republican fixation on Obama is just the latest example of a party out of power settling for tactical advantage over the hard work of intellectual renewal. Assume for the moment that at least 51 Republican Senators take the oath of office in January 2015. Will a GOP Senate prefer the ideological red meat served up by Ted Cruz? The war-weary, civil-libertarian message crafted by Rand Paul? Will it follow Mario Rubio through the shifting sands of immigration reform? Will it play to the base, content to remain a congressional party, secure behind its gerrymandered redoubts?

Other Republicans, less incrementalist in their approach, nurture visions of political realignment as sweeping as the Goldwater takeover of 1964.