A few months before the election, President Barack Obama famously told a roomful of donors that "if we're successful in this election, when we're successful in this election, that the fever may break, because there's a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense."

Obama did win the election. But asked by the New Republic whether he was seeing much movement on that whole fever-breaking thing, his answer was dryly honest. "Not yet, obviously."

By and large, Washington isn't gripped by fever. It's gripped by actual disagreements and mismatched incentives. Republicans really do disagree with Obama on taxes. And most Republicans in the Senate and the House really do come from increasingly conservative districts that didn't vote for Obama.