Green Shoots of Sanity?

At the same time, the 60-vote hurdle to avert a filibuster in the Senate remains staggeringly high. Even higher is the two-thirds needed to overturn a presidential veto. Boehner has the dealmaker's urge to get results, and not simply oversee protest votes and avert shut-down disasters.

His Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has even greater incentive to show voters that Republicans are capable of governing; 24 of his members are up for re-election in two years, a presidential cycle that could favor Democrats.

The opening salvos between the Republican Congress and the Democratic White House are inevitably going to make things look as if gridlock is the only possible outcome; Republicans pass a measure obviously unacceptable to the White House; the president hurls back a veto threat; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's dwindling band of Democrats stands united against allowing Republicans to override.

The tantalizing question is what happens next in this legislative tango, as reality dawns that majority power has its limitations. So the House sends the Homeland Security funding bill to the Senate, where under the ticking clock of funding expiring in late February, its most odious immigration provisions will be removed.

The recent moderate Republican rumblings could -- underline, could -- presage greater rationality. "This is not yet a group," one Republican congressman told me when I broached the notion of an emerging "sanity caucus." Still, he said, "I think it does show people the Republican conference is more diverse than the common perception of it and the leadership is trying to manage it."

Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution identified 51 House members she describes as "Obama Republicans" -- lawmakers from congressional districts that Obama won in 2012 or that Mitt Romney won by fewer than five percentage points.

Examining their campaign positions, she found striking differences both in emphasis and in substance between this group and their counterparts on hot-button issues such as immigration, same-sex marriage and climate change.

"On issues like tax reform and regulation of business, the Obama Republicans could be just what Boehner needs to create a majority on a compromise with the Democrats while allowing his tea party supporters to defect," Kamarck observed.

To be determined. But we may just be seeing green shoots of what passes for sanity in the nation's capital.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.