There is one all-important fact that has inexplicably gotten lost in much of the arguing over how Republicans should respond to President Obama’s unilateral edict on immigration: The GOP doesn’t control the Senate yet.

Democrats will run the Senate, and Harry Reid will be majority leader, until Jan. 3, 2015. So when Republicans, or conservatives, or anyone else, announce what they think Mitch McConnell and John Boehner should do in the next few weeks, they should remember that right now Republicans have the same strength and numbers they had in October 2013, when they lost the government shutdown fight.