January 20 will be a banner day for the Republican party. On the steps of the Capitol, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45th president. In the building behind the ceremony, his party will be ready to enact his program with a sturdy congressional majority. The GOP is in historically strong shape in state capitols across the nation, set to implement conservative policy reforms from Idaho to Florida and just about everywhere in between.

But if the Republican party were a publicly traded company, January 20 would be the day to sell, sell, sell. This may sound counterintuitive, but the verdict of history is clear, if not quite unanimous: The moment a party achieves total control of the government is the moment just before power begins to slip through its fingers.