I mean, they completely control the congress and White House. What’s the challenge? That’s like me bragging that I managed to masturbate last night. It’s not a win when no one else is playing the game.
I’m not following your logic. This is like saying, “Why is it a victory when the Warriors beat the Cavs? They have better players, better coaching, etc.” Well, yes - the better players were the means by which the victory was achieved.
The majority in Congress is a means to an end, a way to achieve the legislative “win.”
You must not be very old (assuming you are saying climax was reached). 
The challenge is mostly from a filibuster threat in the Senate. You said they “completely control the congress”. It’s true that they have a majority in both houses, but in the Senate a majority can’t just do whatever it wants. There are some other intra-party divisions and the ebb and flow of public opinion and the like that also pose challenges.
It’s nothing like that at all. It’s not even like Kramer dominating his karate class full of children. It’s more like playing Connect 4 with your opponent only having three chips. You can call it a “win” when you defeat your opponent, but the fact that it was impossible for your opponent to win in the first place completely diminishes the value of the “win”.
It’s a “win” in the sense that it’s a positive (in the eyes of the “winners”) outcome in a process that has no guarantees of produce such an outcome.
Would you be more comfortable with “The Republicans succeeded”? Well now you’ve learned that in some contexts that’s with synonymous with “The Republicans got a win”.
I don’t think “succeeded” is a synonym of “win”. I succeeded in a lot of mundane acts that I wouldn’t label as a win. I successfully baked some cookies without burning them, so I won… against who? or what? Myself? To me a “win” always means someone or something else “lost” in some sort of challenge or competition.
We lost.
If that’s winning, I’m tired of it! :mad:
The OP makes a fundamentally flawed assumption (and then proceeds to ignore the one poster who has pointed that flawed assumption out). The Republicans do NOT “completely control” Congress. Due to the internal rules adopted by the Senate, simply having a majority of Senators is not enough to ensure passage of legislation.
Further, to say “Republicans” control the House or Senate is to fundamentally misconstrue what, exactly, a political party is. It is not a unified grouping of people with fundamentally consistent views. Rather, it is a coalition of people who choose to identify as being similar for political purposes, while still retaining individual identity. To equate, say, Rep. Charlie Dent’s views with those of Rep. Trey Gowdy, simply because both are “Republicans”, would be to fundamentally mis-characterize them. So, while the majority of members of the House (and of the Senate) are members of the Republican Party, that does not mean that any one particular political position necessarily has a controlling number of members ascribing to it.
Passing legislation is not a win in itself and it’s annoying when the media and party leaders portray it as such. A “win” is passing legislation that is popular.
I think part of what’s going on is Congressmen trying to convince themselves that passing bad legislation is better than passing no legislation because if they pass anything at all it’s a “win”. This has been proven wrong time and again. Passing bad legislation gets you fired.
The Republicans held the majority of House and Senate seats for most of Obama’s term in office. They did not have a veto-proof majority, so Obama can and did stop some of their legislation. However, the Republicans decided that putting a bill on Obama’s desk was a “win”, even if he vetoed it. It took them six years to put a bill to kill Obamacare in front of him (which he obviously vetoed). Seeing how “all” Republicans opposed Obamacare, it might seem surprising that it took so long to present Obama with such a bill. But as we’ve seen, not all Republicans really oppose the bill.
Even when Obama (and Pelosi, and Reid) had a supermajority he had to put a tremendous amount of effort, and rely on a little luck, to pass Obamacare. That win was difficult to pull off. Pelosi and Reid had to get a majority of Democrats to support the bill, and some didn’t like the idea of the public option, so that fell aside. They had to keep things going when the Republicans won in Massachusetts. Some silly things got associated with the bill (the device tax that people hate, etc). Removing it was, apparently, too difficult in that amount of time.
Now Trump is President. He’s very unlikely to veto any legislation the Republicans bring to him. The Republicans have a majority in the Senate but not a supermajority, so it’s hard for them to pass bills there. Still, they’ve overpromised and underdelivered.
They have passed few major pieces of legislation this year. Putting a conservative on the Supreme Court was their biggest win yet. They promised to kill Obamacare, and managed to pass that bill in the House by one vote. They did not pass such a bill in the Senate. Killing Obamacare is hard though (and frankly I want them to keep losing at this!).
The media acted as if Republicans could not get their act together and could not score “wins”. It didn’t help that Trump repeatedly and unintentionally made it harder for his own party to pass bills (in part because he wasn’t interested in the bills, but just in looking good by getting bills passed).
The Republicans just passed massive (and largely harmful, IMO) tax legislation, which will damage but not eliminate Obamacare. The House and Senate versions aren’t coordinated yet, but I suspect it will pass.
As DSYoungEsq pointed out, parties aren’t voting in lock step. They do that, mostly, in Canada and some other countries (where the Prime Minister can immediately eject you from your party, something done infrequently, and people vote on party since that’s more important than the representative’s personality), so I used to be a little mystified when American parties don’t agree with each other, but really they don’t. They squabble and ignore the wishes of their leadership a lot more, since they’re more concerned with winning local elections and winning primaries than they would in Canada. The President can’t just say “you’re no longer running as a Republican” like the Prime Minister could in Canada.
Passing the tax bill in the Senate involved modifying the legislation enough to satisfy a small number of Senators, even though the point of the bill was to cut taxes on corporations and the rich (Republican donors) and is something that pretty much all Republicans agree on. The details still mattered.
The Republicans could not do this on Obamacare because they’re further apart on this, and (despite the rhetoric) don’t entirely hate the bill.
I ignored the post because I thought it was obvious that I was referring to reconciliation bills. Maybe I’d consider a republican sponsored bill that passed with 60 votes a win, maybe, but the more I read this thread the more I believe that assigning a “win” to any passed legislation is weird and potentially dangerous. It isn’t a game, and as Adaher pointed out, passing legislation so you can call it a win without much thought into it’s effect is not good governance.
So it’s a win because they wrote a bill they all could vote for? Who is this win against?
Unfortunately good governance and us.
It’s a win for the Republicans and a loss for America. Winning on bad bills or appointments is not good governance.
It’s a win because despite the fact that a majority of people don’t like the republican agenda, they still manage to deliver the goods for the donor class that funds their campaigns. In the post-Citizens United world, America is increasingly a flawed democracy which pits the donor class (an extreme minority) against the rest of the country. The tax bill that just passed is supported by, what, 35% of the country? Their healthcare bill that nearly passed and failed, but will actually pass as a stealth provision (mandate repeal) in the tax bill, gets about 25% support. It’s a win because all of the democratic institutions that are supposed to work are failing - which is what the GOP wants to see more of in the future.
In order to perfect this analogy, you would have to add in that despite all these advantages, the warriors were 0 and 3 against the Cavs before this game.
The reason it’s a win, is that despite every advantage in the book, until this point they hadn’t been able to get anything done. So the bar has been set so low that being marginally competent is a major improvement.
What I’m sure everyone wants to know is, was anyone trying to stop you from baking? And why?
A “win” is not just a term for a successful outcome in a game. As Merriam-Webster Online notes, you can “win” when you gain something through effort, or through work.
So, yes, it’s a win. They had to overcome opposition (you DO concede that there are people in the government who have opposed their efforts, right?), they had to win over people to convince them to vote positively, etc.
You are simply whining about the terminology because you don’t like the result. 
They count any task they manage to complete as a win. If the Republicans in Congress formed a football team and played a game without opposition, they’d turn it over on downs every time they got the ball. This bunch is elated every time they remember that you put your socks on first, then your shoes. Remember how to tie your shoes and they give you a leadership position. So with control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, they manage to give their donors a Brinks truck to back up to the Treasury Building. Now if we’re lucky they’ll go home for Christmas and not be able to find their way back.