Jon Terbush writes in The Week:

There are other reasons to perpetuate dysfunction in Congress. When Obama first won the presidency, Republicans gambled that blanket obstruction was their best strategy for reclaiming power. In a moment of glib candor, McConnell vowed to make Obama a one-term president by refusing to work with him on anything. Outlining the strategy to The Atlantic, McConnell explained that Republicans “worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off” big legislation because “when you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”
It was a brazenly cynical ploy, to break the government and scoop up the pieces. But it eventually worked. It worked so well that National Review begged Republicans to keep right on doing nothing until 2016 lest they give the impression of bipartisanship and restore the public’s confidence in Obama — and, by extension, Democrats.

Terbush is reading both McConnell and NR the way a lot of people (generally liberals) have. But I think he may be wrong about the former and is certainly wrong about the latter.

In that Atlantic story, McConnell did not outline any strategy of refusing to work with Obama on anything. (Nor has he outlined any such strategy elsewhere, so far as I know.) I have always taken his comment to mean that he tried very hard to maintain party unity: that is, to keep one or two Republicans from supporting a Democratic bill and thereby creating the impression that a bill is in some genuine sense “bipartisan.” I’d even say that’s the most natural reading of his comment that he wanted to avoid creating “the perception . . . that differences have been worked out.”

As for NR, the magazine didn’t call on Republicans to “keep right on doing nothing.” It called on them to start holding votes on conservative legislation on a range of issues that they have not done enough to address. It did not call on them to refuse to work with Obama, either. It explicitly urged Republicans to give the president trade promotion authority, for example. The relevant part of the editorial’s argument is that Republicans should not base their political strategy for 2016 on showing that they can work with Obama. Similarly, Democrats, once they took over Congress after the 2006 election, did not base their strategy for 2008 on proving they could work with President George W. Bush, even though they occasionally did work with him.

It is certainly true, though, that the editorial does not assume either that working with Obama is a great good in itself or that it’s important for Congress and the president to agree on a lot of legislation. Whether that constitutes “breaking the government” or “dysfunction” is of course a matter of opinion.