I think John Boehner is probably reading the tea party’s mood perfectly when he says “repeal” the Dodd bill. It exudes a we-don’t-do-comprehensive instinct, too — it’s an instinct that can sometimes gloss over details that absolutely need to be developed and debated, but outside the think tanks, there’s a real appetite for it. Congressmen at home this weekend likely heard that Washington is bad, period. To win, Republicans — especially those whose jobs bring them to Washington every week — need to communicate that they, too, are angry and are determined to be a solution, not another sitting problem.

“I want to be out of here the day before I am no longer moving the ball forward,” one congressman recently told me. Some incumbents actually are here for America, the Constitution, and good, old-fashioned Founding things like that.

Ramesh is absolutely right, though, that walking into a plausible majority, Republicans have to have real, workable, creative plans. The tea party has an appetite for that, too — voters who are angry about health care, angry about the fin-reg bill, and angry about the audacity of patronizing liberal transformative politics want to know that John Boehner and the rest are angry, too. Once they’re sure Republican leaders are on the same page, I think they’ll be receptive to a checklist of sound, substantive commitments — ones that are doable with Barack Obama in the White House and a Senate possibly still run by, if not Harry Reid, then Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin.

I think August will be a(nother) venting period for engaged voters to show up at town halls throughout the country, and the post–Labor Day run-up to the elections needs to be a time of some practical commitments from House Republicans. But the first priority for all incumbents has to be convincing voters that they and their Washington team share the tea party’s mood — that’s the way to be able to effectively engage with voters on the road to November.