When It comes to the GOP running on a national agenda, I wish I could be clearer in my opinions. On the one hand, I think that, as long as Obama’s disapproval numbers stay at 53-54%, the Republicans are in a pretty good position to take over the Senate. On the other hand, the lack of an agenda hurts Republicans in ways that might be obscured by the GOP winning the vast majority of the Senate races that Real Clear Politics currently calls toss ups.

The lack of a broadly popular GOP agenda doesn’t show up on the generic ballot or the poll ratings in red states. It shows up in New Hampshire. Given Obama’s unpopularity in that state, the GOP should have been able to run virtually any unobjectionable candidate and been favored to win. Instead, because the GOP lacks an appealing policy agenda, they felt the need to run a former Massachusetts senator and hope that personality would put them over the top. The lack of a broadly appealing GOP agenda also shows up in our expectations. It is almost impossible to imagine the Republicans winning a forty (or more) state sweep in a presidential election – even though the GOP pulled it off in four out of five elections from 1972 to 1988.

This gets to a further irony regarding 2014. No such popular (in the sense of having actual public awareness and support) Republican agenda exists at the moment. There are proposals regarding health care and tax policy that might become popular, but that would require Republican candidates (and hopefully their allies among the right-leaning Super PACs) pushing those policies.

Since almost any policy change involves winners and losers (or people who fear they might be losers), Republican candidates who embraced a positive agenda would face multiple risks. First, they would have to figure out how to put the pieces of various policy proposals together. Do they want health care reform of the kind favored by James Capretta or the kind favored by Avik Roy? Second, candidates would have to learn how to explain policies in the absence of a playbook. If that sounds easy, remember how Romney got into trouble explaining why he wanted more choice in health insurers? He ended confessing that he likes being able to fire people. Don’t mock him. He is actually better at running for office than the vast majority of Republican candidates. Third, Republican candidates won’t have a playbook for deflecting the inevitable Democratic demagoguery directed at these unfamiliar policies. Republicans have enough trouble explaining how they won’t steal your girlfriend’s birth control pills. Imagine trying to explain how a tax code with a larger child tax credit won’t be a middle-class tax cut or how Republican health care reform won’t mean having to get your surgery from the world’s drunkest veterinarian.

That doesn’t mean that Republicans shouldn’t run on a middle-class agenda. They should! The long-term rewards far outweigh the short-term risks. Not taking the risks now, means taking them in 2016 when the stakes are even higher. The lack of a broadly popular agenda that can appeal to people who were not socialized to be Republican voters virtually guarantees the party’s long-term demographic decline. That decline will occasionally pause due to favorable circumstances, but circumstances won’t reverse the decline for any length of time. The Republicans are going to have to earn the voters that they are going to need. Running on an agenda today makes it more likely that some Republican senatorial candidate will make a gaffe. It makes it slightly more likely that an elderly Republican senator won’t be a chairman in 2015. We shouldn’t exaggerate the risk. If Obama’s disapproval ratings stay where they are, adopting James Capretta’s health care proposals won’t salvage Democratic chances in the Senate – and if Obama’s disapproval rating comes down a little, maybe giving people a reason to vote Republican might get a few more people to… vote Republican.