‘Tis the season to look back on and take stock of the last twelve months — mostly with the aim of retroactively conditioning your audience into assuming your preferred conclusions.

That seems to be the objective of the political commentators who look back on this year as one big, missed opportunity — a lapse attributable entirely to the modest Republican majority in the House:

This feat of congressional lethargy has been received by Democrats and their allies as though it was a profound crime. “This is what you get when a GOP House cares about nothing more than doing Trump’s bidding to bring a no-evidence impeachment,” independent journalist Marcy Wheeler mourned. “The American people deserve more than this,” Representative James Clyburn lamented of the “dysfunctional and extreme Republican majority.” Onetime Obama campaign spokesperson Stephanie Cutter greeted the news with melancholy cynicism. “Merry Christmas, America,” she sighed.

These complaints are predicated on the untested assumption that an energetic Congress eagerly rubber-stamping legislation is desirable in itself. But what, exactly, is Congress supposed to have done? If these critics of the GOP House majority devoted more consideration to their dirges, they’d probably conclude that a vigorous GOP House majority would have passed bills they don’t particularly like. From the Democratic perspective, isn’t a paralytic GOP majority better than an active one?

Perhaps the goal of agitation of this sort is to ping the nerve centers in the progressive mind that regard circumscribed government as an abdication of the social engineer’s responsibility to, well, engineer. But if their objective was to demoralize Republican-leaning voters, they’ve misread their targets. For GOP voters, promoting House Republicans’ inability to do much beyond keeping the government’s lights on is a selling point.

Compared to the vivacity of the 117th Congress, the 118th Congress’s inactivity is vastly preferable. It’s not exactly surprising to see that progressives are enamored with a Congress that produced “sweeping” Medicare expansion provisions, new gun-control legislation, green-energy boondoggles, and massive spending bills masquerading as anti-inflation measures. But in 2022, the GOP won the majority of the popular vote for House candidates on the back of their promise to pump the breaks on the Democratic Party’s legislative orgy, and voters got exactly what they were sold. Why would anyone assume that accusing Republicans of fulfilling a campaign-trail promise is a knock on the GOP?

“This Congress is on track to be one of the most unproductive in modern history,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently grieved, “thanks to the Republican House majority.” Correct. You’re welcome.