How many Republicans does it take to repeal Obamacare?

Before Jim DeMint ran the Heritage Foundation, he was the top conservative kingmaker in Congress. Ousted from his think tank perch, now is a good time to review the state of the larger DeMint project: pulling the Republican Party rightward.

"I'd rather have 30 Marco Rubios in the Senate than 60 Arlen Specters," DeMint, then a Republican senator from South Carolina, said during the Tea Party's prime. He did his part to make it happen, when his Senate Conservatives Fund helped elect Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz to serve alongside him, while Specter was replaced with Pat Toomey.

"When I ran for the U.S. Senate two and a half years ago, no one thought I had a chance to win," Rubio said in a statement when DeMint announced he was leaving Capitol Hill. "Jim DeMint was the first person in Washington that believed in me and invested in me, and I'm eternally grateful."

The Republicans' current struggle to get much done even with control of the White House and both houses of Congress reveals the limits of having 30 Rubios or 60 Specters.

It is very difficult to produce the kind of sweeping change principled conservatives want without the kind of large majorities responsible for liberalism's biggest policy victories: the New Deal, the Great Society, even Obamacare.