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One thing is not in doubt: there will be tears before it's over.

The man who will be sworn in on WednesdayÌýas speaker of the House, Republican John Boehner, cried when his party won in November, cried afterwards when he explained he had been at that moment thinking of his modest background, helping out in his dad's bar, and then cried again on TV when he was asked why he'd cried.

Whether he'll weep again now, I cannot say, but it may be a moment when all Republicans may feel like getting out the hanky. The scale of their achievement is enormous: two years after the election of Barack Obama on a huge wave of abstract ideals like hope and change, they won the mid-term election hands down. Today they take charge of one of the most important components of American government, the House of Representatives. They have cut the Democratic majority in the Senate too.

In this fluid mix comes not just tears, but tea.

There will be many new faces in Congress. Fresh faces, steeped in the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement. They really are different. Many of them took not the tired old route of a little light lawyering and then a stint in the city council or state government. Here are car salesmen, pizza restaurant owners, opticians - people who've never before been politicians.

They are filled with a sense of mission and mandate, a belief that they have been elected by the American people to overturn what they see as Mr Obama's socialist agenda.

Their very first action? To order the reading on the House floor of the US Constitution, to them an almost sacred document aimed primarily at limiting government. Their next step? A bill to repeal what they scornfully call Obamacare - Mr Obama and the Democrats' effort to reform the US healthcare system.

Eventually, of course, the main battlegrounds will be the economy, debt and deficit, taxation and the size of government.

So do Democrats feel like shedding a few tears of their own in the face of their loss and the passion of the new masters? Not a bit of it.

Some Democratic strategists are already salivating at what they see as an opportunity to position the president ahead of the 2012 elections.

After all, they have just woken from a similar illusion, that Mr Obama's election was a whole-hearted embrace of his policies, a mandate for the left rather than a preference for him over the old bloke. Now they've got the old, old message that it is the economy, stupid. One strategist told me their failure over healthcare was in trying to sell it as a self-evident virtue - because more people would have access to care - rather than puting the economy first and appealing to people's self interest by branding it the second biggest tax cut in American history.

Elections can sometimes be about choosing a brand new direction. But those voting are often choosing the lesser of two evils, or indeed not choosing by not voting. American politics is becoming not merely tidal but now sloshes from one side to the other with the alarming regularity of a bucket carried by a staggering drunkard. Every two years, the voters seem to express their disgust with Washington and whomever is in power.

And this is why some Democrats are rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of being the opposition in the House.

The Tea Party's near-revolutionary fervour appealed to something deep in the American soul but, as of today in the House, the Republicans are in control. The public may, in part and in time, come to blame them for the economic woes all around them.

Mr Obama's game plan is to murmur constantly the mantra "jobs jobs jobs". All the while he'll attempt to look achingly responsible, striving to find compromise on behalf of the American people.

The French call it "cohabitation", when the president has to work with a party of a different stripe. This, though, is a marriage of inconvenience, of opposites, where Mr Obama will attempt to appear the stoic one, working at a hellish marriage for the sake of the kids.

If the Republicans spend time trying to pass a healthcare repeal that won't go anywhere (because if the Senate doesn't reject the repeal, the president will) it will be portrayed as hopelessly self-indulgent. If Tea Party purists insist on not raising America's debt limit that will be putting ideology before country. Of course, the Republicans will be also be attempting to paint Mr Obama as the one not trying hard enough to make the marriage work: the profligate parent intent on blowing what little is left of the family fortune on his undeserving favourites.

The difference is that Mr Obama was sobered up by what he called his "shellacking" in the elections, while the potent Tea Party brew is still coursing through the Republicans' veins.

Democrats are hoping all that tea will lead to tears. Not Mr Boehner's brought on by contemplation of the American dream, just of frustration and failure.

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