STARTING from the position that any major legislation is going to need significant buy in from Democrats, since they control one chamber of Congress (at the moment.) And then telling their constituents that what's important now is to reach across the aisle and work with the opposition party, so it would be best to START with something that's more ideologically inline with them (even though you know from experience that they never actually support major GOP legislation) and then negotiate downwards from there.

He'd be out of a job for that.