Andrew McCarthy explores for National Review Online readers the mandate voters delivered for Republican members of Congress in last November’s election.

The Republican party’s conservative base has a major problem. In assessing the 2014 midterm elections, a tidal wave in which the base propelled the GOP to substantial majorities in both houses of Congress, conservatives are in full agreement with President Obama and completely at odds with Republican leadership.

The president boldly declared that, while he was not on the ballot, his policies were. He could not have been more right.

GOP leadership boldly declares that the election was a case of voters trusting Republicans with an opportunity to “prove we can govern” — to demonstrate that GOP lawmakers can work effectively with the president. They could not be more wrong.

November was all about Obama’s liberty-strangling, crony-coddling, financially reckless agenda. Voters emphatically defeated these policies. The American people want them stopped. That is what they sent Republicans to Washington to do. That is the mandate from the midterms.

Consequently, it is also the clarion call of the Citizens’ Mandate from the November 2014 Elections, issued on Thursday by conservative leaders from across the United States. The title of the Citizens’ Mandate is straightforward: “Stop the Fundamental Transformation of America.”