At my gym, they put lit­tle inspi­ra­tional quotes up on the wall to get you to work out hard­er (that’s the the­o­ry, at least).

“Lead, fol­low, or get out of the way,” was last Tuesday’s quote, attrib­uted to the Marine’s hand­book, which was a rev­e­la­tion to me. I always thought that Lee Iacoc­ca was the man who first said that mem­o­rable phrase when he was try­ing to fix Chrysler.

This quote must haunt Con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans on both sides of the Capi­tol dome.

In the House, the fol­low­ers aren’t fol­low­ing the Lead­ers. In the Sen­ate, the Lead­ers aren’t fol­low­ing the followers.

Over 60 Repub­li­cans refused to fol­low the Com­mit­tee Chair­man and the Lead­er­ship in vot­ing for a Farm bill in the House two weeks ago. That didn’t bode well for the even­tu­al pas­sage of the Immi­gra­tion bill or for a bud­get deal that would keep the gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing a full capacity.

In the Upper Cham­ber, not one mem­ber of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can lead­er­ship vot­ed with Mar­co Rubio and the Gang of Eight’s immi­gra­tion reform bill. Not one.

Ear­li­er this year, not one mem­ber of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can lead­er­ship vot­ed with Pat Toomey in his gun show loop­hole bill.

In oth­er words, two for­mer Tea Par­ty favorites, who stuck their necks out to get some­thing accom­plished, got no back-up from their own lead­ers and were left hanging.

Now, there might be good rea­sons why lead­ers desert­ed their fol­low­ers and why the fol­low­ers desert­ed their leaders.

For good rea­son, just about every Sen­a­tor and House Mem­ber is wor­ried about a pri­ma­ry chal­lenge, and some might just dis­agree on the poli­cies that were involved in one of these pieces of legislation.

But Con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans will not sur­vive if the Lead­ers and Fol­low­ers don’t coor­di­nate bet­ter. They have to have uni­fied mes­sage if they want to beat Oba­ma and the Democ­rats. They have to agree on a com­mon set of tac­tics and a big­ger strate­gic vision. They have to dis­cour­age hot-dog­ging and folks going out on their own.

As Ben Franklin said dur­ing the hottest peri­ods of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, they have to hang togeth­er or sure­ly they will hang separately.

I know this sounds eas­i­er than it real­ly is to achieve. I know the vast dif­fer­ences between the House and the Sen­ate, and I know the geo­graph­i­cal dis­par­i­ties that some­times inspire pret­ty intense dif­fer­ences of opin­ion with­in the respec­tive GOP conferences.

But this isn’t sup­posed to be easy. It is sup­posed to be hard.

There may be a method to the mad­ness. Per­haps let­ting Toomey go off on his own helps him in Penn­syl­va­nia, which is a pur­ple state (and that is being char­i­ta­ble to the Republicans)

But if Repub­li­cans are to beat Oba­ma and the Democ­rats in the Fall show­down, they have to march togeth­er as one team. They have to per­form flaw­less­ly. They have sing off the same hym­nal, beat their drums in prop­er time, they have to share the same strate­gic vision and agree on the right tactics.

If they do all of that, they will be successful.

But if the Tea Par­ty con­tin­ues to go its own way, if the North­east­ern Repub­li­cans go their own way, if the Appro­pri­a­tors go their own way, or if the lead­er­ship goes its own way, the Pres­i­dent, despite his appar­ent lack of inter­est in actu­al­ly leg­is­lat­ing, will score a smash­ing victory.

In Con­gress, not every­body can be a Leader. The lead­ers have to lead, the fol­low­ers have to fol­low, and every­body else should shut up.