What bothers me as much as anything on this day after is that the Congressional Republicans were rewarded by voters, not all voters but enough of them, for taking their football and going home for the past six years. They did almost nothing to help move America forward. We could have had an ambitious program to rebuild the roads, bridges, airports, and rail lines. They would not give President Obama the respect needed to put together a public building program that would have provided thousands of jobs for people hurting from coast to coast. They sat on their hands and ran out the clock. I’m using all my cliches this morning. They extended the pain for selfish political benefit. They would not dare give President Obama a share of the success on something so badly needed as Rebuilding America. It is shameful. Now watch a President Trump launch a massive moon-shot scale infrastructure program by June 2017, taking credit for getting people back in well paying jobs (public spending or borrowing for most of it, I would predict). If this approach to governing, destroy the opponent by obstruction, becomes the norm then our system will fail. The American way of politics assumes compromise, not scorched earth opposition. The maddening part of this is that the Republicans were rewarded by a majority of voters for not cooperating with the president, whether on legislation or on a Supreme Court nomination. They dug in their heels, folded their arms, let the damage happen “out there,” and gambled that it would benefit them. It did. They won everything. This tactic of de-legitimizing the opposition, a kind of Congressional nullification of the people’s will (two presidential terms for Barack Obama), will ruin our system in the long term. The national Republicans got what they believe they are entitled to, full control of the federal government. What are they going to do with that power?