Last week national Democrats woke up to the aftermath of a Republican invasion — a Red Dawn. Democrats felt the full force of an electoral recoil four years in the making. After flipping a total of 52 House and 14 Senate seats since 2006, a huge number of Dems found themselves in vulnerable positions, running for reelection in reddish areas that never really felt like their own. Many of them confusedly bumbled from message to message, running away from their caucus’s accomplishments and attempting to triangulate themselves back into Congress in a red year. Republicans, to their credit, successfully coupled popular unrest over the economy with simple, repudiating messaging to storm back this year. The result was, in President Obama’s own words, a “shellacking:” the GOP recaptured the House and nearly erased the historic Democratic advantage in the Senate.

Republicans like to argue that the American people sent Washington a message last week, that the results in this one election represent a sweeping validation of conservative principles. The truth is a little messier than that: this year it wasn’t just a perfect cross-section of “the American people” sending the message, it was the Republicans’ dream electorate. 2010 voters were markedly older and whiter than those who came to the polls in 2008. Apathetic Democratic sympathizers (I’m looking at you, students) sat home on Election Day, allowing a very different electorate to make its voice heard. By delivering a new majority in only the House and failing to recapture the Senate, the older and whiter voters who showed up to the polls gave Republicans a strange sort of blessing. Mad Republican scientists can now play around in their Congressional lab and shove through the House any wacky piece of legislation they want — and then moan about how Washington is broken when Democrats try to slow it down in the Senate.

But it’s becoming clear that the GOP isn’t satisfied with just legislating from its current position. Republicans have made no secret that their goals are political, rather than policy-oriented. Sarah Palin says she can see 2012 from her house, and it seems like Republicans who actually have government jobs are just as fired up about pressing their political advantage. When asked just days before his party was poised to take back Congress’s lower chamber, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told The National Journal that, come January, the number one priority for the again-powerful Republican conference would have nothing to do with immigration reform, climate legislation, tax policy, or creating jobs. “The single most important thing we want to achieve,” he said, “is for President Obama to be a one-term President.” Several days later, the man who in January will be the Speaker of the House echoed his colleague’s combative tone. A cocky Representative John Boehner told Fox News pundit Sean Hannity that “This is not a time for compromise.” If you’re disturbed by the idea of two of our country’s most powerful legislators promising to place their responsibility to work with all parts of government secondary to their political ambitions, then you’re not alone.

McConnell’s and Boehner’s words paint a bleak post-election landscape. The tone of this past cycle eviscerated the illusion that we ever even came close to the bipartisan harmony candidate Obama preached on the campaign trail. Republicans aren’t even bothering to pay lip service to the value of bipartisanship. Instead, the GOP has doubled down on its commitment to extreme non-cooperation. That promise ensures that under the new red reality, the shifting of blame and shuffling of feet in the legislative process is going to be just as hyperpolitical as it has always been.