Conservatives began rooting for Obama’s failure before he even took office.

Shortly after the election, a major American publication asked Rush Limbaugh to explain his hopes for the Obama presidency in a few hundred words. Limbaugh said on his radio show that he needed only four: “I hope he fails.”

Some Republicans distanced themselves from Limbaugh’s remarks, but their tepid rebuke of the conservative firebrand was lost amid a whirlwind of support. Dozens of party faithful from Karl Rove and Rick Santorum to Michele Bachmann appeared on Fox News to argue that Obama was a threat and needed to be stopped at any cost.

Obama was not even president and Republicans were already plotting his downfall, having made the wager that it was better to try to oppose, obstruct and block every piece of pending legislation — no matter how badly needed or how trivial — because to them a Democratic victory would mean a Republican loss.

Their wager paid off, but it came at a great cost. Stirring up racial tensions by dropping hints that Obama was a Kenyan Muslim with “a deep-seated hatred for white people” may have been an effective way to rile up the Tea Party fringe of their base, but now that Republicans have regained power in the House, it will make governing all the more difficult. How can you justify working together with someone you’ve spent the past two years demonizing?

Democrats stand at a critical crossroads. Political momentum has turned against them, and they must decide whether to extend an olive branch or follow the same tactics of obstruction favored by the GOP, using congressional procedure to stall any bills passed in the House and grinding Republican momentum to a halt.

For the sake of political progress, I hope they choose the olive branch.

The upcoming Congress has some tough problems to deal with. I’m not naïve enough to think all of them can be solved by holding hands and singing “Kumbaya,” but some degree of compromise will be needed now that power in Congress is split between the two parties.

Unfortunately, Republicans have made it clear that they are not willing to put aside partisan politics just yet. In a recent address to the Heritage Foundation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a nasty rebuke of Obama and Democrats, saying that his party’s number one priority during the next session of Congress was to make Obama a one-term president.

It doesn’t bother me that McConnell would rather see a Republican in the White House — that goes without saying. But it is deeply troubling that the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate would care more about securing power for his own party than creating jobs, reining in spending, cutting taxes or fulfilling any one of the many promises Republicans made during the campaign season.

Shouldn’t policy trump blind partisanship?

Let’s give McConnell the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was only posturing. I hope this was just his way of throwing a bone to the Tea Party, because the alternative is quite disturbing. If the 112th Congress has only one party capable of thinking beyond slogan-based solutions that begin and end with tax cuts, some very real problems are going to be ignored, from high unemployment and an anemic economy to a deteriorating education system.

Unlike Limbaugh and McConnell, I’m not hoping for Republicans to fail. I’m hoping for Democrats and Republicans to succeed together. Whatever ends up passing — whether it was proposed by a Democrat or a Republican — I hope it works.

It’s not productive to elevate party interests above national interests. I would much rather be forced to eat my words and admit I was wrong about a certain set of issues than see endless partisan gridlock for the next two years.

Jason is a senior in Engineering.