Last night’s election was the culmination of a very bitter fight for survival. The GOP spent tons of capital… both political and monetary… in the hopes of destroying President Obama’s agenda, and decimating his long list of first-term accomplishments. After four long years of being a party defined by divisiveness and obstruction, they received their mandate from American voters.

CHANGE NOW, OR GET OUT.

Eventhough Republicans retained a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, they were decisively clawed back in the Senate. And of course, President Obama roared back into the White House.

For Mitt Romney, the coming weeks will likely bring much criticism of how he ran his campaign and what all went wrong, but in reality, the GOP owes him a tremendous bit of gratitude. As the party has fractured so deeply between the idealogues and the Pro-Business wing, Romney stepped up to the plate and made the ultimate sacrifice for his party. He was the only man willing to steer the ship into what we all saw as an inevitable crash course in 2012… FAILURE.

But in doing this, he’s also helped to save Republicans from themselves too. Countless shifting political positions aside, Romney is a decent man, and he ran a good campaign. He conceded to the President with grace and helped to unite our country after a bitter fight. And most importantly, he sacrificed his time and energy so that future candidates (like Chris Christie, Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio) wouldn’t have to go down with the ship… at least not this year.

Finally now, the GOP has come face-to-face with the real change that President Obama helped to accomplish. They now have to wake up to the new realities of a more diverse nation than what they represent. This time, change is sure to happen, because the GOP no longer has a choice.

So today is a new day, and already we are seeing small signs of a new mood in Washington. Here are tweets from retiring Senator Olympia Snowe and House Speaker John Boehner.

Change indeed. Let’s just hope it lasts and that President Obama and Congress have a more productive relationship… starting with the Lame Duck session.