A day after Donald Trump’s improbable romp into the White House, is it, as they say, really a “brave new world” before us? Or is the opposite — “The more things change, the more they stay the same” — true?

The obvious answer to this question is that it’s far too early to say one way or the other. Even if it wasn’t, why would anyone listen to the editorial page of a newspaper? Haven’t we (and the pollsters; and the political pundits; and everyone) been wrong about nearly everything this election cycle?

Touche. But the question still stands — and it’s not just President-elect Trump that needs to come up with an answer.

The entire Republican Party, which managed to defy predictions and retain control of the U.S. Senate and stave off large losses to its historic majority in the U.S. House, needs to do some soul searching as well.

Normally a performance like Tuesday night’s is followed by think pieces musing on things like “political momentum” and “honeymoon periods.” But take a moment to consider: what honeymoon period?

Trump ended his campaign at odds with virtually every Republican leader in Washington. Is there a kumbaya moment to be had here? Or a full-scale shake-up of Republican congressional leaders instead?

And what political momentum? This campaign has been about scandal and emotion, not public policy or prerogatives. And the Trump policies — The Wall, mass deportations — that seemed to energize voters are either impractical, possibly unconstitutional, or generally implausible.

To make matters even worse, the obvious first steps for a Trump administration — hamstringing or eliminating the Affordable Care Act; installing a conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court — aren’t a plan of governance or a vision for the future of the nation.

Yes, Republicans will probably get a great deal of pleasure from those actions — it might even produce that seemingly unlikely honeymoon period — but plucking low-hanging fruit won’t suddenly mold a fractious GOP into cohesion and give it a vision for the future.

The only unifying vision Congressional Republicans have had over the last eight years — opposition to President Barack Obama — will walk out of the White House on Jan. 20, 2017. It won’t be back.

So the party which has spent the last eight years holding hundreds of congressional votes they knew to be ultimately symbolic and playing at the politics of denial (disillusioning the party faithful in the process) has to actually come up with a plan to wield its considerable legislative and executive authority.

In short, it has to stop playing games and actually govern.