Three years ago when Republicans were battling President Obama over the debt ceiling and a government shutdown, the president said, “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election.”

That is what Republicans did on Nov. 8. In addition to winning the presidential election, Republicans also maintained majorities in the House and Senate and now have 33 governorships and 32 state legislatures under GOP control. It was a consequential repudiation of the far-left policies of the Democratic Party. To paraphrase Mr. Obama: Republicans won, Democrats lost, now deal with it.

Democrats are having a hard time dealing with it and so instead of examining why they and their policies were so roundly rejected, they have decided to take a familiar path. They are smearing newly named White House counselor and chief strategist Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, as an anti-Semite and bigot with little or no evidence, other than guilt by association for incendiary articles posted on Breitbart.com when he was chairman.

In other overreaction to the election results, some despondent lefties have announced their intention to continue violating the law when it comes to illegal aliens.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who can’t control the shooting gallery his city has become, has said Chicago will continue to be a sanctuary city for any and all people who broke federal immigration laws. He joins the mayors of New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and more than two dozen other cities and towns who have made similar declarations, thus violating federal law and their oaths of office to defend the federal and state constitutions, which state that lawmakers, not mayors (or presidents, or judges) are the ones who pass laws.

Washington, D.C., radio talk show host Chris Plante has a good idea to counter this lawlessness. On his program Tuesday, Plante said that if an illegal immigrant in a sanctuary city commits a crime, especially murder, the mayor of that city should be prosecuted by the Justice Department as an accessory. The Trump administration should also announce it will withhold federal funds for any city that harbors people who broke immigration laws to get here.

Billionaire globalist George Soros met in Washington this week with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to plot strategy for how to stop Trump. Here’s how a story in Politico put it: “George Soros and other rich liberals who spent tens of millions of dollars trying to elect Hillary Clinton are gathering in Washington for a three-day, closed-door meeting to retool the big-money left to fight back against Donald Trump.” That was wasted money given the outcome. In business, if your strategy isn’t working, you change the strategy. In liberal politics, it’s like a cult. You believe despite any and all evidence that proves your beliefs wrong.

The left and angry Democrats believe and behave as if government is their property and when Republicans win they are stealing merchandise that doesn’t belong to them. In their efforts to kneecap Trump before he takes office, they will again rely on the big media as their ally. Except it didn’t work during the campaign and it won’t work now because the public’s trust in news organizations is at a record low.

The danger for Democrats and the left is that the very same “angry white voters” they alienated during the campaign might be driven even further away, if they won’t even allow Trump to take office and have the traditional honeymoon period to see if his ideas can be implemented and whether they work. That can only mean more Republican victories in the future.

Deal with it!

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.