Rachel Maddow shoots down Washington media 'fairy tale' about kinder, gentler GOP

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on Friday that Washington D.C. political reporters were trying to convince themselves that Republicans would be more focused on governing following Tuesday's elections, despite a surplus of evidence to the contrary.

"You should have taken it as a hint when the Republican Party press conference the morning after the election was done in front of a giant red screen that said 'Stop Obama,'" she said. "That's what they mean. When Republicans talk to each other -- which is what Fox News is for -- what they're talking about this week is not freaking constructive policy-making; it's 'When do we impeach the president? When do we get to start?'"

Maddow showed clips of Megyn Kelly and other Fox hosts speculating about the possibility of the GOP impeaching President Barack Obama. She also said that recent polling shows that 50 percent of Republican respondents -- and 64 percent of Tea Party Republican voters -- said the new Congress "should consider" doing so, compared to just 24 percent of overall respondents.

"A lot of things are still unsettled from the election this week," she argued. "The Republican Party seeing the destruction of President Obama as their reason for living? That is not unsettled."

She also said the media was ignoring the rhetoric from House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus accusing Obama of both threatening to "poison the well" and delivering a "nuclear threat" by discussing the possibility of an executive order implementing immigration reform.

"The Beltway keeps telling themselves this fairy tale about Republicans and how Republicans must feel now," she said. "But listen to them actually talk to each other."

Watch Maddow's commentary, as aired on Friday on MSNBC, below.