Additional Excerpts: Joe Lowndes

The personal identification factor: Obama has a reserve of goodwill, and one of the interesting things about his approval ratings being so high is that not only do people hold him in very high regard, but they have decided to be patient with him. There's a strong sense of personal identification with him as is evident in the famous Shepard Fairey lithograph - and its rendering in the FaceBook application that allowed people to digitally remake themselves in his image. There's a devotion to him that we have not seen since Reagan. He also is adored around the world. Although, the polls actually show that love for Obama doesn't translate into love for America.

Rethinking the Right: I think the GOP is schizophrenic at the moment. There has been a fight among Republicans since the election about why McCain lost and what this means to the party now. Many Republican strategists and pundits think that the country no longer wants to hear hard conservative rhetoric. But the institutions with the money claim that McCain lost because he didn't go far enough to the right. So there are a lot of resources that will go that direction through organizations like Heritage Foundation and through people like Rush Limbaugh, who has 20 million listeners a day. There was also this interesting fight over who was going to become the RNC chair. You had two black candidates and two white candidates. Michael Steele, who they ultimately went with, is more of a moderate on questions of abortion and other issues. I think it is unclear which direction the party will choose, although recent skirmishes in Congress would suggest that conservatives have the upper hand.