How will the Republican party react in the wake of Barack Obama’s victory (not to mention the loss of multiple House and Senate seats)? David Brooks of the New York Times sees a fight on the horizon.

I can’t remember the last time there was such good will aimed at an incoming president. According to George Will though, we’ve been picking presidential nominees incorrectly for quite a long time now. One could infer from Will’s piece that Hillary Clinton (or even Joe Biden) should have been the nominee and not Obama.

Three guesses as to who wrote this:  “I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it’s precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country.”  That’s right, this comes from Barack Obama (specifically, from his book “The Audacity of Hope”).  I haven’t read the book yet, but I found the excerpt in a terrific New Yorker article.  I’m ready for the new Age of Deliberative Democracy.