Dialogue, not Dissing
I'm with Earl on Obama picking Rick Warren for his inaugural invocation. Obama said it best when he said that this is about maintaining the unifying dialogue that he's been championing.
Liberal activists need to be reminded, time and again, that this conservative country didn't suddenly turn liberal, it simply rejected some conservatives that it deemed to be incompetent. That provides an opening for a pragmatic progressive like Obama. But activists will have to remember that he's a pragmatist first. And that, frankly, may be their best hope for the future.
This is one of the better posts I've read here. However, it might be slightly more accurate to say that the country rejected Republicans that it deemed to be not very conservative. After all, what do $700 billion bailouts and more regulation - yes, contrary to Democratic claims, we have way more regulation now than we had eight years ago - have to do with conservatism? Ironically, the country didn't reject the PATRIOT Act (which I'm opposed to) and other contributions to the growing national security state - long associated with Republicans and conservatives - maybe because so many Democrats (including Obama) also supported these measures, something that, I think, has been conveniently forgotten.