Three bits: Assemble them however you will.

1) (Hertzberg/NewYorker) "Fifty years ago, the civil-rights movement understood that nonviolence can be an effective weapon even if—or especially if—the other side refuses to follow suit. Obama has a similarly tough-minded understanding of the political uses of bipartisanship, which, even if it fails as a tactic for compromise, can succeed as a tonal strategy: once the other side makes itself appear intransigently, destructively partisan, the game is half won. Obama is learning to throw the ball harder. But it’s not Rovian hardball he’s playing. More like Gandhian hardball."

2) (Staff/CQPolitics) "But many of the right’s grass-roots activists say the current political landscape offers little for them to get excited about. The political party they call home, of course, is coming off back-to-back devastating electoral losses, of Congress in 2006 and of the White House last fall. Just as grave, the GOP has no leader who’s clearly capable of restoring the magical Reagan alliance of fiscal and social conservatives that fueled the party’s strength for the better part of three decades — a critical task, activists say, when liberal views on social and economic policy are gaining popular appeal and traction in Congress."

3) (ObamaInterview) "But he did say that he thought the GOP party-line vote was a fait accompli long before it was taken. "Look," he said, "once a decision was made by the Republican leadership to have a party-line vote -- a decision that I think occurred before I met with them -- then I'm not sure that there was a whole host of things that we were going to do that was going to make a difference."