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"If you were watching cable news the Monday after the Golden Globes, you would have thought the numbers would say 99 percent of Americans want her to run," said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University, in a Tuesday interview. "Certainly polls have their limitations, but these numbers don't quite indicate that degree of enthusiasm."

Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee who is now a CNN contributor, said Winfrey successfully seized the moment at the Golden Globes with a speech about important contemporary issues that was not blatantly political. Asked about the voters who said Winfrey should not run for president, he ascribed that to political fatigue.

"People like Oprah because they've watched her do amazing things for 30 years now. Yeah, she supported candidates in the past, but being a candidate yourself opens you up to all kinds of political attacks," he said in a Tuesday interview.

Sixty-two percent of those surveyed described Winfrey as liberal, 39 percent of whom described her as "very liberal." Six in 10 Republicans described Winfrey as "very liberal," compared with 28 percent of Democrats who described her as such. A 33-percent plurality of Democrats described Winfrey as "somewhat" liberal.

No matter how much physical, financial, or emotional damage he causes, the criminal believes he is a good person...

It is important to understand how a criminal fortifies his good opinion of himself so that he can do a kind deed for someone and then, shortly thereafter, wreak havoc. The criminal's view of himself as a decent person constitutes a major barrier to change.

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