Iowa fallout

And the Iowa 'winners' are:

Republican

1.  Huckabee - 34%
2.  Romney - 25%
3.  Thompson - 13%
4.  McCain - 13%

Democrat

1.  Obama - 38%
2.  Edwards - 30%
3.  Clinton - 29%

If you want to know why I put quotes around the word 'winners,' then read this:

On the Republican side the balloting amounts to a "beauty contest" or straw poll (underlining the utter uselessness of the Ames Straw Poll the previous August). No delegates are committed; they will all be chosen later at a state convention. The Democrats do choose delegates, but in such a way as to defy description. There is no secret ballot - caucus participants must stand in a group for their candidate. Then the process of winnowing out the "non-viable" candidates begins, when people may be persuaded, cajoled, or harangued into joining another group. The whole event can take two hours or longer. Even then, Democrats can't tell you who "won" right away, because the bedrock concept of "one man, one vote" doesn't apply: they "weight" each precinct based on its past record of voting Democratic.

So nothing is really settled.  Ron Paul can and will still make trouble for the Republicans.  Rudy Giuliani is probably through.  Fred Thompson is hanging by a thread; as the much anticipated "new Reagan" of the Republican party, his poor showing in Iowa might be a death blow.  The Republican race is still wide-open.

Mike Huckabee's rise to Republican front-runner status illustrates a number of things that the conservative chattering classes do not seem to understand about working-class Americans.  They do not argue with each other over supply-side theory, monetarism and currency markets, federalism, and the like.  Their financial and political decisions have nothing to do with potential stock market growth or profitability of Fortune 500 companies, and everything to do with the financial and physical security of their families.

They worry about layoffs and they would be hard-pressed to tell you how the Dot Com Boom made a difference in their lives.  They worry about high gasoline prices.  They worry about the value of their homes -- the single largest asset many of these families own.  They worry about high taxes and the enormous amount of waste and fraud in the government.  Mostly they are church-goers and are particularly sensitive about their Christian beliefs.

Mike Huckabee has latched on to the kind of populism that appeals to these people.  He is not going over their heads with economic theories or promises to place the financial health of corporate America at the top of his priorities list.  He has promised not to raise Federal income taxes.  He has shown a willingness to spend money and provide benefits for those who need them.  He plainly and genuinely articulates his faith.  He seems to understand the threat of radical Islamism and has promised to see that America keeps her promises to Iraq and Afghanistan.  His only weaknesses as a populist are his leniency toward criminals and illegal aliens.  Will this populism carry throughout the nation?  How will the conservative elites, who strongly dislike Huckabee, fight to keep him from being nominated?  Can the Democrats use his Southern Baptist beliefs to denigrate him in the general election?  For now, only time will tell.

Barak Obama did it.  No coronation for Queen Hillary.  But Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  With respect to Senator Obama, perhaps an appropriate sentiment would be, "I don't know whether to congratulate you or not."  Lorie Byrd wrote, "Obama should be afraid because he is now going to feel the business end of the Clinton machine. He seems like a really nice guy. I wonder if he has any clue what is in store for him."  Obama is also a populist.  His eloquent charm and vision of a new type of leadership appeals to a vast audience.  He has promised a gentler foreign policy, which also appeals to Americans who fear a future of continual warfare for our nation.  And he is the only Democrat candidate who can speak about faith from the heart and not sound like he is reading from a script.  And he has tip-toed past the radical hyper-socialist and class warfare messages of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

Let's be brutally honest about Hillary.  She has no charm.  She has little authenticity.  She represents business-as-usual/good-ol'-boy/high-roller politics in all of its worst aspects.  And when she has not memorized a carefully-written script, she is an embarrassment -- last week, she managed to get most of the facts about Benazir Bhutto's family, the Pakistani political system, and next month's parliamentary elections in Pakistan completely wrong.  In describing Hillary Clinton, Peggy Noonan wrote:

I concede her sturdy mind, deep sophistication, and seriousness of intent. I see her as a triangulator like her husband, not a radical but a maneuverer in the direction of a vague, half-forgotten but always remembered, leftism. It is also true that she has a command-and-control mentality, an urgent, insistent and grating sense of destiny, and she appears to believe that any act that benefits Clintons is a virtuous act, because Clintons are good and deserve to be benefited.

But this is not, actually, my central problem with her candidacy. My central problem is that the next American president will very likely face another big bad thing, a terrible day, or days, and in that time it will be crucial--crucial--that our nation be led by a man or woman who can be, at least for the moment and at least in general, trusted. Mrs. Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma? I do not think so. And if I am right, that simple fact would do as much damage to America as the terrible thing itself.

Noonan also says, "There's something about her that makes you look, watch, think, look again, weigh and say: No."

But she won't go down without a hell of a fight.  She has, as Rush Limbaugh often remarks, "eaten the excrement sandwich" over and over again for her husband, covering up his questionable Arkansas good ol' boy deals, putting up with his affairs, running the Bimbo Eruption Squads, managing the Clinton White House and directing its spin control, and so on.  She is owed something by him, and by the Democrats.  How ironic if the presidential legacy that she worked so hard to create and preserve (her husband's) becomes her ultimate undoing.  Truthfully, I don't think Bill would mind that one bit.

Comments

[Charlie]

Well said, Mike. I agree completely with how you describe Huckabee's appeal, and even today I found a number of newspapers who credit "evangelicals" with his Iowa win. The bigger part of his appeal comes from the huge gulf that has opened between the concerns of the working class and the concerns of the elites, and despite the lip service paid, Republicans in Washington seem to listen more to the elites than to the party's base.

The line that Peggy Noonan quoted from Huckabee's Leno appearance gets to the heart of Huckabee's support: "People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off."