Blogs of War

While the winners may have been predictable others, at least on the Republican side, may benefit more. Huckabee, even with a win in Iowa, is on a fast-track to nowhere. Nothing would slam the brakes on the conservative movement faster than a Huckabee nomination – nothing. Thankfully, there’s just no way that will happen. Ultimately, I believe that McCain’s fourth place finish, along with his positive polling, and friendly media support will have a more significant long-term impact than Huckabee’s win. Fred Thompson also stands to benefit from his relatively strong showing – if he can convince voters that he actually wants to.

Here are a few thoughts from the blogosphere:

Threat Level
Joe Carter, an evangelical political blogger who recently signed off from a month-long stint with the Huckabee campaign as a research director, says in an interview that “the bloggers really helped us to get the message out.” He attributes Huckabee’s online support to a “long tail” group of underground bloggers. “They don’t make a big splash, but instead make lots of little ripples across the water,” he says.

David Limbaugh
Given Gov. Mike Huckabee’s remarkable performance so far in the GOP presidential contest in the name of conservatism, and especially after seeing his interview on the “Tonight Show,” I question how brightly that flame is flickering.

Pensito Review
Mike Huckabee’s campaign manager, Ed Rollins — who has been coasting for 24 years on his success working on Reagan’s reelection but was last seen storming off the senate campaign of Florida whackjob Katherine Harris — obviously decided to keep Huckabee’s sons out of camera range during last night’s victory speech in Iowa, not because they are ginormous but because their presence would remind people about son David’s torturing and killing a dog (and the attempts by his father, then the governor of Arkansas, to cover up this sadistic episode).

Hot Air
The Republicans who are upset are so because they want a candidate who is strong on foreign policy, and Huckabee just doesn’t project that strength (and secondarily, they want an economic conservative as opposed to an economic populist). He downplays that foreign policy weakness toward the end of the interview with one serious fact that I’ve mentioned vis a vis the Democrats — foreign policy experience just didn’t matter in the caucuses. We’re at war and it didn’t matter.

CNN Political Ticker
Evangelicals constituted the majority of Republican caucus goers (60 percent), and our entrance polling shows Huckabee won 45 percent of that group. Mitt Romney, who has heavily courted social conservatives only drew 19 percent of those voters.

The Swamp
Last night, just before Gov. Mike Huckabee walked onto a Des Moines stage to declare victory in the Iowa caucuses, his aides and advisers gave him a simple message: whatever you do, don’t scream.

Brendan Nyhan
However, there’s almost no precedent for someone winning the nomination with as little elite support as Huckabee (see, in particular, the work of Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller [here and here] who find that elite activist support is the best predictor of primary outcomes). That means the establishment will be coming to destroy Huckabee in the next few weeks. John McCain’s 2000 defeat in South Carolina may look like a tea party…

Michelle Malkin
Now that Barack Obama has won a resounding victory in 94.9 percent white Iowa, will the MSM and the Dems stop yammering about racist, un-diverse voters already? The bigotry concern troll act is getting old and tired. Not as old and tired as Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But close.

The Moderate Voice
Face it, folks: McCain’s the only GOP candidate who could possibly keep pace with the eventual Dem challenger in the general election; but if that Dem challenger is Obama (as it increasingly looks like it will be), even McCain’s heroism and integrity won’t be enough. Accordingly, dual-mod Republicans will need to wait until at least 2012 to resurrect their party. And perhaps that’s a good thing. As slow as we’ve collectively been to recognize the crisis we’re in, the chances are damn good we’ll need another four years to make things right.

Power Line
With any luck, tonight will be the high-water mark for Huckabee. Romney, meanwhile, faces the very real prospect of back-to-back second place finishes. That wouldn’t be bad in the abstract, but given the resources he’s thrown into Iowa and New Hampshire and the leads he has held there, it would raise doubts about his ability to “seal the deal” with voters. Of course, if Romney manages to defeat McCain in New Hampshire, his set-back in Iowa will quickly be forgotten.

Riehl World View
The energy and participation is off the charts on the Dem side. It went up on the Republican side due to the Evangelical vote. That’s great, but it isn’t enough to win a general election. The fact is, as things stand, the Republicans don’t have a candidate that can win nationally in 2008.

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