A very good night

Tonight is a very good night to be a Mike Huckabee supporter.

For months, we have been told that supporting Mike Huckabee was a bad thing — that we were dividing the social conservative vote and would throw the nomination to Rudy Giuliani if we didn’t bow out and get behind Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney himself said that no candidate could be taken seriously without at least $20 million.

Tonight, no one can ignore Mike Huckabee.

Mitt Romney spent about 15 times as much as Mike Huckabee, and it looks like Iowans aren’t for sale. At this time, CNN is reporting about a 9-point lead, 34% to 25%. That has to hurt.

For Mike Huckabee, of course, this is a very big deal. You simply can’t ignore him anymore.

For Mitt Romney, this is also a very big deal. With major endorsements from all over the establishment in the GOP, he was still unable to pull out even a close second. Gov. Romney has to focus on New Hampshire now. If he loses in these two early races, he is probably done. He’s doing well in NH, but let me get back to that.

Fred Thompson pulled off a third place finish, about as far behind Romney as  Romney was behind Huckabee, at 13%.  This will keep Sen. Thompson in the game, if he can do well in South Carolina.

John McCain also pulled in about 13%, which he needs to use to make a good run in New Hampshire. This was a strong finish for him after many of us — and I’m among them — who thought that the immigration bill would have doomed him. He’s doing well in NH, and if he can pull off the win here, then he’s a force to be considered.

At long last, we have some idea what Ron Paul’s support looks like. For a candidate who has been ruled everywhere from longshot kook to front-runner,  10% is … well, … a number. We’ll see how that plays with the Ron Paul supporters. Certainly, a double-digit finish indicates that he has real support. But a 5th place finish in this first contest is hardly inspiring. It will be interesting to see what happens from here. New Hampshire will likely be better to Rep. Paul, with a much-stronger libertarian (and Libertarian) presence than Iowa. Rep. Paul also apparently carried a strong vote among younger voters — according to one report that I heard, he got more first-time voters than Gov. Romney did.

Rudy Giuliani didn’t really campaign in Iowa, saying that he was focusing on later states with more delegates. He also didn’t bother campaigning for the strongly conservative people of Iowa. A 4% finish is a problem for him now. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

With 1%, Duncan Hunter is now demonstrably in last place. I doubt that he will stay in through Super Tuesday. As did Tom Tancredo, I think that Rep. Hunter is going to find a candidate who is close to his values, and withdraw soon.

Listening to NPR, I have heard Rich Lowry of National Review, and I’ve been greatly enjoying it.

Rich Lowry, who endorsed Gov. Romney very recently, has acknowledged that this outcome is bad for Romney. According to Lowry, Romney loses momentum for the NH primary, and  it becomes likely that Sen. McCain will win the race here. Then, it lines up to a race of Huckabee, McCain, and Giuliani representing three different factions of the GOP — and he sees Sen. McCain having a very strong chance of becoming the new establishment/mainstream Republican candidate, an alternative to the social conservative/fiscal moderate Huckabee and social liberal/defense hawk Giuliani.

For now … it’s a very, very good night.

I do have some comments on the Democratic side of the game …

Hillary Clinton cannot possibly be happy with her third-place finish (even if it turns out to be second). Like Romney, she had a huge amount of pressure to win the early races. Negative momentum is going to hurt her badly. If she doesn’t win New Hampshire, then I think she’s done.

Barack Obama is charismatic, and should warrant a lot of attention. This could be very interesting. Like Huckabee, he won with a strong vote among young people — generally considered a losing strategy. This could prove very interesting.

Senators Chris Dodd and Joseph Biden have each withdrawn. This is too bad, really. Frankly, they had more experience and potential to lead than the three Democratic front-runners combined.

We will see how the rest of this plays out.

But for tonight, it is a very, very good night.

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